Tag Archives: historic photographs

Beware the servants

As readers of murder mysteries well know, when a body is found in a large country house it’s usually the butler that did it. While this is just a crime fiction cliché, research that I recently carried out at North… Read more

It’s Alive! Riding Turbinia, 1897

It’s a funny thing, working in a museum.  You get so used to the extraordinary things around you that they sometimes seem to fade into the background.  Then, suddenly, something happens to inspire you all over again.  I come to… Read more

Some Assembly Required

Every so often you come across a story so extraordinary that you can barely believe it really happened.  Such is the saga of the ss Baikal, which I stumbled upon whilst innocently cataloguing a box of old photographs… By 1895… Read more

The Neptune Shell Shop bracelet and the response to the shell crisis of 1915 – Part 2

On December 5th 2014 I posted about a gold bracelet we had recently acquired, and its connection with the manufacture of 6” shells in the Neptune Engine Works of Tyne shipbuilders, Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson. The post was illustrated… Read more

Reinventing the Wheel

I was having a bit rummage and found this marvellous sepia photograph dated 1880:- At first sight, it appears to show a dastardly Victorian villain attempting to flee the scene of some dark deed aboard a horseless, minion-powered vehicle with feet… Read more