Posts tagged history
Powdered Wigs and Screaming
I don’t mind people who are surface-level misinformed on something. Like they only know one fact and it’s wrong, but they’re not invested. Those people you can just correct. The real insidious ones have moved up a step and have like, watched a single documentary that they wildly misinterpreted, and then go around “correcting” everyone else’s misinformation with different misinformation that’s still wrong.
Tell me again that the Salem Witch Trials didn’t happen in Salem and I will come for you in the middle of the night. Like Bridget Bishop.
@arches-of-moonlight-and-sky Because they learn that the accusations of witchcraft began in what is now a town known as Danvers, conveniently ignoring that Danvers didn’t become a separate town until the 1750s. In 1692 it was a village incorporated into the town of Salem. This is a bit like saying that the Empire State Building is not in New York City because it is actually in Manhattan.
It’s also just as misleading because 1. the first finger-pointing took place in Salem Village, but the trials did take place in the larger downtown that is still known as Salem, because that’s where the courthouse was, and 2. there were nearly 25 communities involved by the time all that finger-pointing was said and done, but The Greater Essex County Witch Panic doesn’t have the same ring to it.
I love a good historical mythbusting video.
Say it with me people, the plural of anecdote isn’t data! As someone who does hearth cooking regularly and has actually had my clothing singed from it, I know firsthand what life was like in the past, and it’s not that dramatic. The people who throw around made-up statistics like “fire was the second leading cause of death for women in X century” are simply not thinking critically. It’s just an easy way to hold ourselves up as being so much less barbaric than our ancestors.
Also, because I DO love data and it can be hard to find, here are the yearly mortality stats for the city of Boston 1811-1820:
To put it in perspective, the total number of deaths in the city for that period was 8,468. 42, or .5% of those deaths were from burning or scalding. That’s inclusive of all ages, sexes, and sources of burn (cooking fire, house fire, dropped a candle in bed, splashed with boiling water, etc).
The danger of fire is very, very real, and people did, and still do, injure themselves and die from it. But let’s not pretend that women were bursting into flames on the daily.
I know the people who wrote 18th century newpapers were paranoid about getting sued but can I buy a fucking vowel please?
Fun fact, there was at least one guy who publicly admitted to telling Paul Revere to shut up and go away. Do you think they ever let him live that down
Starting a new post because I’m not derailing my original one twice, but if anyone is interested in seeing more of the hauntingly beautiful or delightfully derpy mortuary art of early New England, I highly recommend visiting the Farber Gravestone Collection.
This is a photography series, mostly by Daniel and Jessie Farber, documenting over 9,000 pre-1800 gravestones in high-quality black and white photos. It is not a comprehensive list of stones by any means, but it is searchable by state, town, carver, and style, and gives a wonderful overview of the different types of stones that you can see in our old burying grounds.
I love history because sometimes it’s poring over boxes of long-forgotten, unlabeled documents trying to solve the mystery of who started a war, and sometimes it’s just sitting around with your friends dissing a founding father’s interior decorating style or weird fetishes
DANG
Respectfully I am going to break your kneecaps
You: This sour patch kid would kill a victorian child!
The victorian child, who has been in the Peaky Blinders since the age of six and has already drunk more gin today than you have in a month:
Liking historical music is great because you can get a beautifully melancholic song about slowly dying of syphilis stuck in your head for days