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The Hard Life of a 'Faker'

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17/01/1897

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Two Salvation Army Officers, armed with the requisite brooms and suitably rigged, ragged and disguised, practised the art of 'faking' - the name given to crossing sweeping by professionals. Relating their experiences - extended over a considerable time and a wide area - the amateur sweepers arrived at the conclusion that unless one had a really good crossing, and that, too, on a very muddy day, pence were few. If the road was fairly clean the average man in the street was apt to treat the mournful 'faker' - although he simulated the most racking cough - with scorn by crossing beside, not on, the cleanly swept path. At the same time the investigating Salvationists brought the knowledge that there are crossing sweepers who manage to make a decent living, but by also working up a connection in window cleaning, running errands, and doing odd jobs in genteel neighbourhoods. However, the poor fellow who spends his last copper in the purchase of a penny second hand broom, and sallies in search of a crossing to sweep, may well deem himself fortunate if at the end of the day he has gained enough to secure a shelter for the night and food for the morrow. (Peterborough Advertiser)

Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.

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Birth of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

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1689

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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was born in May 1689, the eldest child of the future 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull. She married, against her father's wishes, Sir Edward Wortley Montagu, who was later twice MP for Peterborough. Lady Mary is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her letters from travels to the Ottoman Empire, when her husband was the British ambassador to Turkey. These witty and well observed missives, as well as her other writings demonstrate that she deserves to be better known as a great writer.

Aside from her writing, Lady Mary is also known for introducing and championing smallpox inoculation (variolation) to Britain, which she had seen demonstrated during her time in Turkey. She had a great interest in the disease as she herself had suffered from it and was left badly scarred, and her brother died from it. Innoculation remained controversial and in later years was replaced by Edward Jenner's much safer technique of vaccination using cowpox rather than smallpox itself.

Lady Mary died on 21st August 1762 of breast cancer having recently returned from Venice to London. Edward Wortley Montague had died the year before. Their names are remembered in the Wortley Arms, originally the Wortley Almshouse.

Reference:

http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2016/05/lady-montagu-and-the-introduction-of-inoculation/

Links

  • Learn more about Lady Mary's writings.
Smallpox , Infection

Definitely Not What You Want for Christmas

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1853

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Victorian Britain was a time when infectious illness were far more serious than in modern times. Before the rise of a mass vaccination programme diseases such as whooping cough, measles, tuberculosis and mumps were common and often fatal.

School records written by headteachers in Peterborough regularly noted children who were absent with contagious diseases and times when schools had to close completely when diseases ran rampant through the population.

It was concerning then, when smallpox was identified in Peterborough in 1853, spreading through the population after being brought to the city by a traveller who subsequently died from the illness. By December the local paper noted that many people were ill with it, and we can surmise that many were ill with it over Christmas. Sadly, a man named John Julyan, aged 45, died from the disease on 12th January.

Small pox killed around a third of those who caught it, with many others left with scarring. The scarring was caused by pustules that covered the skin, usually starting with the face and spreading throughout the body including the palms of hands and souls of feet.

Thanks to international vaccination programmes the disease was declared eradicated by 1980.

References:

Stamford Mercury, January 20 1854, p. 3.

Stamford Mercury, December 16 1853, p.3.

Image by YvetteFang from Pixabay

School record books can be accessed at Peterborough Archives on request

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