Top Tips for Cleaning Clothes – Georgian style

I would imagine that a lot of these practices were used during the Regency as well

All Things Georgian

So, just how did those Georgians cope with  cleaning delicate fabrics? They couldn’t simply nip along to a dry cleaners to have them chemically cleaned. Well, we came across this wonderful little book from 1753, packed with all types of useful information including top tips for cleaning clothes, ‘Madam Johnson’s Present: Or, Every Young Woman’s Companion in Useful and Universal Knowledge’ so we thought we would share some of them with you. We have no idea as to how effective some of these methods are so ‘approach with caution’. Some of them sound very dubious, so please do be careful if you try them one at home as we acceptable no responsibility!

unknown artist; Portrait of a Lady in a Floral Dress Washing Clothes; National Museums Northern Ireland

To take iron mould and all sorts of spots and stains out of linen

These are removed by holding the linen…

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Regency Domesticity: Living the High Life

Thanks to Angelyn for this great post!

Angelyn's Blog

The Tattler, as she(?) readily admits, has been applied to for advice not only in the arts and sciences, but in matters of astrology (“I have had money offered to me in an attempt to bribe me into a fit of supernatural occasion) and medicine (no less than three letters requesting receipts to cure corns and another for the mode to cure chilblains).

But on matters of marital discord, we find her squarely on the side of Pope, whose famous Epistle to the saintly Anne Blount is prefaced with the well-known eighteenth century notion that ‘most women have no characters at all.’

For example, in Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, etc., March 1, 1818, Vol. V, the Tattler addresses two letters from harassed husbands of the Regency.

The first from a husband who has:

“..a clever, managing kind of wife, and, though I say it, rather pretty in her person; but then she has a tongue that never…

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Romance of London: The Mermaid Hoax

I had to share this great post!!

Susana's Parlour

Romance of London: Strange Stories, Scenes And Remarkable Person of the Great Town in 3 Volumes

John Timbs

John Timbs (1801-1875), who also wrote as Horace Welby, was an English author and aficionado of antiquities. Born in Clerkenwell, London, he was apprenticed at 16 to a druggist and printer, where he soon showed great literary promise. At 19, he began to write for Monthly Magazine, and a year later he was made secretary to the magazine’s proprietor and there began his career as a writer, editor, and antiquarian.

This particular book is available at googlebooks for free in ebook form. Or you can pay for a print version.

The Mermaid Hoax

The absurd notion, that there are “Mermen and Mermaids, half man or woman and the remainder fish,” has long been exploded; but, little more than 40 years ago since (in 1822) thousands of dupes were attracted to the…

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Extreme Longevity in 1700s

This makes me wonder how much we think is true about the past really is.

All Things Georgian

Today’s post has been written with our genealogy followers very much in mind and those who love nothing more than a good challenge.

So, according to the government, health experts and others we’re going to live longer than ever before. Well, if you believe these accounts of longevity below we’ve got quite a way to go to exceed some of these instances.

All of these accounts appeared in the newspapers and also in a collated account of longevity written by James Easton ‘Human Longevity: Recording the Name, Age, Place of Residence, and Year’ in 1799.

Certainly Easton had done his homework by trawling through the newspapers, etc. We have tried in vain, so far, to validate any of them with a corresponding date of birth, yet if true, then they are accounts of longevity that far exceed anything you would expect for that period and many would still make headline news…

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