Credit goes to a Victorian-era inventor for out-of-a-box gelatin. What an amazing labor-saving invention! Until now, wives and daughters everywhere had been making gelatin out of pigs feet and a good deal of elbow grease.
How did nineteenth century scientists manage to capture the essence of gelatin and put it in a box? And how much did it cost?
Did Victorians blame tooth decay on worms or germs?
Scientific understanding of dental decay received a huge boost in the work of Dr. Willoughby Miller, an American dentist in Germany in the late 19th century. His publication of his microbiology discoveries, Micro-Organisms of the Human Mouth, eradicated old myths and brought about “an unprecedented interest in oral hygiene”… and occurred just in time to contribute to my novella’s [Isabella’s Calico Groom] setting and characters’ development.
As an amateur historian, I’m thrilled to share my five-star Goodreads Review of author Mary Cable’s The Blizzard of 88. This nonfiction account of how and why this great blizzard impacted life in 1888 from Maine to Washington, crippling New York City. Can’t recommend this title enough!
This vintage newspaper article, printed in Washington, D.C. in 1881, speaks frankly of concerns a minister has in the way young people go about courtship. Compared to today’s parents’ and grandparents’ concerns, we might draw parallel (or direct) comparisons. Much has changed, and much stays the same.
The decade of the 1880s proved among the most disastrous, desperate, life-threatening (and life-taking)–as winter in North America was at an extreme, the whole decade long. Climatologists have theories we understand today, but were unknown to our Victorian American ancestors. If you read a fictional book set in the 1880s, that touches on a mild winter, be surprised. Today, March 11th, is the anniversary of “the big one”.
