#The London History Show
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petermorwood · 11 months ago
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This is a fun watch.
J. Draper gets SERIOUSLY nit-picky about "The Muppet Christmas Carol", and as a nit-picker myself, I enjoy seeing how others do it.
I can also see why some of her nit-picks were subordinate to the requirements of a different medium, though I second her curiosity as to why the development of Scrooge's youthful character was changed between book and screen.
It would have been easy to retain the original book character (Scrooge didn't always hate Christmas, but a succession of Bad Things happened at the holiday season and soured him on it). The change is as mysterious as that decision to delete one song ("When Love Is Gone") while leaving its complementary book-end song ("When Love Is Found") in place.
That at least has been corrected on Disney +, though AFAIK it's still not the Official Version and the corrected movie needs selected down among Extra Features.
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Funny thing, a large proportion of the YouTube comments are about Christmas Pudding and US ignorance of same. If Christmas Pud is mysterious, wait till they start finding out about Yorkshire Pudding, Pease Pudding and Black Pudding... :->
Check "pudding" in my tags And Learn More...
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yeoldenews · 10 months ago
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A Guide to Historically Accurate Regency-Era Names
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I recently received a message from a historical romance writer asking if I knew any good resources for finding historically accurate Regency-era names for their characters.
Not knowing any off the top of my head, I dug around online a bit and found there really isn’t much out there. The vast majority of search results were Buzzfeed-style listicles which range from accurate-adjacent to really, really, really bad.
I did find a few blog posts with fairly decent name lists, but noticed that even these have very little indication as to each name’s relative popularity as those statistical breakdowns really don't exist.
I began writing up a response with this information, but then I (being a research addict who was currently snowed in after a blizzard) thought hey - if there aren’t any good resources out there why not make one myself?
As I lacked any compiled data to work from, I had to do my own data wrangling on this project. Due to this fact, I limited the scope to what I thought would be the most useful for writers who focus on this era, namely - people of a marriageable age living in the wealthiest areas of London.
So with this in mind - I went through period records and compiled the names of 25,000 couples who were married in the City of Westminster (which includes Mayfair, St. James and Hyde Park) between 1804 to 1821.
So let’s see what all that data tells us…
To begin - I think it’s hard for us in the modern world with our wide and varied abundance of first names to conceive of just how POPULAR popular names of the past were.
If you were to take a modern sample of 25-year-old (born in 1998) American women, the most common name would be Emily with 1.35% of the total population. If you were to add the next four most popular names (Hannah, Samantha, Sarah and Ashley) these top five names would bring you to 5.5% of the total population. (source: Social Security Administration)
If you were to do the same survey in Regency London - the most common name would be Mary with 19.2% of the population. Add the next four most popular names (Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah and Jane) and with just 5 names you would have covered 62% of all women.
To hit 62% of the population in the modern survey it would take the top 400 names.
The top five Regency men’s names (John, William, Thomas, James and George) have nearly identical statistics as the women’s names.
I struggled for the better part of a week with how to present my findings, as a big list in alphabetical order really fails to get across the popularity factor and also isn’t the most tumblr-compatible format. And then my YouTube homepage recommended a random video of someone ranking all the books they’d read last year - and so I present…
The Regency Name Popularity Tier List
The Tiers
S+ - 10% of the population or greater. There is no modern equivalent to this level of popularity. 52% of the population had one of these 7 names.
S - 2-10%. There is still no modern equivalent to this level of popularity. Names in this percentage range in the past have included Mary and William in the 1880s and Jennifer in the late 1970s (topped out at 4%).
A - 1-2%. The top five modern names usually fall in this range. Kids with these names would probably include their last initial in class to avoid confusion. (1998 examples: Emily, Sarah, Ashley, Michael, Christopher, Brandon.)
B - .3-1%. Very common names. Would fall in the top 50 modern names. You would most likely know at least 1 person with these names. (1998 examples: Jessica, Megan, Allison, Justin, Ryan, Eric)
C - .17-.3%. Common names. Would fall in the modern top 100. You would probably know someone with these names, or at least know of them. (1998 examples: Chloe, Grace, Vanessa, Sean, Spencer, Seth)
D - .06-.17%. Less common names. In the modern top 250. You may not personally know someone with these names, but you’re aware of them. (1998 examples: Faith, Cassidy, Summer, Griffin, Dustin, Colby)
E - .02-.06%. Uncommon names. You’re aware these are names, but they are not common. Unusual enough they may be remarked upon. (1998 examples: Calista, Skye, Precious, Fabian, Justice, Lorenzo)
F - .01-.02%. Rare names. You may have heard of these names, but you probably don’t know anyone with one. Extremely unusual, and would likely be remarked upon. (1998 examples: Emerald, Lourdes, Serenity, Dario, Tavian, Adonis)
G - Very rare names. There are only a handful of people with these names in the entire country. You’ve never met anyone with this name.
H - Virtually non-existent. Names that theoretically could have existed in the Regency period (their original source pre-dates the early 19th century) but I found fewer than five (and often no) period examples of them being used in Regency England. (Example names taken from romance novels and online Regency name lists.)
Just to once again reinforce how POPULAR popular names were before we get to the tier lists - statistically, in a ballroom of 100 people in Regency London: 80 would have names from tiers S+/S. An additional 15 people would have names from tiers A/B and C. 4 of the remaining 5 would have names from D/E. Only one would have a name from below tier E.
Women's Names
S+ Mary, Elizabeth, Ann, Sarah      
S - Jane, Mary Ann+, Hannah, Susannah, Margaret, Catherine, Martha, Charlotte, Maria
A - Frances, Harriet, Sophia, Eleanor, Rebecca
B - Alice, Amelia, Bridget~, Caroline, Eliza, Esther, Isabella, Louisa, Lucy, Lydia, Phoebe, Rachel, Susan
C - Ellen, Fanny*, Grace, Henrietta, Hester, Jemima, Matilda, Priscilla
D - Abigail, Agnes, Amy, Augusta, Barbara, Betsy*, Betty*, Cecilia, Christiana, Clarissa, Deborah, Diana, Dinah, Dorothy, Emily, Emma, Georgiana, Helen, Janet^, Joanna, Johanna, Judith, Julia, Kezia, Kitty*, Letitia, Nancy*, Ruth, Winifred>
E - Arabella, Celia, Charity, Clara, Cordelia, Dorcas, Eve, Georgina, Honor, Honora, Jennet^, Jessie*^, Joan, Joyce, Juliana, Juliet, Lavinia, Leah, Margery, Marian, Marianne, Marie, Mercy, Miriam, Naomi, Patience, Penelope, Philadelphia, Phillis, Prudence, Rhoda, Rosanna, Rose, Rosetta, Rosina, Sabina, Selina, Sylvia, Theodosia, Theresa
F - (selected) Alicia, Bethia, Euphemia, Frederica, Helena, Leonora, Mariana, Millicent, Mirah, Olivia, Philippa, Rosamund, Sybella, Tabitha, Temperance, Theophila, Thomasin, Tryphena, Ursula, Virtue, Wilhelmina
G - (selected) Adelaide, Alethia, Angelina, Cassandra, Cherry, Constance, Delilah, Dorinda, Drusilla, Eva, Happy, Jessica, Josephine, Laura, Minerva, Octavia, Parthenia, Theodora, Violet, Zipporah
H - Alberta, Alexandra, Amber, Ashley, Calliope, Calpurnia, Chloe, Cressida, Cynthia, Daisy, Daphne, Elaine, Eloise, Estella, Lilian, Lilias, Francesca, Gabriella, Genevieve, Gwendoline, Hermione, Hyacinth, Inez, Iris, Kathleen, Madeline, Maude, Melody, Portia, Seabright, Seraphina, Sienna, Verity
Men's Names
S+ John, William, Thomas
S - James, George, Joseph, Richard, Robert, Charles, Henry, Edward, Samuel
A - Benjamin, (Mother’s/Grandmother’s maiden name used as first name)#
B - Alexander^, Andrew, Daniel, David>, Edmund, Francis, Frederick, Isaac, Matthew, Michael, Patrick~, Peter, Philip, Stephen, Timothy
C - Abraham, Anthony, Christopher, Hugh>, Jeremiah, Jonathan, Nathaniel, Walter
D - Adam, Arthur, Bartholomew, Cornelius, Dennis, Evan>, Jacob, Job, Josiah, Joshua, Lawrence, Lewis, Luke, Mark, Martin, Moses, Nicholas, Owen>, Paul, Ralph, Simon
E - Aaron, Alfred, Allen, Ambrose, Amos, Archibald, Augustin, Augustus, Barnard, Barney, Bernard, Bryan, Caleb, Christian, Clement, Colin, Duncan^, Ebenezer, Edwin, Emanuel, Felix, Gabriel, Gerard, Gilbert, Giles, Griffith, Harry*, Herbert, Humphrey, Israel, Jabez, Jesse, Joel, Jonas, Lancelot, Matthias, Maurice, Miles, Oliver, Rees, Reuben, Roger, Rowland, Solomon, Theophilus, Valentine, Zachariah
F - (selected) Abel, Barnabus, Benedict, Connor, Elijah, Ernest, Gideon, Godfrey, Gregory, Hector, Horace, Horatio, Isaiah, Jasper, Levi, Marmaduke, Noah, Percival, Shadrach, Vincent
G - (selected) Albion, Darius, Christmas, Cleophas, Enoch, Ethelbert, Gavin, Griffin, Hercules, Hugo, Innocent, Justin, Maximilian, Methuselah, Peregrine, Phineas, Roland, Sebastian, Sylvester, Theodore, Titus, Zephaniah
H - Albinus, Americus, Cassian, Dominic, Eric, Milo, Rollo, Trevor, Tristan, Waldo, Xavier
# Men were sometimes given a family surname (most often their mother's or grandmother's maiden name) as their first name - the most famous example of this being Fitzwilliam Darcy. If you were to combine all surname-based first names as a single 'name' this is where the practice would rank.
*Rank as a given name, not a nickname
+If you count Mary Ann as a separate name from Mary - Mary would remain in S+ even without the Mary Anns included
~Primarily used by people of Irish descent
^Primarily used by people of Scottish descent
>Primarily used by people of Welsh descent
I was going to continue on and write about why Regency-era first names were so uniform, discuss historically accurate surnames, nicknames, and include a little guide to finding 'unique' names that are still historically accurate - but this post is already very, very long, so that will have to wait for a later date.
If anyone has any questions/comments/clarifications in the meantime feel free to message me.
Methodology notes: All data is from marriage records covering six parishes in the City of Westminster between 1804 and 1821. The total sample size was 50,950 individuals.
I chose marriage records rather than births/baptisms as I wanted to focus on individuals who were adults during the Regency era rather than newborns. I think many people make the mistake when researching historical names by using baby name data for the year their story takes place rather than 20 to 30 years prior, and I wanted to avoid that. If you are writing a story that takes place in 1930 you don’t want to research the top names for 1930, you need to be looking at 1910 or earlier if you are naming adult characters.
I combined (for my own sanity) names that are pronounced identically but have minor spelling differences: i.e. the data for Catherine also includes Catharines and Katherines, Susannah includes Susannas, Phoebe includes Phebes, etc.
The compound 'Mother's/Grandmother's maiden name used as first name' designation is an educated guesstimate based on what I recognized as known surnames, as I do not hate myself enough to go through 25,000+ individuals and confirm their mother's maiden names. So if the tally includes any individuals who just happened to be named Fitzroy/Hastings/Townsend/etc. because their parents liked the sound of it and not due to any familial relations - my bad.
I did a small comparative survey of 5,000 individuals in several rural communities in Rutland and Staffordshire (chosen because they had the cleanest data I could find and I was lazy) to see if there were any significant differences between urban and rural naming practices and found the results to be very similar. The most noticeable difference I observed was that the S+ tier names were even MORE popular in rural areas than in London. In Rutland between 1810 and 1820 Elizabeths comprised 21.4% of all brides vs. 15.3% in the London survey. All other S+ names also saw increases of between 1% and 6%. I also observed that the rural communities I surveyed saw a small, but noticeable and fairly consistent, increase in the use of names with Biblical origins.
Sources of the records I used for my survey: 
Ancestry.com. England & Wales Marriages, 1538-1988 [database on-line].
Ancestry.com. Westminster, London, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1935 [database on-line].
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ishouldbedoingalright · 4 months ago
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the number of people cheering that gareth's gone... babe he ranks third for all-time victories as england manager and all european championship runs to the final have been under his management. no men's manager has ever done that. he completely transformed how the england team are viewed not only by the public but by the players.
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idkaguyorsomething · 9 months ago
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learn your fucking history
(IMAGE ID: A man sitting in a pew in a church labeled “Modern Who is too political”. Behind him is a person with a gun labeled “Vengeance on Varos’ election subplot”. Behind them is another person with a gun labeled “Genesis of the Daleks’ fascism allegory”. From a hidden corner is a sniper pointing a gun at that person, labeled “Barbara saying trans rights in The Aztecs”.)
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agir1ukn0w · 6 months ago
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I feel like my last post on this subject was a bit forceful, so I would like to take this opportunity to gently but strongly encourage all of my followers to go watch shardlake either on disney+ uk or @hulu, because this series deserves a second season and we all know just how fickle these streaming companies can be about letting fans of well-loved IP's have nice things
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mariocki · 3 months ago
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Honor Blackman guest stars as art expert Syd Lewis in Saber of London: Deep in the Heart of Chelsea (1.3, NBC, 1957)
#fave spotting#honor blackman#cathy gale#saber of london#the vise#the avengers#classic tv#deep in the heart of chelsea#1957#nbc#so im visiting parents for a week or two and taking the opportunity to catch up on my old tv watching as i have access to my beloved#dvd collection. Saber was one of the final network releases I've located (after‚ i might say‚ a long long search for a reasonably priced#copy). so. the story of Saber of London. (deep breath). SoL is really a development of The Vise; for more on the needlessly complex history#of that series you can follow the appropriate tag above. in short The Vise was a crime anthology made specifically for US tv but produced#in the UK using brit actors writers and directors. the recurring character of Mark Saber was popular enough that the show eventually became#The Vise: Mark Saber; it then became Saber of London. some sources still regard this show as essentially being a later series of The Vise#(and it does still use the og theme tune over the end credits) but considering the title change and (crucially) the fact that SoL saw the#series move from ABC to NBC‚ im gonna consider this its own self contained show and number the episodes accordingly (ie. this is series 1 o#Saber of London not series 5 or 7 (depending on your counting) of The Vise). anyway now that's all out of the way.#there's little material difference between this series and the slightly earlier The Vise: Mark Saber episodes besides new titles and a#different introductory spiel from star Donald Gray. our hero is still a plucky private detective undertaking modest cases that the show's#budget will allow. this ep concerns art forgeries and an attempt to trap the criminals responsible‚ which means Saber must call on an art#expert to help authenticate the works. enter Honor! not yet a star‚ Honor did have a decade of acting experience behind her#which is maybe reflected in the fact that she's given an unusually meaty part for a woman in this series: she's neither victim nor love#interest (which are the usual roles) but a witty and intelligent source of assistance to the hero.#unlike The Vise episodes (which could take up to a decade to appear in the uk if they did at all) SoL appears to have had a fairly regular#slot from Granada about two years after the show's US premier. this ep would have been seen by uk audiences in 1959
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edmundpevensiesqueen · 3 months ago
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MAISIE PETERS AT THE ERAS TOUR?!?! WITHOUT ME?!?!?!?
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waugh-bao · 1 year ago
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Keith Richards and Ronnie Scott attend a Charlie Watts Jazz Orchestra Show at the latter’s club (1985)
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render-bomb · 1 year ago
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You know what I love about the number aew announced? It wasn't tickets sold, it was people who actually turned up after buying tickets. So many more tickets were sold, and it's totally normal for loads of people to just not show up to an event they paid for for many different reasons (I've done it). So they could've just announced the total ticket sales, but they wanted us to know how many people actually attended, how many people were actually in the arena, which is, in my opinion, more important and more significant
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thenotoriousscuttlecliff · 11 days ago
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There's an episode of Goodnight Sweetheart, an old British sitcom about a time traveller set during WWII, where American troops arrive in London and all the cockneys are flabbergasted to see some of them are black, like this is the first time they've ever seen someone non-white even though there were about 10,000 or so living in London at the time. The city was also home to the largest port in the world and was a major centre of international trade. So thinking London (and the rest of the country) was a purely white until just after the war is sheer lunacy, but that's the attitude many wilfully ignorant Brits have about our own history.
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kazz-brekker · 29 days ago
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accidentally derailed dinner preparations for several minutes tonight by reading sir walter raleigh's wikipedia page out loud to my sister while she was supposed to be making a frittata and startling her so much with the revelation that he was beheaded on the orders of king james that she forgot to preheat the oven
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ladyblacklavender · 2 months ago
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Hey everyone! I’m very excited to announce that my new TikTok series “Even’s Macabre Museums” is now live on my TikTok!!
Join me on my quest to find the grim, gory and great amongst London’s museums and galleries and beyond! New episodes will be uploaded every 1 - 2 weeks. Be prepared for a lot of skeletons, sharp tools, taxidermy, weird historical facts and trinkets and… various things in jars.
Available to watch now (free of charge)! 🩸🏛️:
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exhibit-of-the-century · 6 months ago
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John Singer Sargent, Sargent and Fashion Exhibition, Tate Britain, London Part 1
Masterlist
BUY ME A COFFEE
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weedle-testaburger · 9 months ago
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i love how the definition of an 'obscure fandom' is so variable depending what kind of people you're around
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christiangittingsblog · 5 months ago
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Secrets of the Underground Starts on the 2nd July 2024 at 8pm. On Yesterday, Channel
//check this series out if you are interested in the history of London Underground, history in general, or railways.
(If you have missed series 1~3, don't worry, previous episodes of this program are available online at Yesterday UKTV Play)
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supercantaloupe · 1 year ago
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though i don't consider it my all time favorite show ever i do think cabaret is at the very top of the list of shows i'm so abnormal about that if i see people being Wrong about it i will go the fuck off about it
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