19th Century
People in the early nineteenth-century experienced, like today, a variety of reasons to make mobility aids desirable or necessary. While the self-propelled wheelchair has been around since the seventeenth century, the invention spirit of the time of the industrial revolution coupled with cheaper, more affordable materials, produced new devices. One such invention was Merlin's Mechanical Chair. It was developed by the enterprising John Joseph Merlin.
Today, December 16th marks 250 years - a quarter of a millennium - till a baby girl was born to the Reverend George and Cassandra Austen. Since my mother first placed her books into my hands in my early teens, she has been a constant in my life over now nearly two decades. Her characters are companions to me both on a winter's night with a cup of tea, on a long drive, and while sewing. In a way, my love for Jane Austen's books set in motion a series of defining moments in my life.
Across the decades between 1837 and 1901, the Victorian-era fashion silhouette was in a continual state of drastic changes. Fashion has a way of swinging like a pendulum between extremes; between restraint and extravagance, simplicity and opulence.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an era named 'Gilded Age' by Mark Twain, scores of daughters of new money US American families were sent across the Atlantic to the UK, not merely for educational purposes but for a more permanent establishment: to marry into the British aristocracy. Referred to as the 'Dollar Princesses', these women were heiresses of newly-minted American industrial-era fortunes, often made in railroads, steel, or oil.
In August 1827, a giraffe calf arrived on the shores of England as a diplomatic gift by Muhammad Ali of Egypt to King George IV. It was housed in George IV's menagerie and the giraffe quickly became the talk of the town, igniting a fascination that influenced everything from fashion to hairstyles.
Women in 19th Century Publishing – La Mode Illustrée, Magazine Owner Emmeline Raymond and Her Illustrators Héloïse and Adele-Anaïs Colin