MP3 download | Patreon | Apple | Mixcloud | Spotify | Castbox | Stitcher | RSS 1889 is by no stretch of the imagination a golden year for recorded music. A blip on the otherwise upwards trajectory in terms of both sound quality and things being recorded, it is, frankly, the worst possible starting point …
It wasn’t a nice life working as a matchgirl at the Bryant & May factory in Bow – work-days were fourteen-hours long, pay was poor, infractions resulted in fines and there were severe health complications of working with white phosphorus, such as phossy jaw. But all that was to change after social reformer, socialist and …
An even larger figure in British crime lore comes out of 1887 – Sherlock Holmes, who made his debut in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first novel, ‘A Study In Scarlet’. As far as Victorian popular novels go, it stands up very well indeed, even more so as it manages to act as an introduction to …
The Whitechapel murders of 1888 are a sordid, unpleasant business, and the books, tours and new museum which attempt to romanticise and spin money out of the violence perpetrated on young women are nothing short of disgusting. ‘From Hell’, on the other hand, might be the only great piece of art to be inspired …
In 1887 23-year-old Nelly Bly talked her way into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, and talked the editor into letting her feign insanity in order to write an undercover report into the conditions at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. Her investigation was a success in many ways – not only …
The late 19th Century was an astonishing time for invention – aside from recorded sound we have radio, electric lights, the telephone, the internal combustion engine, electric motors and of course motion pictures. In Roundhay, Leeds, on 14th October 1888, French inventor Louis Le Prince made the first ever film. It’s less than three seconds …
In the 1888 US presidential election, Democratic Party incumbent Grover Cleveland wins the popular vote, but loses the Electoral College vote to Republican challenger Benjamin Harrison. Elsewhere in the USA, Anne Sullivan begins teaching Helen Keller, Susan B. Anthony organizes a Congress for Women’s Rights in Washington, D.C., George Eastman registers the trademark Kodak, and …
MP3 download | Patreon | Apple | Mixcloud | Spotify | Castbox | Stitcher | RSS The gramophone and phonograph had been experimental toys for a decade, their inventors deciding to tinker with them from time to time in between other, more immediately lucrative projects. In 1887, aside from Edison’s occasional developments, Alexander Graham Bell’s …
For the final segment of general Victorian-era background, here’s Ruth Goodman’s book, which is substantially more interesting and informative than the macro-histories of the empire. Of course, most of what we’re coming to was recorded on the other side of the Atlantic, so perhaps I could’ve found something a little more relevant – but plenty …
