Hacker News with Generative AI: Victorian Era

The Victorians, Creation, and the Dinosaur Problem (historytoday.com)
Overworked and haunted by hallucinations, Hugh Miller wrote a note to his wife Lydia and shot himself at some time between late 23 December and early Christmas Eve 1856.

Victorian Era, History, Geology, Mental Health

5 points by samclemens 12 days ago | 2 comments

The Cat's Meat Man: Feeding Felines in Victorian London (publicdomainreview.org)
As cats evolved from feral ratters into beloved Victorian companions, a nascent pet-food economy arose on the carts of so-called “cat’s meat men”. Kathryn Hughes explores the life and times of these itinerant offal vendors, their intersection with a victim of Jack the Ripper, and a feast held in the meat men’s honor, chaired by none other than Louis Wain.

History, Victorian Era, London, Animals, Food

6 points by giuliomagnifico 85 days ago | 0 comments

The Cat's Meat Man: Feeding Felines in Victorian London (publicdomainreview.org)
On January 10, 1901, twelve days before Queen Victoria did the unthinkable and died, 250 cat’s meat men sat down to a slap-up dinner at a restaurant in Holborn, on the edge of central London.

History, London, Animals, Victorian Era

4 points by pepys 106 days ago | 0 comments

Infectious diseases in Victorian novels highlight public health fragility now (theconversation.com)
Modern medicine has enabled citizens of wealthy, industrialized nations to forget that children once routinely died in shocking numbers. Teaching 19th-century English literature, I regularly encounter gutting depictions of losing a child, and I am reminded that not knowing the emotional cost of widespread child mortality is a luxury.

Public Health, Literature, History, Victorian Era

14 points by rntn 174 days ago | 2 comments

Lady Baker and the Source of the Nile (harkness.substack.com)
Among the thousands and thousands of handwritten letters preserved in the British Library from the pen of the Victorian publisher Alexander Macmillan, one in particular piqued my interest: written to the heroic explorer of the sources of the Nile, Sir Samuel Baker, on 4 May 1866:

History, Exploration, British Library, Victorian Era, Letters

15 points by Caiero 221 days ago | 0 comments

Victorian Artistic Printing (2009) (sheaff-ephemera.com)

Victorian Era, Art, Printing, History

21 points by jfil 296 days ago | 3 comments

Voice is a garden: Margaret Watts Hughes's Victorian sound visualizations (themarginalian.org)

Art, Victorian Era, Sound Art, Visualizations

76 points by benbreen 302 days ago | 10 comments

Behind Victorian Bars (historytoday.com)

History, Victorian Era, England, Prisons

4 points by Caiero 330 days ago | 6 comments

Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Blackmail, and the First Motion Pictures (publicdomainreview.org)