The Historical Ponderings Society

[EverySongbirdSays]

Following on from the thread "What questions do you have about stuff from History or am I the only one?" Which is here

Ever wondered how we got from the clothes of Cave people to the clothes of today?

Who was the first person to make and eat Cheese? Or cake?

How ideas became widespread

Why the Aztecs didn't have the wheel?

Why Elizabeth I never married?

How accurate historical fiction is?

Then this your thread and we are your people.

PROCEED HISTORY LOVERS

Bowls and mugs I guess EBear. They didn't have the stuff to change the water's pH and remove nasty things from it either, though

I would have thought their life expectancy was fairly low!

Jam jars I suspect. (With a bit of string tied round the top.)

Jam jars would be perfect, then Mum could use it for a spot of preserving the following day, once the fish had expired.

Or the kids could add to the collection in the cupboard for swapping for free entrance tickets to something?

Once the fish had expired of course.

When were jam jars invented?

I suspect that mass glass production would have had to been developed before we had jam jars - hand blown jam jars would surely have been unaffordable for most people.

But then there's sugar prices too - when did sugar prices reduce enough to make jam affordable to the general public rather than a luxury for the rich?

Jam jars aren't just for jam though, pickling stuff and just generally preserving it.

So whatever glass jars replaced probably.

Probably some sort of pottery or earthenware before glass jars?

Mass production if glass jars started in the mid-1800s and Gladstone repealed the sugar tax in 1874 so it became affordable. I think jam was a big part of the diet of the urban poor in those days. I seem to recall mention of people drinking from jam jars in various novels, but they might have been American. Sugar refining was going on in Britain from the 1700s but it was crude cane sugar that was imported. Sugar beet production only really took off with WW1 as it was hard to import cane sugar. I know Silver Spoon were bringing cane to their refinery on the Thames in barges relatively recently and may well still do so. Golden syrup was a by-product that Tate and Lyle gave away free to their workers, until they realised how popular it was!

Jam and preserves came in earthenware jars prior to (re-usable, potentially re-cyclable) glass - my childhood home had a small Victorian rubbish-tip at the bottom of the garden and my mother was forever digging up these old pots. I still have several of them on my desk to hold pens and suchlike.

Plenty of stoneware cider jugs around here! Gentleman's Relish came in little pottery containers too. We found a few of those. And Bovril jars, so that's obviously been around a while too.

Reading about the diet of the Victorian poor, I have come across flour soup (it seems the addition of caraway seeds transformed this from revolting to caraway flavoured disgustingness), slink beef or lamb, which was the meat from aborted animals or unborn animals recovered at slaughter and broxy, which was meat from sheep that died of disease. I bet they ate horse, although I can't find any reference to it. They can't have been eating aborted calf themselves to economise and then shelling out a ha'penny on a horse cat kebab surely?

I used to live in a place that, I suspect, didn't have a regular refuse collection until quite late on. The top of our garden had been used for a tip in the early 20th century, I think, and it was fascinating to find things while digging. Small glass bottles (meds?) seemed to be the main thing and, interestingly, we didn't have tins of any description. I guess they cooked from scratch and re-cycled as much as possible. (But what can you do with a little glass bottle if you have one?)

Dogs were an important part of the local set-up where I was, Weeds. (Working dogs.) I guess they received a lot of off-cuts.

If the little glass bottles were square with ridges on, they were ink bottles. Tins were originally hand soldered and very expensive (the ones for canning food), plus I would expect them to rust away if buried. Biscuit tins with replaceable lids would be pre-use I think. You see them in museums a lot so people must have hung on to them. We used to find quite a few things in our garden too. People seem to have checked their rubbish over the wall or at the bottom of the garden in rural areas!

Re-used

Some were clearly ink bottles - but some looked like they had other purposes. I took a great deal of glass out of the ground, mainly shards. (Kept the few whole bottles.)

I've got a random question (inspired by clicking through one of those online "72 amazing photos from WW2, you won't believe #59" slide show things).

Why did some of the Nazis wear long leather coats? Did they invent this style? Was it just the Gestapo, or is that an 'Ello 'ello thing?

I would guess that they were just a version of the military greatcoat which used to come in all lengths although was generally below the knee. (Protection from the elements.)

I've always vaguely assumed they were a sort of hang on from the cavalry. They remind me if the Drize-a-bone type coats that split up the back and have leg straps inside to keep you dry when riding.

Maybe there was some thing that leather became easier to obtain than the correct grade of waterproofable material. I wouldn't underestimate the importance of 'fashion' though. All you need is a few people at the top of the tree to take to them and Whey Hey. Everyone is aspiring to one.

Links back to horses being made into German cavalry trousers possibly!!? You could waterproof leather very well with dubbin.

Ploughing, Weeds. (Limited petrol.) Horses might have been extremely valuable. (Not my area, though.)

Thomas Burberry discovered the waterproofing properties of lanolin when picking up sheep as a shepherd (or possibly noting a shepherd, can't remember if he started out as one himself) - anyway, he noticed the front of a shepherd's smock didn't let water in, because of all the lanolin from holding a lambs and sheep, and thence a raincoat fashion empire!

I assume leather is a suitable substitute but less agricultural.

(Don't know where the tartan came in - Burberry was a Basingstoke man. )