It was February 19th 1896 that a terrible tragedy struck a Cambridgeshire village. Wimblington, is a small Cambridgeshire village not far from March. Police constable Lee was on duty at the time and was asked to make forceful entry at a local cottage owned by a widow named Mary Ann Continue Reading
General
Fanny Wilkinson
Frances Rollo Wilkinson otherwise known as Fanny Wilkinson was Britain’s first female landscape gardener. Born a doctors daughter from wealthy parents Fanny was the eldest of her six siblings. She was born on the 6th June 1855 and spent a lot of her childhood growing up at Middlethorpe Hall in Continue Reading
Ally Sloper
A Victorian and Edwardian Character Charles Henry Ross was born in London around 1835 he was known for being popular comic strip author who invented a famous fictional character called Alexander Ally Sloper known as Ally Sloper. The character seemed to attract a rather large interest amongst Victorian and Edwardian Continue Reading
The Danger of Lucifers
Who Invented the Lucifer? The word Lucifer is another word we associate with “the devil” or “Satan”. In Latin the word Lucifer means “light bringing”. It is safe to say the name fitted well with the product. In the year of 1829 a small tin containing matches with the name Continue Reading
Divorce and Our Ancestors
To put it simply, divorce was not common in comparison to modern times. It wasn’t unheard of but mostly people who got divorced had money and even then it wasn’t a thing that was considered lightly it could bring a lot of scandal and shame to people involved. To get Continue Reading
International Mermaid Day
Yesterday the 29th March was International Mermaid Day and I thought I would share a mermaid story for those who like folk tales from the past. “The Mermaid of Zennor” which is an old popular folk tale set in Cornwall. The author was a man named William Bottrell who wrote Continue Reading
“Bread and Pullet”
Let’s be honest there are many of us who are moaners, fussy eaters and very particular when it comes to food and meals today, but what we don’t consider is how spoilt for choice we are. Going back to the 1950s many people had more of a basic diet and Continue Reading
Behind The Names
Naming a baby can involve a lot of thought and research for some parents and over time names have come and gone and well come back again! It’s interesting when you look at the Christian names given to our ancestors and believe it or not there were some unusual choices Continue Reading
The 1926 Legitimacy Act
I know so many couples today who have children who are not married and it doesn’t make any difference to their lives or their children’s. However, step back a hundred years and even up to the 1960s it was seen as wrong to have children out of wedlock. Society put Continue Reading
1921 Census
The 1921 census was taken three years after the First World War and Britain was very much still getting over the impact of the war and families were still very much picking up the pieces of the loss of loved ones. The Spanish flu pandemic had also taken its toll Continue Reading