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

If he was Victorian, all things tartan were the height of fashion!

Love the Burberry story!

Am trying to find out if it was only the Gestapo who wore the (expensive) leather stuff, but googling "nazi uniform leather" throws up some, um, interesting results......

Lol, curiosity piqued, I did exactly the same thing olenna!!

Leather, properly tanned and sewn lasts so well. Besides being a resilient material, it also hangs beautifully and has the added bonus - if you're that way inclined - of looking really 'rough tough'.

(I didn't google though. )

Cozie, explains why Mrs May paid so much..

Dubbin fine for leather but destroys the stitching. You need to be careful. Saddle soap generally a better idea.

That first sentence completely lost me, Orlanda. I must be having a dense sort of morning.

Theresa May was photographed in a pair of £1000 leather trousers recently.

Ah.

I'm just watching six wives ep1 now...

I've just watched E2 - am wondering what made them realise in the end, scientifically that confinement was actually the opposite of helpful to mother and child

Is anyone hoping to receive historical books from Father Christmas?

Oh yes. My Amazon wishlist is all history. Tracy Borman's new one on private lives of Tudors, Woolgar The Culture of Food In Medieval England, and various Peter Brears food history ones.

Try Nancy Mitford eg The Sun King. I don't know how good she is on the facts but the feeling of Louis XIV's court is extremely good. The Daughter of Time is also excellent - pretty well a 'must read' even though it's an elderly book.

hi all
wonder if anyone can help with something I saw on the TV show Whitechapel - which is mostly very easy to find history for - they said that it was thought the gates of hell were situated around a church there called Christchurch but I can't find any info about this? Maybe a bit that was made up for the show?

thanks.

Christ Church is in Spitalfield, which used to be one of the most notorious rookeries (slums) in London, so I assume it was a metaphorical reference. "Go any further than Christ Church and you will enter a world of depravity, criminal behaviour, street violence, prostitution, drunkenness, godlessness...."

Church Street, now Fornier Street ran from Christchurch to Brick lane and one of the main roads in the slum, so this was probably your gate to hell. The Rookery was called Old Nichol.

thank you weeds - I shall investigate further. There was a picture shown in one of the episodes - a sketch from history, not a current photo - but it wasn't in shot long.

I also learned about the Black Swine and what a djinn or aswang was from watching this show! Hadn't heard of either before.

Church Street would have been one of the "blackest streets". A poverty map made in, I think 1890, showed rich streets in pink and the worst of the worst in black.

thanks Weeds - I'm going to dig out my Times History of London and see if there's anything there. I did read Ackroyd's London but was more focused on areas of London I know well, I don't know much at all about the East.

I doubt there's much left of the East? (After the Blitz and redevelopment.)

There's a surprising amount left, however slum clearance did away with a lot of it prior to the blitz! The street layout hasn't changed much, if at all and a lot of the old buildings are still there.

I thought the same as cozie tbh, interesting to hear that's not the case.

Interesting, Weeds. Although they're mainly town houses now, I think? When I lived in the South East of London, all of the former warehouses were being converted into posh flats.

No mention of gates of hell in Times book but talk of clearing out Whitechapel rookeries with the result that it moved crime to surrounding regions. My memory is failing me, I thought police were introduced in the 1840s but it's 1829.

Yes, the old houses with the back courtyards are all gone. I think they are mainly industrial or replacements for the slum housing. But you can look up old streets and they are still there. I lived in SE18. All "artisan villas" according to estate agents, two up two down to everyone else and all with downstairs bathrooms as they didn't have any when built!