back
10 comments
Here is a higher-resolution copy of the image that heads this article, so you can answer burning questions like "is that a dog up there in the ceiling or what?".

https://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/%7E/media/bl/global/dl%20ro...

Hooray for TinEye.

It's a lady with jack the ripper behind her.
Thank goodness for TinEye… because Google visual search has gone to complete shit.
Similar modern tale: Wesley Redhead came to Iowa City in its early days, having been a driver on the Erie Canal and a cabin boy on a Mississippi Steamboat.

Arrived with nothing (cheated of his money by gamblers on the train, substituted for counterfeit) he worked his way from printer's devil to Postmaster in the capitol of Des Moines (a thankless job back then), sold books from the lobby, became a bookseller, and at his peak sold $600 in books a day (a lot in the 1800's) at affordable prices.

Later the Coal King of Iowa during the Civil war he retired very rich, donated the land for the Iowa State Fairgrounds, donated his house and surrounds for a city park.

> he worked his way from printer's devil to Postmaster in the capitol of Des Moines (a thankless job back then)

Postmaster was a patronage job then. Considering how much it was sought after, I wonder just how thankless it could have been.

The folks that got it around here were generally young and promising, but no paying position otherwise. They'd keep it for a year or two, pass it on.

These were pioneer days. Low volume, maybe long trips to get mail bags overland. Mail interval in weeks or months.

I wonder if the conclusion from Lackington's story can be applied in other industries.
Ask yourself: are there any industries where commodity products are only sold with 'pomp' that could be stripped away to offer a more barebones accessible product?

in a way ChatGPT made AI accessible to the average person (who isn't a developer and doesn't know how to use an API)

For a fabulously contrarian and curmudgeonly look at book selling, I can highly recommend A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski.
I love old rare books. There are so many that have never translated from Latin. It’s a different arena.