Not all knowledge is contained outside LJ

[desperance]

Whoops. I have been cheerfully reading Adam Hart-Davis' What the Victorians Did for Us as a piece of casual research (for the steampunky stories about the barber-surgeon-spy who shaved Half-Emperor Cyrrhenius): the book is a coffee-table tie-in to a TV series, so deep it isn't. But superficial can also be instructive, especially if you can treat it as reliable; one thing for sure, Hart-Davis knows more than I do. In and of himself, he does, and I'm sure he has researchers also turning up book-suitable facts.

Three chapters in, I hit what is almost the first fact that I know independently - and it's wrong.

"Cholera was especially frightening, because it was a new disease. The first case, apparently brought from India, appeared in Newcastle in 1831..."

Sunderland, damn it! Sunderland!

(For a rather wonderful novel about the outbreak, see Sheri Holman's The Dress Lodger. Written by an American who had never been to Sunderland, but that's okay, we ain't proud...)

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

(No, we will not accept that French incursion. Not yet.)

I should think not, forsooth. Why, it's not been 600 years yet! Takes that long to grow a decent lawn...

[mantichore.livejournal.com]

1453 is the date when we stopped being British. Alienor d'Aquitaine was married to some English king or other in 1137. So, yeah, it has been a tad longer than 600 years.

Mind you, decent lawns don't really grow well, over here. But we did decently, curbing the proliferation of vines...

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Just to clarify, the 'less than 600 years' is since 1453 ('the French incursion'), not since 1137.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

That's what I meant, that it's not been 600 years since the abominable annexation, which we decline to recognise. Which is why we drink so much of your our wine, in salute of an abiding sovereignty. Or something.