Photography

PHOTOGRAPHY

I'm kicking myself that I forgot to mention the British Library's Points of View exhibition on 19th Century photography, which I visited a couple of weeks ago. There's a lot to see here - not so much on London, but it does include Fox Talbot's famous shot of Nelson's Column under construction from the 1840s. There's also a nice blog of the exhibition, including some videos of early photographic methods, in case you fancy trying your hand at the wet collodion process. My first book London Dust deals with early Victorian photography, as it happens ... along with a couple of murders, a pornographer and a music hall star ...

Vegetarianism

VEGETARIANISM

It's a little-known fact that vegetarianism was a Victorian 'lifestyle' with several vegetarian restaurants in London in the late century (I must admit I don't know the precise figures). Contemporary cartoonists were not always very understanding of the vegetarian (see above from Punch, one of my favourites from the magazine).

[This is also a cunning pointer to a new post on Some other ideas - yes, more bad poetry. But you don't have to read it.]

Bloomeration

BLOOMERATION

Bloomeration (London, 1891). Illumination. First heard 9th November at Prince of Wales' illuminations.

Binned

BINNED

A couple more brief entries from 'Passing English of the Victorian Era':

Bellywengins (E. Anglian, chiefly Suffolk). A violent corruption of 'belly-vengeance', a cruel comment upon the sour village beer of those regions.

Binned (Lond., 1883). Hanged; a ghastly word, referring to Bartholomew Binns, a hangman appointed in 1883.

Bags of Mystery

BAGS OF MYSTERY

More suspicious slang from 'Passing English of the Victorian Era', a dictionary which I suspect is not entirely to be trusted. The list of different types of Victorian beard is quite good, mind you:

Bags o' Mystery. (Peoples'). A satirical term for sausages, because no man but the maker knows what is in them.
     'If they're going to keep running-in polony fencers for putting rotten gee-gee into the bags of mystery, I hope they won't leave fried-fish-pushers alone.'
     This term took its rise about 1850, long before the present system of market-inspection was organised. But this term remained long after sausages were fairly wholesome. The 'bag' refers to the gut which contained the chopped meat.

irrelevant image shamelessly snatched from folksy.com

Balaclava (1856-60). A full beard, first seen upon the faces of the English army upon their return to England from Crimea. The new departure was instantly dubbed with the name of the most popular of the three great battles (Alma, Balaclava, Inkermann), the name probably being chosen by reason of the brilliancy of the charge of the Light Brigade. French writers who had visited the Great Exhibition of 1851, and who had been struck by the absolute absence of the moustache (except in the case of some military men), and the utter absence of the beard, without exception, were astonished upon return visits half-a-dozen years afterwards, to find Englishmen were bearded like the pard. Britons upon the principle of reaction always going the whole hog, grew all the hair they could, and the mere moustache of Frenchmen was nowhere in the fight. Interestingly enough, exactly as the wild, unkempt beard of 'The Terror ' dwindled into the moustache for the young, and the cotelette (mutton-chop) for the elderly, so the Balaclava (which abated the razor, as a daily protesting sacrifice to anti-gallicanism) toned down by '70, into the various beards of to-day the Peaked, the Spade, the Square, and other varieties of Tudor beards. These remained until the Flange, or Dundreary (see 1872-73),came in and cleared the chin, to be followed by the Scraper. To-day the 'York' prevails the short, pointed beard still worn by the Prince of Wales.

Banbury (London, 1894). One of the more recent shapes of 'jam', 'biscuit', 'cake', 'confectionery', 'tart' (qq.v.) a loose woman.
     Witness took several names and addresses, and some of the females described themselves as 'Banburys'; and said they got their living as best they could. — Raid on the Gardenia Club, The People, 4th February 1894.