Treatment of Slaves in the United States – Lives Our Ancestors Left Behind

Slavery throughout what is now the United States varied, depending on what time in history and what place you look at. Generally, slavery was brutal, especially on plantations. Whipping and rape were …

Source: Treatment of Slaves in the United States – Lives Our Ancestors Left Behind

Saved by a judge: Historic Victorian station with a military history and a setting for “Dad’s Army” | Westminster Confidential

Brandon Station

When Save Britain’s Heritage appeared before Mrs Justice Lang to argue the case for saving Brandon Station it was almost a lost cause.

Historic Brandon Station dating from 1845, built by a notable Victorian architect and now listed following the judgement …

Source: Saved by a judge: Historic Victorian station with a military history and a setting for “Dad’s Army” | Westminster Confidential

John Snow and the Soho Cholera Outbreak of 1854

Contagious disease has long been a very significant problem. Outbreaks would rise and fall, killing many thousands of people, often in limited areas. Prior to the mid 19th century, the thinking was often that disease was caused and transmitted by a miasma – a form of “bad air”.

It took the work of a number of Doctors and Scientists to prove this was not correct and to trace the real cause of disease transmission, and one of these was Dr. John Snow, often called the founding father of …

Source: John Snow and the Soho Cholera Outbreak of 1854

Behind the Walls of a Sports Bar, Remnants of Florida’s Early Years – Atlas Obscura

The Detroit Hotel around 1900. FLORIDA HISTORY, STATE LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES OF FLORIDA/PUBLIC DOMAIN

PICTURE THE FRESH, CLEAN WALLS of a modern interior space. It’s hard to imagine they would hide anything special, but in the case of a former sports bar in St. Petersburg, Florida, some of them concealed a world of history, hidden for decades. When the walls came down …

Source: Behind the Walls of a Sports Bar, Remnants of Florida’s Early Years – Atlas Obscura

Lord Kitchener in London | London Historians’ Blog

Broome House, near Canterbury.

A guest post by Dr Anne Samson, London Historians Member.

The name Kitchener does not tend to trigger thoughts of London. Invariably, it’s the poster “Your country needs you” which comes to mind or the Second Anglo-Boer (South African) war of 1899-1902 with concentration camps and farm burning in South Africa or Kitchener’s New Armies and…

Kitchener in his pomp, 1910, aged 60, by Bassano. NPG, London.

Source: Lord Kitchener in London | London Historians’ Blog

It’s time China got over the Opium War – UnHerd

Take three mid-19th century Asian conflicts: one killed 20 million people, one killed well over 100,000 and a third killed 20,000. Which one, despite being barely noticed by the Chinese government at the time, is the most discussed today and has become emblematic of an historic clash between …

Source: It’s time China got over the Opium War – UnHerd

Archaeologists in Mexico discover wreck of Mayan slave ship from 1850s

ARCHAEOLOGISTS IN MEXICO say they have identified a ship that carried Mayan people into virtual slavery in the 1850s, the first time such a ship has been found.

The wreck of the Cuban-based paddle-wheel steamboat was found in…

Source: Archaeologists in Mexico discover wreck of Mayan slave ship from 1850s

The Jewish Ghetto and Photonostalgia: Roman Vishniac’s Vanished World | A R T L▼R K

A re-run from A R T L▼R K.

On the 19th of August 1897, one of the world’s most remarkable microbiologists and naturalist photographers, Roman Vishniac was born in Pavlovsk, the Russian Empire. Within the art world, however, he is best remembered for his photojournalistic coverage of the Eastern European Jewish ghettos prior to World War II. In the late 1930s, Vishniac was commissioned by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to photograph the Jewish poor of Eastern Europe. Out of the sixteen thousand photographs he managed to take, only two thousand survived. Most of them have been published several times in book form as Polish Jews (1947), A Vanished World (1969), and To Give Them Light (1992).

Vishniac’s body of work has come to be thought of as the last photographic record of a universe on the cusp of being comprehensively and cataclysmically…

Source: The Jewish Ghetto and Photonostalgia: Roman Vishniac’s Vanished World | A R T L▼R K

The Victorian Tea “Infomercial” | JSTOR Daily

Recently, far-right commentator Laura Towler claimed to be “chuffed” that Yorkshire Tea had not openly expressed support for Black Lives Matter. Yorkshire Tea and PG Tips (another tea giant) fired back on social media. The former told Towler, “Please don’t buy our tea again”; both companies stated that they “stand against racism.”

Ironically, even though…

Source: The Victorian Tea “Infomercial” | JSTOR Daily

Meet Hercules, One of America’s Early Celebrity Chefs – Gastro Obscura

Washington’s Philadelphia residence, as depicted by William L. Breton.

AFTER A LONG DAY IN president George Washington’s executive kitchen, chef Hercules hit the streets of Philadelphia with sartorial flair and a keen eye for late-18th century fashion. Atop his head, the enslaved cook wore a voguish tricorn hat. Bright metal buttons held together his blue velvet-collared coat, a pair of shiny buckles dominated his fastidiously polished shoes, and a long watch-chain dangled from the side of his black silken…

Source: Meet Hercules, One of America’s Early Celebrity Chefs – Gastro Obscura

How a Long-Lost Perfume Got a Second Life After 150 Years Underwater – Atlas Obscura

A team of divers and archaeologists discovered the 19th-century fragrance in a shipwreck off the coast of Bermuda.

AFTER AN INTENSE STORM PUMMELED Bermuda in February 2011, the island’s custodian of historic wrecks  Philippe Max Rouja went to do a coastal survey and spotted a partially exposed bow of a boat. The bow belonged to the Civil War blockade runner Mary Celestia, which was en route to North Carolina’s Confederate forces when it sank in 1864.

Source: How a Long-Lost Perfume Got a Second Life After 150 Years Underwater – Atlas Obscura

How the 1896 Bombay Plague Changed Mumbai Forever – Atlas Obscura

Workers clean a house in a neighborhood affected by the 1896 bubonic plague. CAPT. C. MOSS / WELLCOME LIBRARY / PUBLIC DOMAIN

ALONG THE WINDING LANES OF Bandra, a coastal suburb of Mumbai with a history of Catholicism, lime-washed crosses can be found near busy intersections. They are markers of a plague that ravaged the city more than a century ago when this metropolis was still known as Bombay. Mumbai was shaped by a catastrophe it has largely forgotten.

Source: How the 1896 Bombay Plague Changed Mumbai Forever – Atlas Obscura

Meet Maria Branwell, mother of the extraordinary Brontës – London Life With Liz

The Mother of the Brontës by Sharon Wright

“The book that can never be written”. So Sharon Wright was told every time she proposed the idea of a biography of the Brontë sisters’ mother, Maria. The accepted view in Brontë scholarly circles has always been that Maria’s life was eclipsed by the genius of her children.

Source: Meet Maria Branwell, mother of the extraordinary Brontës – London Life With Liz

10 Places That Tell Stories of Isolation | Heritage Calling

The wooden hut built by Henry William Williamson in Georgeham, Devon © Historic England Archive

Isolation and social distancing have shaped our past and places in many different ways.

Historic buildings and places are reminders of how people have lived, coped, struggled and sometimes even changed the world.

Here are ten places which have witnessed moments of self-isolation…

Source: 10 Places That Tell Stories of Isolation | Heritage Calling

‘Heimat’ in a Suitcase: Flight and Exile of the Herzberg Family | Leo Baeck Institute London

‘Heimat’ in a Suitcase: Flight and Exile of the Herzberg Family

Today we would like to invite you to have a glimpse into the private rooms of Haus Herzberg. The photographs you see here are an extract from an album that contains images of the Herzberg family home in 22 Richard-Wagner-Straße, in the German town of Hanover. The pictures were taken in the 1930s, before the Herzbergs had to flee Germany to escape the Nazi Regime. The beautifully bound red leather album contains an array of photographs showing…

Source: ‘Heimat’ in a Suitcase: Flight and Exile of the Herzberg Family | Leo Baeck Institute London