We’ll start with a touch of Christmastide shenanigans. A well respected farmer and businessman, Thomas Hole, was stood in the dock garbed only in a sheet and rug, much to the amusement of the court’s public attendees, in stark contrast his hands and face were blackened. Thomas was accused of being drunk and disorderly at the Crown hotel.
Category: Victorian illustrations
Examples of Victorian illustrations.
When Andromeda and the Naval Fleet went Walkabouts from Weymouth. August 1899.
via When Andromeda and the Naval Fleet went Walkabouts from Weymouth. August 1899.
Granfer Henry Reads the News; Every Day Lives in Weymouth; 1884.
What I find fascinating about mooching through old newspapers is not only the sensational crimes and usual misdemeanours that fill the columns of the local papers, but also those mundane snippets that give us every day glimpses of our Victorian ancestors lives. In some sense, they really weren’t that much different from us. Take The…
Men of the Sea; Greenhill Weymouth 1869
Folks lined the grassy slopes along Greenhill common, watching as men dragged their wooden boats and heavy rope nets down the beach and into the water. Time after time they rowed out into the wind swept bay, laying nets behind them. Having circled round, they then began the hard work. Men heaved and hauled in their cumbersome nets, moving ever closer to shore.
19th c New Years Eve in ‘Dorset Lunatic Asylum.’
This New Year’s Eve musing takes on a slightly different tone. Maybe not quite so light a subject as I would normally cover, but it’s a subject that I feel strongly about and that I think often gets brushed under the carpet. (The words used, though not nowadays politically correct, are ones that were used during…
What Were Your Weymouth Ancestors Up To December of 1888?
Christmas is nearly upon us, its that time of year when we think about absent family and friends and especially those no longer here to celebrate with us. Our long departed ancestors knew how to celebrate Christmas too, albeit sometimes in a very different way, though their life often mirrored ours of today, with the same…
Victorian St Nicholas Street: Weymouth
Numerous narrow streets tuck themselves away in and around Weymouth town. Ones that we don’t pay much attention to. Maybe sometimes travelling their length merely to avoid excess holiday traffic or that proliferation of poodling summertime pedestrians. They are merely a means of getting from A to B as quickly as possible, never a place to stop and admire the…
Love is in the Air…Weymouth & Portland’s Victorian Valentines
Well, as Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, I eagerly await to see what glittering jewels and delicious delights my beloved will present to me early that morn…(don’t even go there!) It might surprise you to know that celebrating St Valentine’s Day is nothing new, it has been observed for centuries, apparently made popular by Geoffrey Chaucer…
Ringing in the New Year Victorian Style; Weymouth and Portland.
Well…that’s yet another year year done and dusted. My old Mum always used to say the older you get, the faster they go, and true to her oh so wise (but often infuriating) words, the older I’m getting, the faster they’re bloody well going. In fact they’ve now almost hit warp speed! New Year’s Eve is…
A Happier Weymouth Christmas of 1862…
Well…this is my second attempt at writing a blog post this year about life in Victorian Weymouth in the build up to the Christmas period. My first attempt at writing one that gave the reader a warm fuzzy glow, the feel-good factor, full of Christmastide cheer, had somehow ended up instead laden with the doom and…
VICTORIAN TALES FROM WEYMOUTH AND PORTLAND 