Vitriol Sensation

I was reading The Fasting Girl by Michelle Stacey last night. In the midst of reading, the book quickly mentioned vitriol-throwing.. which was a brief criminal sensation during the late Victorian years.

The book states:

"Innocent citizens were burned by vitriol thrown on them by persons unknown to them-a puzzling, random crime that enjoyed a brief popularity."

I thought this was interesting because I've never heard of vitriol.. and i like poisons. Vitriol is another name for Sulfuric acid. Apparently, criminals would take a bucket, or a jar, of vitriol and throw it at victims thereby burning off their face and other body parts. Arthur Conan Doyle mentions this type of attack in one of his books. there are different types of vitriol. The color of the end product corresponds with the named color.

blue vitriol: copper sulfate
green vitriol: iron sulfate
white vitriol: zinc sulfate
(shown is blue vitriol)

I tried to find some info about crimes about vitriol in my other books. Haven't found anything yet. If you would like to read part of this book, please go

HERE

The book mainly tells the story about a girl who unexplainably survives on hardly any food excepts a bit of milk and fruit. Then later in life, doesn't eat any food for the 12 ending years of her life.

Old Cures for Diarrhea

Recently, I've purchases a book called Country Fold Medicine which is a collection of old remedies people used to do for various illnesses. The information was gathered by Elisabeth Janos and comes from elderly senior's stories of the good 'ol days. It is truly questionable if these treatments work or whether they are just placebo effect. Some treatments do have some scientific proof behind them and/or have been used for centuries dating even back to the Egyptians.

Cures for Diarrhea or more discreetly, "summer complaint":
Blackberries in general:
Blackberry root simmered in water to make tea.
Blackberry brandy
Blackberry syrup

Scalded Milk:
A cup of scalded milk + spices of your choosing (cinnamon, pepper, flour)
Scalded Milk poured over burnt toast. yum yum.

Pepper:
spoonful of pepper or diluted in water or flour.

photo credit: timniblett

So I think ideally, if you wanted to cure your summer complaint: a cup of scaled milk, burnt toast with blackberry jam sprinkled heavily with pepper.

Updating Zines - buy one!

With the purchase of my long arm stapler, I was able to update my Etsy with three older issues of Old Crap. Originally, once my zines were gone, they were gone forever. But, I'm pretty slow at making them because I research them so heavily now. And the subjects of each issue are unique. Contact me if you would like one. They are $3 each or you can vist my etsy site HERE.

Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer

Because I can't get enough banjo music, I'm sharing a musician I have recently discovered: Mr. B the Gentleman Rhymer. A UK historic hip-hopper. He's like and old fashion british Paul Barman. It's catchy and the crossing of old and new hip-hop (so named chap-hop) is really well done. LUVE IT!

if you would like to hear more from him, please click HERE.
ATM, I'm trying to locate a site to buy the CD, Flattery Not Included, as he's from the UK.

New Books!

Today I took a trip to Half -Price Books and came back with a book which I think will make for some fun reading:

I bought Madams mainly for the current zine I'm working on.. plus I find the subject really interesting. The book seems easily readable and the years it mainly covers is pre-1900. But the topics to range from the 1740's to 1960's.

I'll talk more later about it once I start reading.

Thanksgiving Primary Sourse

One of my design teachers yesterday told us that he had heard that they did not actually eat turkey for the first thanksgiving and it was more likely that they had lobster.. I'm not really sure if i believe it, but it is plausible. So, i decided to do some research..
First of all, wild turkeys can be found pretty much all over eastern America. I don't have a picture showing what the turkey situation was back then.. but the first thanksgiving took place in New England which is well inside turkey territory.

The only written account from the first "thanksgiving" in America is written by Edward Winslow in 1621. In Edward Winslow's document he writes, "the foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside, served the Company almost a weeke"... "and the went out and killed five Deere, which the brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governour and upon the Captaine, and others."
so.. yes... they had fowl and yes.. the had deer.
another rumour is that they aren't sure if Indians actually attend this "first thanksgiving" in fact, the Wampanoag did attend along with the colonists.

So the results are so:
they are unsure if there was turkey or not. but they did eat some sort of fowl.. and deer. no accounts of the eating lobster though.




sources: http://plimoth.org/education/olc/source.html

Shorthand Buisness

I've taken to shorthand again. it takes practice but it's actually pretty simple to learn. I think the most difficult part of it is writing it then trying to read what you've written. other than that, easy peasy. Maybe it will help people in taking notes for school if they learn a couple popular phrases. There are many types of shorthand, but i am learning Gregg shorthand which is the most popular form beating out Pitman Shorthand. Developed by John Robert Gregg, I'm happy to anouce Gregg Shorthand came out in 1888 which was a wonderful year full of Victorian goodies.
The difference between Pitman's and Gregg's Shorthand is that Pitman's system is based on line weight to differentiate between phonetics. Gregg uses different line lengths, make it easier to write with a pen making it more practical for today's uses since fountain pens are no longer in popularity.
If you'd like to teach yourself you can go to :

http://gregg.angelfishy.net/anaboutg.shtml
or
http://books.google.com/books?id=uxELAAAAIAAJ&printsec=titlepage&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0

I use a book written by Louis A Leslie titled Gregg Shorthand : Functional Method
A book is easy to learn from because you can write on the pages. Shorthand has really experienced a decline due to the computer, so you can find these books at old book sales.

Mystery Object

I went to a flea market a couple weeks ago and saw this Object:
I'm really not sure what it is.. maybe someone knows... a spinning wheel, I suppose? most spinning wheels are made with wooden wheels so.. ahh. I don't know.

Dreams

If children have been good all day,
And kept their tongues and lips quite clean,
They dream of flowes that nod and play,
And Faries dancing on the green.

But if they've spoke naughty words,
Or told a lie, they dream of rats:
Of crawling snakes, and ugly birds;
Of centipedes, and vampire bats.

Taken from an children's book circa 1896. There is NOTHING worse than ugly birds. Goodnight children.

Dreams from The Child World. London: John Lane. third edition. 1896. pp. 174.

The Dangers of Onanism

I've been researching for my next zine.. which will be on sex and I came across this: I won't be using it in my zine so I thought I'd place it here. the image is cut in half but should be chronological.


so. I urge you.. please PLEASE be careful when practicing the secret sin.

Hippie Origins

So, I was reading Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West by Anne Seagraves, and she mentioned that when one would go to an opium den to smoke, since, in most dens, there was a lack of furniture, one would have to smoke their opium leaning on one hip... like so:
Seagraves mentions that this is perhaps where the word "hippies" came from.. but.... after some thought and some wiki searching, Hippies come from the 70's. They were followers of the jazzy Hipster movement in the 1940's.. so i went looking for the origins of Hipster instead. After a little more wikipedia surfing, which is not the most truthful place ever, I found two theories:

1. Etymologically, the words hep and hip may have been derived from hepi, a word in the West African language Wolof that means “to see” or hipi that means "to open one's eyes".

2. "Hipster" derives from the slang "hip" or "hep," which are derived from the earlier slang "hop" for opium.

and apparently hipsters were originally called hepcats... (how forties...) I don't really know if Hipsters smoked opium since there weren't many opium dens left in the 1940's.. but if they did.. i guess it would make a lot of sence.. anyways.. I'm curious what the true origins are.