A late 18th-century Magic Book I’ve been reading and thinking a good deal about 18th century…
William Savage
“Crier! Call the Ghost”!
“A remarkable instance of a person being tried for murder on the pretended information of a…
Turkeys in Boots
No, this is not a bizarre idea for a new Christmas panto! Just a plain, factual…
Of Bankers and Beer
The early part of the 18th century saw the beginning of the modern brewing industry, especially…
A Frightening and Inexplicable World
The Quack Doctor: Pieter van der Borcht One of the hardest mental exercises for any writer of…
The Terrors of the 18th-century German Ocean
The Herring Fleet setting out from Scotland Our correspondent at Corton has favoured us with the…
More on ‘Wise Men’, Conjurors and ‘Cunning Women’
“The Witch of the Woodlands”Illustration from an 18th century chapbook I have written before about ‘wise…
Georgian Agricultural Labour: “Learning about Capitalism”
The ‘new’ agriculture required capital in ways that were unexpected. Capital to buy better livestock…
Plus Ça Change: The Georgian Government’s Response to Radicalism
Defending Britain from sedition and the “swinish multitudes” The Norfolk Chronicle, 30th June, 1792 On May…
The Georgians and Whist
Partnership in Whist is an Emblem of Partnership in Trade… It shows how much depends upon…
Scotch Runts in Norfolk
Old drove road to Craik in the Scottish Borders (Photo by Walter Baxter, geograph.org.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0) This…
Poachers in the 18th Century
“The Wounded Poacher”, Henry Jones Thaddeus, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin Much of what we think…
A Lesser-Known Item for Smuggling: Silk
Man’s waistcoat of French silk, made in England c1750. Smuggling of goods was a major industry…
One Hundred Years Ago
For just this week, the subject matter of this blog will be only indirectly relevant to…
Georgian Humour
We English tend to pride ourselves on our sense of humour, so it’s easy to assume…
Georgian Readers and Their Impact
During the 18th-century, there was an explosion of growth in the number of people spending time…
The Georgian Clergy (Part 2)
This Parish Clerk is keeping a close eye on at least one member of the congregation.…
The (Forgotten) Georgian Origins of Pantomime
Advertisement in The Norfolk Chronicle, 20th July, 1793, for a pantomime at the city’s Vauxhall Gardens.…
Georgian Agricultural Labour: “Men as Machines”
During the eighteenth century, England’s agricultural lands and economy changed from yeoman and peasant subsistence farming…
Georgian Mercantilism
The English Merchant Ship ‘Malabar’William Clark Mercantilism was the main economic idea underpinning British government policy…
William Savage, Georgian Musician
Boy Chorister of the Chapel RoyalRichard Buckner, 1873 (Victoria and Albert Museum) Recently, entirely by chance,…
Discovering “The Picturesque”
William Gilpin, “Landscape, Cliffs and Trees” (Tate Gallery) For many decades during the 17th and 18th…
The Georgian Clergy (Part 1)
The Preacher (Thomas Rowlandson) It’s easy to assume that the whole gamut of Georgian clergymen were…
An 18th-century Domestic Fire Engine
The picture above shows the 18th-century Newsham domestic fire engine which today stands in a corridor…