Simply Looking for Jack

thevintagethimble: Victorian Men’s Hairstyles & Facial...

Wed, 15 May 2013 19:23:10 -0400

Victorian Men’s Hairstyles & Facial Hair
A collection of Victorian photographs, depicting some of the hairstyles and facial hair fashion of the time, and a few rather unique hair styles like a man with ringlets.

Woman’s Hairstyles
Victorian [x] | Edwardian [x] | 1920’s [x] | 1930’s [x] | WW2 [x]

thevintagethimble: Victorian HairstylesA collection of...

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:02:34 -0400

thevintagethimble:

Victorian Hairstyles
A collection of Victorian photographs ranging from 1855 - 1880’s.

Edwardian Hairstyles Here [x] | 1920’s Hairstyles Here [x] | 1930’s Hairstyles Here [x] | WW2 Hairstyles Here [x]

thevintagethimble: Edwardian HairstylesA collection of...

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:01:45 -0400

thevintagethimble:

Edwardian Hairstyles
A collection of Edwardian photographs, depicting some of the hairstyles of the time, like the Low Pompadour. Hatpin Hairstyle. Side-Swirls. Flapper (The title ‘Flapper’ originally referred to teenage girls
who wore their hair in single plait which often terminated in a wide ribbon bow.) & the pompadour.

Victorian Hairstyles Here [x]

theoddmentemporium: Guillotine Toy Following the bloody...

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:00:58 -0400

theoddmentemporium:

Guillotine Toy

Following the bloody conclusion of the French Revolution “The toy shops put on the market little guillotines with which little patriots could behead figures of aristocrats. There still survive some specimens of this pretty and diverting machine, of which one bears the date 1794 [above].

In December, 1793, [one man] asks his mother in Frankfurt to get him such a toy guillotine for his son … and in her reply he certainly got some home-truths. In her decisive manner she wrote to him by return post: ‘Dear Son, Anything I can do to please you is gladly done and gives me joy;—but to buy such an infamous implement of murder—that I will not do at any price. If I had authority, the maker should be put in the stocks and I would have the machine publicly burnt by the common executioner. What! Let the young play with anything so horrible,—place in their hands for their diversion murder and blood-shedding? No, that will never do!”

turnofthecentury: Anonymous, c.1910

Sun, 12 May 2013 16:28:30 -0400

turnofthecentury:

Anonymous, c.1910

theoddmentemporium: Death Crowns In Appalachian folklore Death...

Sun, 12 May 2013 16:26:46 -0400

theoddmentemporium:

Death Crowns

In Appalachian folklore Death Crowns are curious discs of interwoven feathers that were found in the pillows of the dying or deceased, that is, in times when feather pillows were more abundant. If discovered in the former, they were seen as a sign that the person would surely die, whilst if found in the latter, they were seen as a sign that the person had gone to Heaven.

Measuring on average two inches wide and one inch thick, scientific explanation suggests that the feathers would become inadvertently matted by the bed bound person’s head, however, those who go in for the legend still believe it is a sign from angels that their loved one is with God.

[Sources: Image | Death Crowns]

theoddmentemporium: Nocturnal Amusements of the 18th...

Sun, 12 May 2013 16:25:50 -0400

theoddmentemporium:

Nocturnal Amusements of the 18th Century

No, not sex. It would seem people in the 18th century had better stuff to do. Like stabbing one another in the butt and slashing one another’s faces with knives…

According to Francis Grose’s 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, one “diversion practiced by the bloods of the last century” was Sweating:

these gentlemen lay in wait to surprise some person late in the night, when surrouding him, they with their swords pricked him in the posteriors, which obliged him to be constantly turning round; this they continued till they thought him sufficiently sweated.

Then, “somewhat like those facetious gentlemen some time ago known in England by the title of Sweaters,” were Chalkers. In Ireland Chalkers were “Men of wit … who in the night amuse themselves with cutting inoffensive passengers across the face with a knife.”

[Sources: Hypervocal | From Old Books]

theoddmentemporium: The Edelweiss Pirates The Edelweiss...

Sat, 04 May 2013 22:15:08 -0400

theoddmentemporium:

The Edelweiss Pirates

The Edelweiss Pirates were a German youth organisation which resisted the Nazis and their ideology. Consisting mainly of fourteen to seventeen year olds, who had evaded the Hitler Youth by leaving school at fourteen and were not yet old enough for military conscription, the group emerge as the Hitler Youth were mobilised to serve the state, severely impacting the leisure time, and more importantly, the autonomy of young people in Germany.

They were distinguishable by their dress, which was a take on fashions associated with American Swing mingled with German folk dress, for example, ‘Dressing in lederhosen was a central part of their look as German heritage and resisting its malign was always at the forefront of their minds.’ [Source]

Although a lot of their activity involved petty provocations, they actively defied the restrictions imposed by the government, gathering on street corners in mixed-gender groups, taking camping and hiking trips, and were highly antagonistic towards the Hitler Youth, frequently starting fights with them. As one Nazi official put it in 1941: “Every child knows who the [Edelweiss] Pirates are. They are everywhere; there are more of them than there are Hitler Youth… They beat up the patrols… They never take no for an answer.” During WWII they supported the allies, helped deserters of the German army, distributed allied propaganda, and possibly carried out the assassinations of several Gestapo Officers.

The government responded characteristically, shaving the heads of those they identified as Pirates to shame them, and often sending them to concentration camps and prisons. Thirteen members of a group from Cologne were publicly hanged.

[Sources: Previous Blog | Edelweiss Pirates]

theoddmentemporium: Baby Brothel Burials In 1912 a group of...

Fri, 03 May 2013 22:15:48 -0400

theoddmentemporium:

Baby Brothel Burials

In 1912 a group of archeologists were somewhat perturbed when, whilst excavating an Ancient Roman villa in Buckinghamshire, they uncovered the remains of some 97 infants. By measuring the bones of the skeletons it was determined that each had died at around 40 weeks gestation, that is, shortly after birth, suggesting systematic infanticide, as opposed to disease, which would have effected the children at different ages. Meticulous records from the dig, maintained by naturalist and archaeologist Alfred Heneage Cocks, show how the remains were found under walls and close together under courtyards. No other site has ever been found which yielded this quantity of infant skeletons.

These curious circumstances lead towards one plausible yet unfortunate conclusion: the babies were the unwanted children of prostitutes, and the building in which they were found was an Ancient Roman brothel. With no effective contraception, unwanted pregnancies were inevitable and frequent in the Roman era, whilst evidence suggests that children were not considered to be ‘full’ human beings until the age of two and, as such, were not buried in cemeteries.

[Sources: BBC News | Thanks to Vintage-Royalty]

"I would rather die of passion than of boredom."

Fri, 03 May 2013 22:14:26 -0400

“I would rather die of passion than of boredom.””

- Vincent Van Gogh (via 14ths)

patron-saint-of-mediocrity: archiemcphee: Here’s an awesome...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:46:15 -0400

patron-saint-of-mediocrity:

archiemcphee:

Here’s an awesome little piece of history:

Archaeologists in the Burnt City have discovered what appears to be an ancient prosthetic eye. What makes this discovery exceptionally awesome is the striking description of how the owner and her false eye would have appeared while she was still alive and blinking:

[The eye] has a hemispherical form and a diameter of just over 2.5 cm (1 inch). It consists of very light material, probably bitumen paste. The surface of the artificial eye is covered with a thin layer of gold, engraved with a central circle (representing the iris) and gold lines patterned like sun rays. The female remains found with the artificial eye was 1.82 m tall (6 feet), much taller than ordinary women of her time. On both sides of the eye are drilled tiny holes, through which a golden thread could hold the eyeball in place. Since microscopic research has shown that the eye socket showed clear imprints of the golden thread, the eyeball must have been worn during her lifetime. The woman’s skeleton has been dated to between 2900 and 2800 BCE.

So she was an extraordinarily tall woman walking around wearing an engraved golden eye patterned with rays like a tiny sun. What an awesome sight that must have been.

[via TYWKIWDBI]

atadoamilenguaje: Milo Manara - Storia dell’Umanità I...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:41:03 -0400

atadoamilenguaje:

Milo Manara - Storia dell’Umanità

I thought this was very interesting. Don’t you?

cabbagingcove: Statue of Louis Agassiz Clearly not in its...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:37:32 -0400

cabbagingcove:

Statue of Louis Agassiz

Clearly not in its original position. The statue was toppled from its niche above the entrance to the zoology building at Stanford University during the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.

Photograph by the US Geological Survey, via Wikimedia Commons.

mydaguerreotypeboyfriend: Walter Bentley Woodbury, age 23....

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:36:26 -0400

mydaguerreotypeboyfriend:

Walter Bentley Woodbury, age 23. Self-portrait with a camera, 1857. This British-born photographer sailed to Austraila when he was twenty and ran a sucessful photography studio first in Melbourne, and then in Java, Indonesia.

He enclosed this photograph with a letter to his mother:

“The portrait I send has the date marked on it and in the future I shall always date them so that you can see if I improve in appearance or otherwise.”

theoddmentemporium: London After Midnight London After Midnight...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:02:34 -0400

theoddmentemporium:

London After Midnight

London After Midnight was a 1927 silent horror film, the last known copy of which was destroyed in a fire in 1967, making it one of the most eagerly sought after lost films.

Set in the 1920s London, the plot revolves around the apparent murder of a Sir Roger Balfour. Burke, an unorthodox inspector of Scotland Yard is sent to investigate the suspects but uncovers a suicide and the case is closed. Then, five years later, a man wearing a beaver-skin hat, with fangs and dark, sunken eyes accompanied by a ghostly woman with flowing robes and black hair, move into Balfour’s old house and strange things start happening, raising the question as to whether it is really Balfour returned from the dead.

Rumours abound as to the possible existence of copies of the film. The most persistant conspiracy is that a number of silent film collectors are hoarding copies, afraid that they’ll lose them to the rights holder, MGM, if they reveal their whereabouts, as well as other theories that the MGM has had the film on it’s shelves under another name, ‘The Hypnotist’, all along or that they are simply, for one of a number of reasons, suppressing it.

Curiously, the film was also cited in the 1928 trial of a man who murdered a woman in Hyde Park. The defence claimed that he had been driven temporarily insane by Lon Chaney’s performance as Balfour and had thus been incited to kill, however, the claims were rejected and he was convicted.

Although it is highly unlikely that any copy of London After Midnight does still exist, it is worth noting that another film, The Divine Women, starring Greta Garbo, which went missing around the same time, later showed up in Eastern Europe, whilst an original cut of Metropolis was discovered in Argentina in 2008.

A reconstruction, which might be viewed here, was made in 2002 using stills from the original film.

[Sources: London After Midnight | IMDB | Mike’s London After Midnight | The Bioscope | Thanks to Vintage-Royalty]

theoddmentemporium: Frog-hopping gravestones. Glasgow, 1948....

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 10:31:10 -0400

theoddmentemporium:

Frog-hopping gravestones. Glasgow, 1948. (x)

theoddmentemporium: Victorian Dress Lifter Basically tool kits...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:43:48 -0400

theoddmentemporium:

Victorian Dress Lifter

Basically tool kits masquerading as jewelry, “chatelaines” allowed Victorian women to keep quotidian essentials at the ready, in the graceful style the era demanded. Consisting of functional pendants attached to a clip, these accessories were worn at the waist.

The above artifact would be hung on the chatelaine alongside other day-to-day necessities such as make-up, pencils, needles, and perfume. Women relied on these little tongs to hoist up their skirt hems when crossing dirty streets.

[Source: Country Living | See Also]

allthequeensmenrgone: Not the best, but who thought of it gets...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:41:56 -0400

allthequeensmenrgone:

Not the best, but who thought of it gets kudos from me.

How funny is that?

wilderthanbilly: Eadweard Muybridge, 1884c. He placed...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:40:54 -0400

wilderthanbilly:

Eadweard Muybridge, 1884c.

He placed numerous large glass-plate cameras in a line along the edge of the track; the shutter of each was triggered by a thread as the horse passed. The path was lined with cloth sheets to reflect as much light as possible. He copied the images in the form of silhouettes onto a disc to be viewed in a machine he had invented, which he called a zoopraxiscope. This device was later regarded as an early movie projector, and the process as an intermediate stage toward motion pictures or cinematography.

Today, similar setups of carefully timed multiple cameras are used in modern special effects photography but they have the opposite goal of capturing changing camera angles, with little or no movement of the subject. This is often dubbed “bullet time” photography.

Bela Lugosi as Jesus — “In 1909, among his many roles, Bela was...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:33:18 -0400

Bela Lugosi as Jesus — “In 1909, among his many roles, Bela was chosen to play Jesus Christ in a passion play. It appears that this role was of special importance to the young Lugosi, as he had a number of pictures taken of himself in the role. They also illustrate the remarkable resemblance that Bela bore to the traditional images of Christ.”