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Whose house is this? A capital FAMILY MANSION, 1854
In theory there is a lot of time to write when you’re on maternity leave but I’m an archival historian and… well… babies and archives just don’t mix. So it was a blessing when Thomas Walker at Historic Newspapers sent … Continue reading
The houses of Crystal Palace Park – new pamphlet for charity
The lovely Melvyn Harrison and people at the Crystal Palace Foundation have long kept a watchful eye over the heritage and development of Crystal Palace Park. Recently they asked if they could reproduce my London Journal research article on the … Continue reading
The origins of fire insurance (& ‘lusty able body’d firemen’)
The Great Fire of London (1666) destroyed more than 13,000 houses and displaced about 100,000 people but it took a couple of decades for its embers to spark the first blaze of the fire insurance business. Nicholas Barbon was probably the first … Continue reading
A woman’s business. Part 2: To honour thy husband’s debts
The majority of women who married in late eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain did not get to live out the idealized role of the Angel in the House from Coventry Patmore’s 1854 poem. Women of the working class were of … Continue reading
A woman’s business. Part 1: To marry or not to marry
Contrary to popular stereotype, women could and did run businesses in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain. True, it was somewhat easier for single or widowed women to flex their dainty entrepreneurial ambitions than married women. However, marriage was surprisingly, given … Continue reading
Ship shape: property ownership of the floating variety
I thought I would turn my attention to a different type of property for this blog post. I’ve mentioned in an earlier post that home ownership was not the common form of property ownership in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. … Continue reading
‘What to do with the Crystal Palace?’
What better time to appreciate second chances than at the the beginning of a new year. The Crystal Palace [a name of fairy tale splendor, if ever I heard one] sparkled as the stage for Britain’s Great Exhibition of 1851 but … Continue reading
When Santa got stuck up the chimney
It’s my son’s nativity play this week and this has put me in a festive mood. He’s been practicing songs about Santa, bags of toys and chimneys and this got me thinking. Why do I say ‘Father Christmas’ but so … Continue reading
The wicked & the wretched: Property & the pawnbroker
Property and pawnbrokers shops are intertwined in the Victorian imagination. The exchange is usually an unhappy one, the proprietor being wicked and the customer wretched. In Sketches by Boz Charles Dickens takes us inside just such an establishment on London’s … Continue reading
Carriages & coverture: Women, property and the law 1790-1860
Dividend Day at the Bank of England by George Elgar Hicks (1859) Across history, women have found themselves vulnerable as economic beings. Their position in relation to ownership of property between 1790-1860 was a often a difficult and dangerous one. … Continue reading
House tales: The brothers Letts
Following on from my earlier post ‘A brief history of park villa estates’, I’ve been devoting a number of blog posts to a park villa I previously had the pleasure of living in on the Crystal Palace Park Estate. … Continue reading
Serving the house: The cost of Victorian domestic servants
©V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London John Sheepshanks at his residence on New Bond Street William Mulready (1786-1863). Oil on panel. England, c.1832-34. In the Victorian period there were more domestic servants than at any other time in British history … Continue reading