Categories
1900-1949 Food & Drink

Vintage Recipes – The Good, the Bad and the Calf’s Head, 1910

My potato surprises

This is the almost unfortunately-named Mrs Dora Rea’s Cookery Book, from 1910.

This is a lovely cookbook, very sensible and everyday, and largely lacking in Victorian and Edwardian aspic-y froufrou. Full of recipes that are easily followed today.

A few cookery quirks of the time were the emphasis on “nitrogenous” foods (what we’d call protein now) and “invalid cookery”, sickroom cooking being taken very seriously before the advent of Heinz Tomato Soup.

It also turns out that there was good reason that British cooking was derided for its treatment of vegetables. Here’s a recipe instructing how to cook carrots:

Yes, that’s boil between one and two-and-a-half hours, then chop into mush. I wouldn’t boil carrots to make baby purée that long.

At this time they were also keen on cooking heads to make brawn. Otherwise known as “head cheese”, a name that gives me terrors.

Although it’s at least a step above the gothic-sounding “blood tongue” – http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_tongue

It seems like a lot of effort to go to, when the end result is still a head. All that removing of snout bone, tongue and brains. Shudder.

But there are loads of great things in here. I’m as mad about cooking as I am about history and I love testing out old recipes. This is “Potato Surprise”, a 100% delicious concoction that I make with the leftovers from yesterday’s sausage and mash (I have to make extra especially so there’s enough for leftovers, of course).

Mrs Rea’s Potato Surprises
1/2 pound of cooked sausages
1 1/2 pounds mashed potato
Salt and pepper
1/2 ounce butter
(Unmentioned – an egg, breadcrumbs and oil)

Melt the butter and mix with the potatoes, also seasoning.
Divide sausages into small pieces.
Cover each with potato, make into a ball, brush with egg, cover with breadcrumbs.
Fry in hot fat.

Nb. Love the old spelling d’oyley. Makes it infinitely posher-sounding.

Categories
Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang Insult of the Week – Softhorn

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

Softhorn – a simpleton, a donkey, whose ears, the substitute of horns, are soft.

Categories
1900-1949 Adverts Ephemera Pharmaceuticals

The Liverpool Virus, 1913

Pharmacist's receipt for The Liverpool Virus rat poison, 1913

I’ve recently discovered the thrills of the “ephemera” section of Ebay. Not least, the word “ephemera” itself which is now vying for the position of my favourite word, alongside “nebula”.

I was looking for old playing cards, and am now the proud owner of some gloriously grotesque Edwardian Happy Family sets. But I was enthralled by the other random and delicate stuff that has survived, almost by accident.

I now have all manner of old bits and pieces, including Liverpool pharmacy receipts from 1913 – the days when names were taken and logged on the paperwork, all the better to know who’d suspiciously been purchasing arsenic after a case of poisoning. They included this receipt for “The Liverpool Virus” rat poison:

Which feels rather like crucial evidence at the start of either an Agatha Christie, or a zombie film.

But the thing I really like about the ephemera is that they are a handy jumping off point into history. A little tangible clue to inspire a bit of history-surfing.

I’ve discovered resources I didn’t know of, like the joys of the Old Bailey’s archive of court case transcripts. I’ve found out about the ship SS Homeric from a letter written on board to a friend in 1932. Leatherhead bus routes in the 1920s from an old bus leaflet. And I’ve been perusing the British Medical Journal archives on account of an outbreak of severe enteritis caused by this “Liverpool Virus” rat poison in 1908. It turns out despite the manufacturer’s claims that it was safe for humans, it very likely contained some form of salmonella.

Advert for The Liverpool Virus
Advert for The Liverpool Virus

I’m especially fascinated by the pharmaceuticals of the Victorian and Edwardian era – the hard drugs you could buy over the counter, and the potentially dangerous snake oils that promised to fix you up and paint the garden gate while they were at it (and I’m speaking as someone who was rather severely quizzed by a doctor last week as to why I even owned a bottle of Piriton).

Some more information is on this blog (another bonus, discovering so many of the informative blogs people are writing out there): http://jsbookreader.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/the-liverpool-rat-virus-strikes.html

Categories
Games Victorian

Friday Fun – Riddle-me-ree, 1870

The Young Ladies Journal, February 1870

A classy riddle from “The Young Ladies Journal”, February 1st 1870.

Can you guess it?

My first is a vegetable well known to all;
My second’s an insect tiny and small;
My whole forms one of a large class in this nation;
Tho’ rather low down in the scale is his station.

Categories
Pharmaceuticals Victorian

Mappin & Company, Surgical Mechanicians of Birmingham, 1885

Mappin and Co surgical instrument catalogue, 1885

Today it’s a very special post – a guest post from Dave of the ace crime fiction blog http://whatareyoureadingfor.wordpress.com

It’s funny what you come across when you’re looking for something else. Hunting for references to an electric car company (don’t ask) in the library stacks, I came across this wonderful 1885 catalogue for Birmingham surgical instrument makers Mappin & Co. I’ve long been fascinated by surgery and pathology (my childhood hero was Jack Klugman, growling his way through Monday night episodes of Quincy M.E), so as soon as I cracked it open I was hooked.

The index at the front is enough to make even the strongest stomach flutter, with references to all manner of ‘bespoke’ items: Haemorrhoidal Clamps, Harelip Pins, Necrosis Chisels, Rectum Plugs, Gunshot Probes, Mouth Gags… You get the idea. But it’s when you get into the body (ahem) of the catalogue that the fun really starts. Many of the items are beautifully illustrated; who wouldn’t want a full dissection kit, complete with Brain Knife, Bowel Scissors and Spine Chisels, all presented in a strong mahogany case for the bargain price of £4 12s (equivalent to £300 in today’s money)?

And if that doesn’t paint a vivid enough picture, some of the products are shown in use. On one page, a sad-faced man is seen inserting one end of the nasal douche into his – well, nose, whilst a jet of unidentified liquid shoots out of the other nostril. According to the blurb, it’s good for ‘Hay Fever, Bleeding from the Nose, Offensive Discharges and Thickness of Speech’ – curing rather than causing them, I’d hope. I wouldn’t be first in the queue to try it out.

Should living patients not do it for you, how about a skeleton? £10 10s for the full body, or £1 15s for top half only. If your budget doesn’t stretch that far, maybe a skull is more tempting (£2 5s) or just a hand (linked with cat gut, a bargain at just 7 shillings). But the catalogue’s best surprise is left until the end. Mappin & Co didn’t just supply doctors – the general customer could also purchase their table cutlery from them. I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be with that – especially the ones with ‘white bone handles’. You’d always wonder who – sorry, where – they’d come from.

Mappin & Co continued to trade up until the early 1920s, at which point they drop out of the documentary record. Trade directories for the period suggest their premises at 121 New Street were subsequently taken over by a pianoforte showroom, and then a jeweller’s. The address is still there, and is currently (I swear I’m not making this up) a branch of The Body Shop. If history doesn’t repeat itself, it certainly rhymes sometimes.

Categories
Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang of the Week – Spunk-fencer

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

Spunk-fencer. Go on, have a guess at what this slang is referring to.

Well, according to The Slang Dictionary of 1865, it’s a match seller, “spunks” also being the term for lucifer matches. Lucifers were rather unstable and prone to explosive reactions, and had been replaced by this stage with phosphorus matches. But the slang persisted for quite some time, until at least the First World War seeing as it’s mentioned in the song “Pack up your troubles”,

“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile
While you’ve a lucifer to light your fag, smile boys, that’s the style….”

Categories
1950-1999 Future Predictions

2010 Living in the Future, 1972

2010 Living in the Future, Geoffrey Hoyle, 1972

Future predictions again, and this is the one I grew up with.

2010 Living in the Future, Geoffrey Hoyle, 1972
2010 Living in the Future, Geoffrey Hoyle, 1972

“2010 – Living in the Future” is a peaceful, soothing image of the future from 1972, by Geoffrey Hoyle, son of the eminent astronomer Fred Hoyle (the man who coined the term, “The Big Bang”, despite not believing in that theory himself).

I had this as a discarded library book as a child and it was one of my favourites. On the one hand, I was willing to believe that its predictions were very likely to come true. On the other, I kind of knew a lot of them wouldn’t as it would really involve the whole world being rebuilt anew, which seemed unlikely. Not only unlikely, but it was also an awful concept that old buildings, streets and the tangible traces of history would be destroyed.

It’s a product of its time in that a fairly communal style of living is hinted at, a 3 day week is still seen as the end product of technology taking over many aspects of life (if only!), and the reassuring, “it’s fine” vision of how things turn out is probably a reaction to the pessimism of the future that was pretty widespread at this point, after decades of US involvement in one war or another, and the image of nuclear war that hovered over the decade.

But it’s also very well done in many respects. Geoffrey Hoyle utterly gets the importance of computers in people’s everyday lives, in a way that even people working in the computer industry at the time didn’t always appreciate. Things like internet shopping, e-readers and watching films on computer are anticipated. Perhaps one day, school will be like this, all distance learning by webcam – although playtime would be pretty rubbish.

Incidentally, here in Liverpool, people cracked the multicoloured jumpsuit-the-whole-year-round thing way back in the 80s.

There’s a little catch up with Geoffrey Hoyle in 2010 here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12058575

I didn’t realise they’d reprinted the book in 2010. A nice touch. And I find it very funny they reprinted it with the title 2011 instead, so it’s still in the future.

(It reminds me of the obscure 90s comedy series Focus North, where they predict that everyone in 2011 wears silver capes, swears a lot and has webbed hands, yet in a flashback to 2009, none of that had happened yet.)

Categories
1900-1949 Games

Friday Fun – Human Sacrifices, 1938

Human Sacrifices, the Weekend Book, 1938

This is a game for the more robust personality. In the wrong crowd, this is not so much a way to break the ice at parties, as a way to crash into a bloody great iceberg. The kind of game they’d make everyone play in the Big Brother house if they wanted to cause murder.

In short, a vengeful god demands sacrifices and a piece of paper is passed round the group who have to mark on it who they would sacrifice first, and that person has to leave the room. This continues until there are only two people left, and this is where it gets slightly confusing. The instructions say to call out the name of the person least worthy to survive, but if there’s only two left then I’m not sure how it would work. Unless the we’re-not-worthy sacrificed in the hall outside are the ones shouting…?

Categories
1950-1999 Food & Drink

Bobby Davro’s Diet Tips (and Jon Pertwee Looking Cool), 1986

TV Times All Star Cookbook, 1986

It’s not all Victoriana and Chomondley-Warners around these parts.

I love a recipe in any form, and I find this 1986 TV Times All Star Cookery by Jill Cox fascinating. Apart from the too many pictures of a breakfast-tellying Richard Keys. It purports to let you into the food secrets of the TV stars but, for the most part, the celebrities recipes are tailored to the theme of their current TV programme.

Therefore, Cilla Black with “Surprise, Surprise!” has a selection of vaguely “surprising” recipes, like “Gosh! Pots” which are, in fact, stuffed peppers. Gian Sammarco, TV’s Adrian Mole, has lunchbox ideas, and some reason Benny Hill is the master of kids cooking. Stan Boardman has a selection of German recipes and Derek Jameson has a load of food named after the newspaper industry.

There are a few show-offy types who parade their actual recipes on show – Michael and Cheryl Barrymore are wearing their fanciest 80s jumpers (it is pretty much a book demonstrating patterned jumpers in many ways) and demonstrating what they’d make for a dinner party.

Bobby Davro is the resident diet expert, with his “year of the body”. And by the way he describes how “the ounces creep on” (ounces!) I’m guessing it wasn’t a serious weight problem he had.

This book got dusted off again by me fairly recently when my small son became quite the scarecrow nerd. We watched endless episodes of Worzel Gummidge (still brilliant) and I remembered the Worzel-themed recipes in here. Hence this pic of Jon Pertwee looking rather dashing and a collection of scarecrow recipes that he definitely used to eat all the time.

(And “Aunt Sally Colly” is the maddest way to cook cauliflower ever)

Added for Gallifrey Base – the missing Pertwee recipe page:

Categories
Victorian Victorian Slang

Victorian Slang Insult of the Week – Cupboard-headed

The Slang Dictionary, 1865

I love Victorian insults, especially the “head”-based insults like “chucklehead”, as used by Mark Twain brilliantly in the below letter to his gas company in 1891:

“Dear Sirs: Some day you will move me almost to the verge of irritation by your chuckle-headed Goddamned fashion of shutting your Goddamned gas off without giving any notice to your Goddamned parishioners. Several times you have come within an ace of smothering half of this household in their beds and blowing up the other half by this idiotic, not to say criminal, custom of yours. And it has happened again today. Haven’t you a telephone?”

And did you know the word “mutt” started out as “muttonhead”, and so was basically an insult used for dogs?

Here’s my top insult for today – “Cupboard-headed” from “The Slang Dictionary”, 1865 – for one who’s head is both wooden and hollow.

(There’s two for the price of one on this page – there’s also “culver-headed” meaning weak and stupid, which I presume is from an old word for pigeon).