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I might be wrong, but this looks very much like penny lick ice cream glasses: https://i2.wp.com/www.oldlondon.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/...
(If you haven't heard of them: in the 1800s London, one happy customer would get their ice cream, lick the glass clean and return it to the vendor, who would refill it and give it to the next customer. Perhaps the best way to spread tuberculosis, which the Penny lick did very well on until it was banned in 1899.)
In communist Poland, street vendors frequently offered carbonated water as a refreshing drink in the summer - but they only had a glass or two, so you would buy a glass of water, drink it, and return the glass for the next customer to use - in the best case, it was quickly rinsed before re-use. The last one was in use until 1995.
Sadly wiki only has an article on this in Polish, but google translate does a decent job:
When I was a kid growing up in the late '50s, the restaurants had a jar of mustard and a jar of mayonnaise at the table, and you used your table knife to spread whichever you wanted on your sandwich, just like you would at home.
This was a problem if you wanted both mayonnaise and mustard. It wouldn't be polite to contaminate one with the other, plus you might get bits of lettuce and bread in the jar.
So we were taught that after putting the mustard on the sandwich, rather than dip the dirty knife in the mayonnaise jar, we should first lick it clean.
They appeared to be quite aware and concerned about contagion though:
http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications/thomson-6.htm
For tremendously more detailed writeups of the Victorian London street trades, with interviews and statistics, check out https://archive.org/stream/cu31924092592751 _London labour and the London poor; a cyclopaedia of the condition and earnings of those that will work, those that cannot work, and those that will not work_. All sorts of odd obsolete trades.
As a photography geek I must say those are incredibly good photographs! Is there some kind of trick in play or was the art of photography really that good back then?
Besides the large plates, I think you're reacting to the focus as well. We've gotten very used to our small lenses and their infinite depth of field that keeps everything focused. We're so used to it that now it's a feature to have a smartphone camera that can blur the background. But those old cameras did that automatically, because they were only capable of a narrow depth of field and the photographer had to be really careful about where the focus was when he composed the shot.
I believe the photographic plates of the day would have been large, maybe 8x10 inches and developed or printed at 1:1 scale.
That would give a pretty good head start on quality.
It is easy to forget just how good film or plate photography is. I scanned some slides from the 80s and they were amazing, easily printed at A4
Judging by those photos, I have to say Dickens[1] was spot-on in his criticism of the quality of life for ordinary citizens in Victorian London.
It struck me to realize the similarities of hardships to common US citizens (and developed world citizens to a lesser extent) today.
Medical episodes cause a cascade of ill-circumstance tumbling once-stable positions into the streets: "...who is now in difficulties through ill-health..."
Retirement a binary condition ill-suiting putting purpose to people's lives: "I’m lost, I’ve been put off my perch"
Substance abuse inures the senses of those who have given up, and thereby tragically reinforcing cycles of abuse into future generations: "...early acclimatizes her infant to the fumes of tobacco and alcohol"
Poor squeezed by land prices into living in the flood plains, with predictable disastrous consequences if their unlucky number comes up: "The sufferings of the poor in Lambeth, and in other quarters of the Metropolis, caused by the annual tidal overflow of the Thames"
"Improvements" displacing common people to the benefit of rentiers, and destroying the micro-culture of a neighborhood: "As a matter of fact, the inhabitants of Church Lane were nearly all what I may term “street folks” – living, buying, selling, transacting all their business in the open street...condemned as an unwholesome over-crowded, throughfare, and the houses on either side are now almost entirely destroyed, and the inhabitants have been compelled to migrate to other more distant and less convenient parts of the metropolis"
Industrial disruption comes at a steep cost to those whose lives are disrupted and swept under the inconvenient rug of the disruptive effects to individuals, even military veterans, to the benefit of the overall economy: "...two boardmen who seemed worthy of a better position..."
There are some, but too few, bright points, considering the progress we trumpet ourselves possessing. Some parts of the human condition remain quite thoroughly embedded within our civilization's mien for the time being.
View some Photochroms to give yourself sense of the color of that era [1].
[1] http://fiveminutehistory.com/photochrom-victorian-era-color-...
Look at this guy's huge shoe:
https://i2.wp.com/www.oldlondon.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/...
Likely a polio shoe: http://members.upnaway.com/~poliowa/Polio%20Feet%20Problems....
Almost certainly. One of my rugby and maths teachers (!) had a similar one for that reason.
Now the 2 1 7 and 6 for the peppermints is an odd thing. I presume it is the price but my first effort is: 2 for 1, 7/6 ie 2 for the price of one for 7 shillings and 6 pence but that was quite a lot of money. Another photo show a bowl of ahem beef leg soup for 2d.
Pre decimalisation British currency was: £1 = 20 shillings, 1 shilling = 12 pence, penny was written as d (denarius, the s for shilling is really sestertius and the £ is L for libra - all loosely Latin).
It must be some kind of prosthetic for a short leg, because his other shoe is normal-sized.
He was a professional arse-kicker.
These sorts of comments don't add value to the discussion. Jokes/memes are generally off topic in the interest of maintaining a high density of interesting conversation.
And you seriously post this response to a thread where all the GP wrote was 'look at this guys huge shoe:' and a link to a picture?
Despite all the dirt and horse poop, it's amazing how much more open and un-congested all the streets looked back then.
Now days, of course, London's streets are all choked with parked cars, creating a less than welcoming environment for cyclists and pedestrians. And horses.
In very early photos only horses and people who stood very still, such as a fellow getting his shoes shined, are visible since the exposure times were so long.
In a lot of ways, Victorian London doesn't sound all that much different to modern London.
Alhough these days, the Police generally don't bother trying to crack down on illegal street traders and other minor crimes.
Never would have imagined a mush-faker was an umbrella repairman.
> having obtained an umbrella to mend, they prefer sitting out doing the work in the street, in front of the house. This attracts the attention of the neighbours, and the fact that they have been entrusted with work by the inhabitants of one house generally brings more custom from those who live next door. When the job is terminated, the mush-faker ” looks about him, as he enters the house, in quest of an umbrella which has passed the mending stage ; and, in exchange for the same, offers to make a slight reduction in his charge. Thus he gradually obtains a stock of very old umbrellas, and by taking the good bits from one old “mushroom” and adding it to another, he is able to make, out of two broken and torn umbrellas, a tolerably stout and serviceable gingham.
They went from house to house asking for old umbrellas, and from two old ones they could make a new one.
"Mush" for "mushroom" (slang for umbrella) and "fake" I assume from make (fecit pronounced "fake-it"in Latin which had more weird vestigial remnants than today).
Quote:
"Mushfake" is a very interesting word. It seems to have first appeared in underworld slang back in the early 19th century in England. "Mush" by itself was, in that period, slang for an umbrella, from its similarity in shape to a mushroom. The verb "to fake" during the same period was criminal slang for "putting something in shape to sell by covering its defects." So a "mushroom faker" or "mushfake" was a con artist who repaired discarded umbrellas just enough to make them briefly functional and then sold them on the street, preferably during a downpour. http://www.word-detective.com/111703.html#mushfake
I used to have a similar approach to yours in trying to derive the meaning of old words. My saddest attempt was where "Yeovil" (where I live in South Somerset, UK) comes from. The river Yeo flows nearby and clearly the town was named after it Yeo-ville. Hah! The village/ham/whatever here was documented as Gifle in around 973 which is an old Saxon (?) word for a bend in a river. Over time and the vagaries of spellings and quite a few changes in vowels and consonant usage, notably G <-> Y, F <-> V. There are something like 50 odd spellings documented for this place over the years since. It would seem the river got its name from the town that got its name from being on a bend in said river.
Nearby is Yeovilton - don't even think of trying to derive that one!
One thing that strikes me is how many people wore hats back then. I could only find a few people not wearing a hat in the photos.
One was not presentable without a hat!
Now we commonly sport sailors' underwear (t-shirts) as outerwear in public, and even in places of business! And low-class rugged laborers' trousers (denim jeans) are worn about by merchants and businesspersons, and can be expensive, high fashion.
Clothes are weird.
Always blows me away how smart the original beat poets and lsd-heads dressed - Jack Kerouac for example:
http://www.cmgww.com/historic/kerouac/wp-content/uploads/201...
Neckbeards were a thing then, too.