Pub signs

A brief note copied from my chat list. (http://grups.yahoo.com/jobeverley)

The idea of inn signs lingers from when city houses were identified that way. Street numbering was a late invention (mid 18th century.) Before that, people hung signs or painted pictures on their front wall, so they could tell people to come to the Red Cock on Pyment Street, or the Pig with Two Tails on Wapping Road.

This confused me a lot at one time, because I thought everyone was living in a pub!

When they started street numbering, they went up one side and down the other. Probably seemed reasonable at the time. The idea of odd on one side and even on the other came later.

More about pub signs here.

You could always get your own pub sign made.

Jo

Castle pictures

I came across this site which gives short camera pan views of interesting places.
http://www.evasion-aisne.com/visites_virtuelles/uk/chateau_de_guise.php

Jo

Childbirth

I came across this extraordinary document which describes childbirth procedures in detail, for the 16th century, at least. It was written to prove the legitimacy of the baby, if a son, because the father was already dead. Pity such scrupulous attention wasn't paid to the birth of "the Old Pretender."

It also confirms that the birthing stool was the usual situation, and interestingly that a man's support was common enough not to be commented on as strange here, even though the man clearly isn't her husband. I've used this in a number of stories, such as Secrets of the Night.
http://members.shaw.ca/jobev/malloren.html#SECNIG

"And the aforesaid Isabel de la Cavalleria, complaining about the pains of her labour, lying down on her back in the arms and legs of the aforesaid lord Martin de Palomar y de Gurrea, lord of Argavieso, who was sitting in a chair holding her with strength, the aforesaid Isabel having some relics on her belly and many blessed candles lit around, and the midwives were there, Aina on her knees in front of the aforesaid Isabel and the aforementioned Catalina Salinas was between the legs of the aforesaid Isabel de la Cavalleria, sitting on a stool with a cloth laid out in her knees to administer the labour and to receive the baby who was about to be born, and there was a clean brass pot between the legs of the aforesaid Isabel, as we could see, where I, the notary and the witnesses saw and heard fall in the blood and the water which were coming out from the body of the aforesaid Isabel de la Cavalleria while in labour pains. "

Sentence breaks were unpopular at the time, it seems!

You can read it all at the link.

Bits and pieces

I'm back. Last year was crazy. I'm sure writing Lady Beware necessitated some spot research - in fact I know it did -- but I never had time to post anything here.

I'm beginning something new, however, so...

Have I said how much I love the google book search? There are some fabulous old resources there. I'm looking at travel in France in the mid 18th century. (Yes, I'm back to the Malloren world. I went first to Lawrence Sterne's travel book. Just the right period.)

From the google search thus far I've downloaded a 19th century road book from Calais to Naples, and an 18th century one called The American Wanderer. In that I came across a little bit that interested me in general.

Among writers of 18th and 19th century fiction we sometimes debate the use of pencils. Well, in the latter book the traveller mentions one. "I recollected my lead pencil, by the medium of which we held a kind of disjointed conversation."

More, probably, at other times.

Jo