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Like it or not, tipping is a big part of hospitality and the service industry. Debates about how much/whether to tip rumble on, but they are not new. Even in the 18th and 19th centuries, travellers were complaining about the amount of unwanted or unexpected extras they had to pay for.
Yes, it’s true – I’ve finally joined the 21st century and decided to try something new. I am still only setting things up, so please be patient with the extremely cheesy and clunky vids as I try to work out what I’m doing! I’ve only got a couple of videos up at the moment too, … Continue reading News Just In: Dr W Joins TikTok – @dralun7
Victorians were inveterate 'swappers' (NB: this might not be what you think!). Newspapers and journals were full of ads for objects sought and to be exchanged. These offer a fascinating insight into what was considered desirable, the value of objects, and the processes of exchange.
For this post, I am going to wander into the world of crime in the late eighteenth century, and the grisly fate that befell many who committed the heinous crime of highway robbery. (Full disclosure: I’m not an historian of crime, gibbets or highwaymen…perhaps the case I’m about to discuss is very well known. But he’s … Continue reading The Troublesome Gibbet of John Haines, the ‘Wounded Highwayman’ of Hounslow.
More in history
First and Second Kings are one literary work that was divided into the two books we have today when translators rendered the Hebrew text into the Greek Septuagint. That division was carried through to the Latin Vulgate and subsequently into modern Bible translations. The Septuagint and Vulgate combined 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 […]
This is the second part of our series (I) discussing the basic contours of life – birth, marriage, labor, subsistence, death – of pre-modern peasants and their families. As we’ve discussed, pre-modern peasant farmers make up the vast majority of human beings in in the past. Last week we started by looking at the basic … Continue reading Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part II: Starting at the End →
Homer’s Iliad tells the story of the Trojan War. Traditionally, that war has been dated to the late Bronze Age, approximately c. 1200 BCE. However, the Iliad itself was not written that early in history. There is wide agreement that Homer—or whoever the true author of the Iliad was—lived much, much later than this. […]
Among the kings of England there have been eight Henrys, eight Edwards, and six Georges but there has only ever been one John. His successors did not want to be associated with the stain the name had in the minds of the English people. Considering what the monk Matthew Paris penned (writing decades after […]
