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History

Penny Hampson

Dying and Dyeing in 1810

February 3rd, 2019

Trapped indoors by the extremely cold and icy weather we are enjoying at the moment, I thought I’d spend some time looking at the Gentleman’s Magazine for January 1810. I love reading about events that occurred so long ago and speculating on the stories of the people involved. A couple of sad items caught my […]

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Don’t be a Nuisance! 11 Useful Facts for a Regency Time-Traveller.

January 24th, 2019

To help with research, it’s always useful for a writer of historical novels to have a few old books to hand. Well, that’s my excuse for haunting antiquarian and second-hand book sites and shops, and spending hard-earned cash on decrepit and worn volumes (the only sort I can afford). To be honest, I started buying […]

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The Canal Built to Trap an Army

January 19th, 2019

Have you heard of the Royal Military Canal? Up to fairly recently, I hadn’t. An entry in the Gentleman’s Magazine for December 1810 brought it to my attention. It reported that a soldier had drowned in the canal, having fallen in when it was dark. The report didn’t mention the site of the tragedy, stating […]

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7 Snippets from The Gentleman’s Magazine, December 1812

January 3rd, 2019

  I spotted some interesting pieces in the Dec 1812 edition of the above publication, showing that life in the Regency wasn’t all ball gowns and masquerades. In fact, you could say these reports show clearly how dangerous and uncertain the times were. A fatal stampede occurred on 29th November. It was reported that the […]

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