*Please note- This site search does not include the Vic. & Tas. BMD's, Lots o' Links & Worth a Look Books
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Now truth more than fiction is strange,
as customs and laws they have changed;
There're things quite absurd
that we've never heard
and some of them seem quite deranged
as customs and laws they have changed;
There're things quite absurd
that we've never heard
and some of them seem quite deranged
DUTIFUl DEEDS
Armpit Plucking
In Rome around 1 AD, there was a strange occupation where there were specialists in armpit plucking. Roman aristocrats would often request for all of their body hair to be removed. To be an Armpit plucker, you would need tweezers, good plucking ability & be able to put up with the smell |
Postal Service
At first, travelers going to distant places would be enlisted to carry written messages. Ship captains, transport drivers, merchants, even itinerant preachers and peddlers were employed to perform similar functions. If no travelers were available and the message was important enough, a private messenger would be hired. From such services evolved more routine delivery systems involving regular couriers, established routes, and scheduled deliveries. Evidence of organized postal systems, both private and government, is found as far back as the twelfth Pharaonic Dynasty (circa 2000 B.C.). The postal services in the Middle Ages grew with the needs of the various classes of society. Thus, instead of a centralized and uniform state post, there arose exceedingly diverse postal services made up of many hundreds of independent institutions. |
The interaction of public and private forces can be seen in the operation of the Dockwra's Penny Post established in London in 1680. Although the Crown (and later Parliament) had asserted its monopoly power over mail delivery in England as early as 1609, seventy years later there was still no regular delivery service in London. William Dockwra remedied this situation by organizing a company which collected intra-city mail, sorted it, and delivered it from four to eight times daily.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Penny_Post |
Rowland Hill suggested that two major reforms be made in the operation of the government system. His "solution was a uniform rate of postage, regardless of distance, and prepayment of postage (by the sender) by means of adhesive stamps sold by the post office." Both steps were designed to improve the efficiency and service of the government post office. At that time, the least expensive rate of service within the country was fourpence. Hill proposed that a letter mailed and delivered in England be charged at the basic rate of one penny for each half ounce, regardless of how far it traveled. To make prepayment workable, Hill developed the world's first adhesive postage stamps, which were placed on sale on May 1, 1840 by the British Post Office.
http://voluntaryist.com/articles/076.html#.Vt-tP9J95kg Postal services history and origins http://www.2-clicks-stamps.com/article/postal |
Roland Hill
http://www.stampdomain
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The Pony Express
After gold was discovered in 1848 in Sutter's Mill in California and prior to the Civil War there was a need for swifter mail service between the East and West. The Pony Express grew out of that need. The completion of a coast-to-coast railroad was years away. At that time, the railroads extended only as far west as the Mississippi River. The completion of a telegraph linking both coasts was close to becoming a reality, but it would still be more than a year before it could be completed. They knew from the beginning that once this was completed the Pony Express would no long be needed. http://historyofourmail.blogspot.com.au/p/pony-ex Throughout its short life of only eighteen months, the Express completed 308 runs, a distance of 616,000 miles. They were able to deliver 34,753 letters though heat, rain, snow and Indian attacks, riding into history and American legend. |
Nova Scotia Pony Express
On December 9th, 1848, this item appeared in the British Colonist, a three-times-a-week newspaper published in Halifax, Nova Scotia. During the ten months that elapsed between the completion, in January 1849, of this telegraph line between Saint John and Calais, and the completion in November 1849 of the telegraph extension between Saint John and Halifax, the New York Associated Press needed a fast courier service to carry the European News across the telegraph gap between Halifax and Saint John. This need led Daniel Craig and Hiram Hyde to organize the fast horse courier service then called the Halifax Express, later known as the Nova Scotia Pony Express, combined with a chartered steamship service across the Bay of Fundy. http://ns1763.ca/ponyexpress/ponyexdx.html |
The construction was delayed due to an unusually wet season and it was not until April 1872 that the construction parties on the northern line could resume their work.
A pony express was organised to carry messages over the 430km gap in the line. The contract completion date of January 1 had expired and the submarine cable had already landed at Port Darwin some months before.The man responsible for the building of the Overland Telegraph Line, Charles Todd, had arrived at Daly Waters on June 22 1872. Two days later, John Lewis and one of his men, Hands, rode south from Daly Waters with the first private cables ever to reach Australia. In an amazing stroke of good fortune, the Pony Express had only just disappeared from sight when news came through from Port Darwin that the submarine cable was dead. Two days later Todd rightly assumed the repair could take months and sent a man, Boucaut, after the Pony Express. Boucaut caught up with them at Frews Pond and they rode together to Powell Creek where fresh horses were waiting. The Pony Express arrived in Tennant Creek on July 1, by which time Boucaut had been in the saddle for one hundred and one hours out of the one hundred and thirty hour journey. He had covered 421 kms over rough terrain. A truly remarkable feat. http://www.xphomestation.com/xp-australia.html |
Mother of pearl set off the darker ones. Trousers were of corduroy and bell-bottomed. Boots often had motifs of roses, hearts and thistles. Neckerchiefs of green silk with yellow flowers or red and blue. Most of the Costermongers are born and bred into the trade & the habits of the costermonger are not domestic. The busy life is past in the markets or the streets, and leisure is devoted to the beer-shop, the dancing-room, or the theatre. Of beer-shops resorted to by costermongers, and principally supported by them, it is computed that there were 400 in London.
Among the in-door amusements of the costermonger was card-playing, at which many of them are adepts. The want of education among both men and women was deplorable. Very few of the costermongers' children were sent even to the Ragged Schools; and if they were, it was so the mother may be saved the trouble of tending them at home. Both boys and girls were sent out by their parents in the evening to sell nuts, oranges, &c., at the doors of the theatres, or in any public place, or "round the houses"
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/work/costermonger.html
It was tested in secret so as to not upset the pressmen who were working at the paper, until it was found to be satisfactory. When the press was ready to go, The Times
produced their product with the new technology. http://patriciahysell.wordpress.com/tag/the-london-times/
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