JamesWhitehead
Piffle Prospector
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2001
- Messages
- 14,176
Don't know who you mean with WS.
Will Shakespeare.
Don't know who you mean with WS.
Will Shakespeare.
Carriage drivers then couldn't read or write.
His poor wife!
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Could we please not?
This is the third thread to which my attention has been directed because of comments of an unpleasant tone.
I'm sure that either Viz or the Roy Chubby Brown Fan Club has a forum more suitable.
I am assuming he meant the unpleasant remark about a woman's vagina that he quoted.Could we please not what? Discuss historical attitude story contraception? OK, sorry if I bored you!
But I did do a dissertation on it.
I am assuming he meant the unpleasant remark about a woman's vagina that he quoted.
I did mean that.
Apologies if I didn't make it clear enough.
Could we please not?
This is the third thread to which my attention has been directed because of comments of an unpleasant tone.
I'm sure that either Viz or the Roy Chubby Brown Fan Club has a forum more suitable.
Falling off cliffs while taking selfies seems to be a new trend.
Maybe they had so many children because so many would die young? Have a footie team and you know some will survive to become adults....glad I am born nowYup, although he had two wives so just the one didn't have to do all 20 lots of sprogging.
Why, one wonders? Surely 'they' had contraception back then, especially among educated people like the Bachs?
There were probably several reasons. It might have been seen as wrong to stop God's creation of children. A knowledge of contraception might have been seen as indicative of immorality in young newly married people, as if they were too experienced in the ways of the world. (This problem is dealt with in certain cultures by having the groom and his mother consulting on birth control, e.g. in India.)
But you'd think a woman'd look around and see her mates producing baby after sickly bay, burying half of them, dying themselves in childbirth or soon afterwards, and think er, that's not for me, how can I have fewer children?
The knowledge was already out there but it wasn't for respectable people.
The big Education Act in 1970 made school compulsory and finally took children out of everyday employment. Local Education Boards took over all the existing local provision. (New schools were called 'Board Schools' because they were set up by the 'Board'. You can still see word 'board' in lettering over the front doors of some Victorian schools. There's one near me, to which I must draw attention on the town's local history Facebook page before it's pulled down!)
Pedant that I am... 1870 surely? Otherwise I'm pretty sure a lot of 'the olds' where I grew up would have been a damn sight thicker than they actually were... Which was often pretty thick!
I am assuming he meant the unpleasant remark about a woman's vagina that he quoted.
What the actual, in 2017?
What the actual, in 2017?
I'm guessing, Ashens?
Austen's "Northanger Abbey" has an episode where a snobby suitor drives his trap and horses recklessly in front of girls and brags on their newness and speed. Really hilarious, and you could easily substitute "Porsche" or "Camaro" for his trappings and have an instantly modern scene.I do wonder how many people in the 18th and 19th centuries were killed by carriages whose drivers were trying to read/write letters from/to their acquaintances.
Elephant cemeteries are a type of clandestine hotel/bar where alcoholics go to drink themselves to death when they have given up on life. These miserable pits of despair are the antonym of glamorous. Most offer nothing more than a dingy unlit room with cold cement flooring, bare brick walls, and a tattered old mattress for the wretched to lie on as they slowly pass away.
Obviously illegal, elephant cemeteries trade entirely underground. Some Bolivians still dismiss them as being an urban legend – perhaps unwilling to accept the fact that such macabre places do exist in civilized society. But a 2014 report by Telemundo put any doubts to rest with shocking footage revealing their inner workings, and with interviews from those unfortunate enough to want to visit. The report states that alcoholics ask the proprietor to lock them inside until they have passed away. Those who change their mind can ring a doorbell and leave, only to end up sleeping on the hard concrete streets right outside.
A short story entitled Los Cementerios de Elefantes (The Elephant Cemeteries) by Victor Hugo Viscarra describes what goes on in gruesome detail. The story is based on his own personal experience investigating this phenomenon. He explains how clients often shake so badly from decades of alcohol abuse that they’re unable to drink from cups or bottles. A bucket full of pure alcohol is offered instead, along with a large dipper to scoop it straight into the mouth. Some places reportedly function as bars with a cemetery out the back, while others are dedicated suicide hotels. Here clients can either choose a private room, or they can opt for a shared space where their final days become a communal event.
Whoa. That's dark.
As are the links EnolaGaia adds.
I can remember a conversation I had with the head of a remedial unit when I was in teacher-training many years ago. I had made some vaguely hopeful or optimistic comment about the value of the work they did. He thought I ought to know the truth: these were their best days, for sure. Outside the school environment, there was little or nothing between these young people and the gutter. Addiction, exploitation, petty crime, abuse lay ahead.
I think he meant we should carry on, despite it. Yet never in denial of the reality.
The Wet House thinking reminds me of that, though we tried to keep the dangers outside.
Alarming as it was, one couldn't help but be glad that the infectious childhood illnesses of old were no longer rampaging.
Measles, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough, various forms of diarrhoea and lung disease, even chicken pox, all under control through a combination of public health works, vaccination and antibiotics. What a fantastic achievement.