THEME Art, design, literature, media and Music

Phrenology- a Victorian obsession?

In 1824, George Combe’s ‘Elements of Phrenology’ was published. Phrenology was the identification of an individual’s faculties by feeling the shape of the skull. It was argued by Franz Joseph Gall, an Austrian physician, along with Johann Spurzheim that mind and brain were connected, in a way that, different characteristics of mind, would give different…

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Tailors and Family History

A plethora of tailors and dressmakers in our own family trees made us stop and think about the role of the tailor in the community and how they went about their everyday work and we will get to that but first Many in our families were tailors in Hampshire between Portsmouth and Hambledon. It just…

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Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps New Hampshire

A super mapping resource from Dartmouth Library is the digital map project of the Sanborn fire insurance maps for many towns in New Hampshire. If you have any family history connections to New Hampshire then these maps are a real treat To explore other intriguing snippets and see how they can be used to explore…

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Charles Dickens – supporter of Ragged Schools

In 1843, Charles Dickens visited the Field Lane Ragged School and was so shocked and moved by what he saw there, he decided to write a pamphlet about it. Instead though he penned ‘A Christmas Carol’ as he thought he could reach more people through a novel. An intriguing connection is that John Pounds set…

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Warwickshire Family History

Warwickshire UK, is probably best known around the world for it’s most famous son William Shakespeare. It is a fascinating county, largely rural to the south, the North became more industrial as the Industrial Revolution unrolled. It’s industrial heart contains a mixture of mining, clay and cement working, textiles and engineering. It is crossed by…

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