#census of the poor

[tenth-sentence]

The Norwich Census of the Poor of 1570 categorised women as single, married, widowed, deserted, and as 'grass wenches' – sexually active unmarried women, sometimes with bastard children.

"Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History" - Philippa Gregory

[feyres-divorce-lawyer]

oh!

[shiegra]

LMAOOOOOOOO the 'same sex attracted is a better way to put it' person had no other response than to go 'IT IS BETTER, IF U DISAGREE UR LYING' after being confronted with the fact that they also have never previously personally used the term on their blog

this site, also, is free

[bravo666]

john price who gets retired out, discharged when he gets some shrapnel in his knee, but he’s still a soldier at heart and needs to scratch some kind of itch. living out an idle retirement simply isn’t an option. with combat of any kind off the table, he picks up a random job as a census worker to occupy his time. government bureaucracy and paperwork, his old enemy—but better the devil you know, right?

it’s not a job he enjoys, as dull as it is, but if john price is anything, it’s not being a quitter. he’s thanking his stars that the season’s nearly done and wondering if he might be able to pitch in at the local carpentry shop when he’s sent to go meet a truant form-taker, some big house a bit of a ways out of town that hasn’t responded to the mail to fill out the census. big, old, and clearly falling apart with an overrun garden and a cracked drainpipe and a trampled, rotted fence.

he’s expecting a pensioner at the door given the state of the place, but when he knocks his big fist and the peeling door swings back, a pretty young thing is standing behind it. he explains why he’s there and the poor bird nearly bursts into tears with apologies. she’s so sorry for the display, she says, she’s just been very overwhelmed lately which is why she forgot to fill out the form and doesn’t mean to cry. the place used to be her gran’s, and apparently she’s in way over her head with the repairs and renovations.

john pokes his head in the door and takes a look at what he can see. bit of water and smoke damage on the walls, a bucket kicked under a leak, musty carpet, some stairs that could definitely use a good replacement on the planks. what he doesn’t already know how to fix, he knows how to figure out, and if push came to shove, he knows for sure he can handle wrangling a contractor better than the sweet woman before him; she’d probably get taken advantage of by some mean, leering electrician, and that just won’t do.

so he smiles at her, blue eyes crinkling up and mustache bristling against his cheeks as he leans back. tells her that they can do the paper census form now together and that he’ll keep her ‘out of trouble’ with the government in his books, and hell, afterwards he can show her how to fix that stubborn leak in the kitchen sink, and insists that the only repayment he needs is a cup of tea.

if he’s a bit hasty in checking off the ‘married’ box on the form when she’s busy fussing over the kettle and imagining the sound of tiny feet running up and down those stairs, well, that’s his business.

[isthatafuckinggayangel]

Remembered this post again, so this is your periodic reminder that treating all southerners as a bigoted monolith is in itself white supremacist bullshit.

Who in the fuck.

“People from the south” is not something to put a trigger warning for, you dumb fucks. If you mean racism/homophobia, fucking say that.

The south is not a monolith of cishet christian white men with every type of bigotry in the book.

Minorities live in the south as well.

If you use tags like this, go fuck yourself.

(Edit to include image ID in Alt text)

[eggtrolls]

Can you restore the ‘Hazbin Hotel’ Wikipedia page ‘That’s Entertainment (Hazbin Hotel)’ on Wikipedia? The same person keeps blanking it.

Hi, thank you for your question! I appreciate the request - I’m actually really flattered! - but I’m not going to do that at this moment. This is actually a very interesting microcosm of Wikipedia backdoor activities and we can use it as a learning opportunity.

Background: anon said the same person (not the same person) keeps “blanking” the page and that’s not entirely true. People have turned into it a redirection page or a redirect (let me know if the terminology is too technical). A redirect is one of the series of pipes that keeps Wikipedia moving smoothly; it would be a massive time waste and hassle to have to enter every article title perfectly to search for it. This is also helpful when you have multiple names for the same topic. Okay great now we all know what a redirect is.

Timeline: on 23 July 2023, someone made a redirect for the Hazbin Hotel pilot.

Then on 6 November 2024, as if I didn’t have enough problems, someone turns that redirection page into a standalone article and adds a massive increase in characters to go with it. This page is user Hazbin girl. Remember this one.

And we all sort of putter around improving that until 6 January 2024, when someone redirects the page, which is currently using the title Pilot (Hazbin Hotel) to That’s Entertainment (Hazbin Hotel).

They also do a kind of sloppy job (see the tag about having not left a redirect). People add meme categories to it a few times, they get removed, and the activity goes back and forth until one of the admins gets fed up and reverts it back to a redirect to Hazbin Hotel on 13 January 2025. And I see the logic behind this - there is very little that is stated in the episode article that isn’t already stated in the show’s article. Between production, development, the actual episode summary, and the references, having an article for every single episode would be a massive reduplication of efforts. Wikipedia is also not a fandom site - what’s notable to fans of the show is not notable per our general notability guidelines. Some episodes get that but at this point, I don’t think the pilot of HH cuts the mustard. So the redirect from 13 January stands.

Then on the same day, someone reverts the redirect to restore the standalone article. That person is Debopamsikder. Also remember this name.

It’s fine to have a difference of opinion as to what should be on Wikipedia. We can work that out with community census-building which is a beautiful thing.

Here’s what’s not fine: sockpuppetry.

Shortly after the redirect is undone, both Debopamsikder, whose account had been created on 13 January 2025, and our old friend Hazbin girl get suspected of being sock puppets and get blocked. More specifically, they are suspected of being sockpuppets for a user who was blocked back in 2017 for, get this, creating multiple accounts to argue for articles about their favourite franchises. You can check out the original sockpuppetry investigation here

Conclusion: I’m not sure if this is the same person behind TotalTruthTeller24, although that would be wild, but I think it’s extremely poor form to ask me to wade into something like this and haha yeah man can you just fix it there’s no larger issue happening ahhahaha nooooooo don’t use critical thinking skills ur so sexy, someone keeps blanking the page that’s it I prommy. That’s simply not true, and now I have spent over 40 minutes digging into this because you want more fandom cruft for your favourite show to repeat information that’s already present or would get immediately removed for being non-notable to anyone but a hardcore fan. No thank you. Go write something on the fandom wiki and be done with it.

[certified-yapper-guy]

"if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything"

the poverty line is set so low that many people living in difficult conditions are actually not considered 'poor' by the government?

Rs 1,632 per month for rural areas

Rs 1,944 per month for urban areas

This means if someone earns Rs. 55 per day, they are not considered poor!

the finance ministry is blind to how much indians actually earn and how much is needed to actually survive- remember, we haven't had the census yet, so no data available.

this govt is lying blatantly at this point and people are cheering for it.

[genderkoolaid]

In the last two decades, there has been a growing body of literature on trans health in India. However, most research is limited to HIV/AIDS and primarily focuses on trans women. Studies on trans men or transmasculine identities and their healthcare needs and experiences in India have received little scholarly attention. Even globally, the literature on trans men’s health is relatively scant, with existing studies conducted mainly in Western countries. There exists a dearth of government data and statistics on trans men in India. The only attempt to enumerate the transgender population was made by the national census, which categorised them as ‘other.’ The census estimated 4,87,803 transgender people in India. However, several transgender activists have argued that this number is a considerable miscalculation and an inaccurate representation of the entire transgender community in India. Moreover, the lack of official data on trans men also risks under-allocating funds for much-needed welfare programmes. Moreover, trans men experience direct and indirect discrimination in healthcare settings. Such experiences include being asked invasive or inappropriate questions about their bodies, invalidating their gender identity via misgendering, deadnaming, and being denied healthcare or receiving low-quality care. Sometimes, it also includes physical mishandling and verbal harassment by the hospital staff and co-patients or not being allowed to enter certain hospital wards or spaces. [...] For many trans men, the family becomes the first space for mental and physical violence and outright rejection of their identity, with instances of forced heterosexual marriages or corrective rape. Vinay (name changed), a 30-year-old trans man from Punjab, says, “Family says ‘you’re ruining our reputation, get married, have one-two kids and then everything will be fine.’ They even use rape as a measure saying ‘you don’t know who you are, and when it happens, then you’ll know [your true sexual orientation].’”  Many have to deal with uninformed healthcare providers unwilling to treat them because of their gender identity. Lack of knowledge amongst medical professionals and poor social understanding of trans men means that trans men often have to self-advocate and explain their health-related issues and gender identity to medical practitioners who constantly challenge or dismiss their identity. This self-advocacy and mental effort to explain or justify one’s gender identity and expression often leads to emotional exhaustion. Soham (name changed), a 24-year- old trans man from New Delhi, recounts his experience of going to a hospital,  “The doctor came and shouted my dead name. There were a lot of people in the emergency room and I remember feeling numb for a second…He shouted, ‘Is this you? Yehi naam hai aapka?’ (‘Is this you? Is this your name?’)…Then he literally pointed at my chest and said your chest is so flat, do you have your periods? I was numb and I didn’t say anything. I didn’t get my medicine, I didn’t tell him my problem, I just went home and I locked myself in my room for a week.” 

— I Didn’t Get My Medicine, And I Locked Myself In My Room For A Week (Trans Men Are Invisible in India's Healthcare) by Arushi Raj and Fatima Juned

[womenaremypriority]

This is so horrific.

———————

I have been following Siro’s story for 30 years, ever since I went to interview her and four other rural midwives in India’s Bihar state in 1996.

They had been identified by a non-governmental organisation as being behind the murder of baby girls in the district of Katihar where, under pressure from the newborns’ parents, they were killing them by feeding them chemicals or simply wringing their necks.

Hakiya Devi, the eldest of the midwives I interviewed, told me at the time she had killed 12 or 13 babies. Another midwife, Dharmi Devi, admitted to killing more - at least 15-20.

It is impossible to ascertain the exact number of babies they may have killed, given the way the data was gathered.

But they featured in a report published in 1995 by an NGO, based on interviews with them and 30 other midwives. If the report’s estimates are accurate, more than 1,000 baby girls were being murdered every year in one district, by just 35 midwives. According to the report, Bihar at the time had more than half a million midwives. And infanticide was not limited to Bihar.

Refusing orders, Hakiya said, was almost never an option for a midwife.

“The family would lock the room and stand behind us with sticks,” says Hakiya Devi. “They’d say: ‘We already have four-five daughters. This will wipe out our wealth. Once we give dowry for our girls, we will starve to death. Now, another girl has been born. Kill her.’

“Who could we complain to? We were scared. If we went to the police, we’d get into trouble. If we spoke up, people would threaten us."

The role of a midwife in rural India is rooted in tradition, and burdened by the harsh realities of poverty and caste. The midwives I interviewed belonged to the lower castes in India’s caste hierarchy. Midwifery was a profession passed on to them by mothers and grandmothers. They lived in a world where refusing orders of powerful, upper-caste families was unthinkable.

The midwife could be promised a sari, a sack of grain or a small amount of money for killing a baby. Sometimes even that was not paid. The birth of a boy earned them about 1,000 rupees. The birth of a girl earned them half.

The reason for this imbalance was steeped in India’s custom of giving a dowry, they explained. Though the custom was outlawed in 1961, it still held strong in the 90s - and indeed continues into the present day.

A dowry can be anything - cash, jewellery, utensils. But for many families, rich or poor, it is the condition of a wedding. And this is what, for many, still makes the birth of a son a celebration and the birth of a daughter a financial burden.

Siro Devi, the only midwife of those I interviewed who is still alive, used a vivid physical image to explain this disparity in status.

“A boy is above the ground - higher. A daughter is below - lower. Whether a son feeds or takes care of his parents or not, they all want a boy.”

The preference for sons can be seen in India’s national-level data. Its most recent census, in 2011, recorded a ratio of 943 women to every 1,000 men. This is nevertheless an improvement on the 1990s - in the 1991 census, the ratio was 927/1,000.

By the time I finished filming the midwives’ testimonies in 1996, a small, silent change had begun. The midwives who once carried out these orders had started to resist. 

This change was instigated by Anila Kumari, a social worker who supported women in the villages around Katihar, and was dedicated to addressing the root causes of these killings.

Anila’s approach was simple. She asked the midwives, “Would you do this to your own daughter?”

Her question apparently pierced years of rationalisation and denial. The midwives got some financial help via community groups and gradually the cycle of violence was interrupted.

Siro, speaking to me in 2007, explained the change.

“Now, whoever asks me to kill, I tell them: ‘Look, give me the child, and I’ll take her to Anila Madam.’”

The midwives rescued at least five newborn girls from families who wanted them killed or had already abandoned them.

One child died, but Anila arranged for the other four to be sent to Bihar’s capital, Patna, to an NGO which organised their adoption.

The story could have ended there. But I wanted to know what had become of those girls who were adopted, and where life had taken them.

Anila’s records were meticulous but they had few details about post-adoption.

Working with a BBC World Service team, I got in touch with a woman called Medha Shekar who, back in the 90s, was researching infanticide in Bihar when the babies rescued by Anila and the midwives began arriving at her NGO. Remarkably, Medha was still in touch with a young woman who, she believed, was one of these rescued babies.

Anila told me that she had given all the girls saved by the midwives the prefix “Kosi” before their name, a homage to the Kosi river in Bihar. Medha remembered that Monica had been named with this “Kosi” prefix before her adoption.

The adoption agency would not let us look at Monica’s records, so we can never be sure. But her origins in Patna, her approximate date of birth and the prefix “Kosi” all point to the same conclusion: Monica is, in all probability, one of the five babies rescued by Anila and the midwives.

When I went to meet her at her parents’ home some 2,000km (1,242 miles) away in Pune, she said she felt lucky to have been adopted by a loving family.

“This is my definition of a normal happy life and I am living it,” she said.

Monica knew that she had been adopted from Bihar. But we were able to give her more details about the circumstances of her adoption.

Earlier this year, Monica travelled to Bihar to meet Anila and Siro. 

Monica saw herself as the culmination of years of hard work by Anila and the midwives.

“Someone prepares a lot to do well in an exam. I feel like that. They did the hard work and now they’re so curious to meet the result… So definitely, I would like to meet them.”

Anila wept tears of joy when she met Monica. But Siro’s response felt different.

She sobbed hard, holding Monica close and combing through her hair.

“I took you [to the orphanage] to save your life… My soul is at peace now,” she told her.

But when, a couple of days later, I attempted to press Siro about her reaction, she resisted further scrutiny.

“What happened in the past is in the past,” she said.

But what is not in the past is the prejudice some still hold against baby girls.

Reports of infanticide are now relatively rare, but sex-selective abortion remains common, despite being illegal since 1994.

If one listens to the traditional folk songs sung during childbirth, known as Sohar, in parts of north India, joy is reserved for the birth of a male child. Even in 2024, it is an effort to get local singers to change the lyrics so that the song celebrates the birth of a girl.

While we were filming our documentary, two baby girls were discovered abandoned in Katihar - one in bushes, another at the roadside, just a few hours old. One later died. The other was put up for adoption.

Before Monica left Bihar, she visited this baby in the Special Adoption Centre in Katihar.

She says she was haunted by the realisation that though female infanticide may have been reduced, abandoning baby girls continues.

“This is a cycle… I can see myself there a few years ago, and now again there’s some girl similar to me.”

But there were to be happier similarities too.

The baby has now been adopted by a couple in the north-eastern state of Assam. They have named her Edha, which means happiness.

“We saw her photo, and we were clear - a baby once abandoned cannot be abandoned twice,” says her adoptive father Gaurav, an officer in the Indian air force.

Every few weeks Gaurav sends me a video of Edha's latest antics. I sometimes share them with Monica.

Looking back, the 30 years spent on this story were never just about the past. It was about confronting uncomfortable truths. The past cannot be undone, but it can be transformed.

And in that transformation, there is hope.

[itellmyselfsecrets]

Some call women's segregation into low-paid work a choice. But it's a funny kind of choice when there is no realistic option other than the children not being cared for and the housework not getting done. In any case, fifty year's worth of US census data has proven that when women join an industry in high numbers, that industry attracts lower pay and loses 'prestige’, suggesting that low-paid work chooses women rather than the other way around. This choice-that-isn't-a-choice is making women poor…Women earn between 31% and 75% less than men over their lifetimes.

This all leaves women facing extreme poverty in their old age, in part because they simply can't afford to save for it. - Caroline Criado Perez (Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men)

[boreal-sea]

Firstly: get dunk'd, transphobe.

Secondly, nice source, dipshit:

I have to do everything, don't I?

Let's talk about this source before we even read this article, because it shows how poor your rhetorical analysis skills are - or how unwilling you are to practice those skills, or perhaps just how willing you are to ally yourself with racist, nationalist, far-right reactionaries if they also happen to be transphobic.

Wings Over Scotland is a far-right, nationalist, reactionary blog run by Scottish "video game journalist" Stuart Campbell. It is not an unbiased news website - it's some dude's personal blog, and he created it because he hated that mainstream news in Scotland wasn't spreading the far-right rhetoric he wished it would.

And this is what you used as a "source". Fucking laughable.

Now let's get into the actual blog post. I refuse to call it a "news article", because it's not. This one was written by a nobody named "Mar Vickers". At the bottom of the article, Stuart claims Mar has "extensive experience in equality law". I can't seem to find any indication Mar is some sort of lawyer or scholar; all I can find is a link to his twitter - sorry, I mean his "X":

https://twitter.com/mar2vickers

You can tell this is the same Mar based on the content of his tweets. He's also transphobic garbage, surprise surprise. He has a backup account on "gettr", because it seems like his twitter gets suspended frequently - which says a lot. Gettr is a clone of twitter that caters to right wingers who get suspended and banned on Twitter for constantly violating its hate speech policies. So. You know. Though these days, X is the safe-haven for far-right reactionaries, so honestly that's a red flag period.

As a summary: Mar doesn't understand surveys or their limits, he doesn't define what a "sex crime" is, he doesn't know what the Rorschach test is, and he's bad at math. He plays with numbers like he's some sort of population statistician, which he's not. He draws conclusions that are completely nonsense, because he's not asking the relevant questions.

Basically, he states that over the past few years, the ratio of trans women in jail for sex crimes to compared to the general population of trans woman is now higher than the ratio of cis men in jail for sex crimes compared to the general population of cis men. Ok, but why did these numbers change? He doesn't ask why. He just assumes these trends are natural and reflect the behavior of cis men and trans women, rather than the increased transphobia in England and Wales that he and his buddy Stuart have been fueling.

I absolutely don't doubt that trans women are incarcerated for "sex crimes" (which he never defines of course) at a higher rate per population than cis men. It's the same reason people of color are incarcerated more per population: bigotry. "Wow, this population of people who society hates sure gets sent to jail a lot. That's probably a reflection of their true nature, and not a reflection on society at large!"

[yzegem]

Sketch of common people from the Twisted Islands. Left to right: llama herder, guild apprentice, fisherman, guild militia man.

The archipellago is mostly made up of rocky atolls, coral reefs and small islands mostly inhabited by shrubs, migratory birds, seals and rodents. (Also llamas introduced by humans).

These poor ecosystems are not suited for large human population yet many people are attracted to the islands because of it's high portal activity (you can read about the magic system here, but I will later do another post about the "mages" of the islands). People from the islands come from many regions of the eastern seaway but mainly belong to the Iliryi seafaring etnithity, and most people speak their language and practice their religion centered around the sea and the portals.

For a long time the islands were not united but each ruled by a "monastic guild" wich investigated portals and lead rituals, divination and offers using them. Certain branches of the guilds opperated as beaurocrats, port tax collecters and managers, defence of the islands and barbers.

The importance of haircuts in the islands stems from their obsession with physical and spiritual cleanliness. People in the islands live in comunal spaces and often travelled between them, so they were very prone to epidemics. Most islands enforce quarantines, daily ritual bathing and frequent body inspections and shaving done by guild officials. This prevents lice from spreading but quickly became a sort of weekly census. Non guild people such as fishermen, divers, some sailors or shepperds shave their hair completely while guild members leave certain locks of hair wich they braid according to their guild branch and status within it.

After the unification of the islands, guilds were standardized into a single secretive entity. Their biggest secret is their use of portals for trade (wich requires years of training and deep knowledge of geometry) and their firearms. While people in the western continent are starting to use iron or bamboo handcannons and bronze mortars, the island's militia have precise matchlocks and powerful breech loading swivel cannons.

Most islands have rocky shores and only one suitable well defended port, so deploying large armies on the islands is basically imposible. These fortified atolls can hold a siege for years while reciving food and suplies from other islands vía portals and even keep making profits by trading.

For an object to be transported between to portals, the portal needs to be opened/primed on the two sides, so many small trading outpost have been set in foreign lands, sometimes willingly by local population and other times by force, wich creates tension with the twisted island's diasphora in other nations.

[probablyasocialecologist]

America isn’t suffering from a housing shortage. Housing production has lagged behind household growth since 2010, but this doesn’t account for the massive overhang of housing produced in the previous decade. Fueled by the housing bubble of 2000-07, 160 homes were added to the stock for every 100 households formed during the aughts, our analysis of Census Bureau data shows. This level of production created a huge surplus of housing, which has yet to be fully absorbed. Put differently, from 2000-21, the nation grew by 18.5 million households. To maintain an adequate inventory of vacant housing, which historically would be 9.3% of the total, the housing stock needed to expand by 20.2 million units. Instead, it grew by 23.7 million housing units, producing a surplus of 3.5 million units.

[...]

It’s conceivable that a huge increase in supply would eventually lead to lower prices. But that would require a major intervention in the market, and the case for it is weak. U.S. housing policy should focus less on adding to the already ample stock of housing and more on raising the incomes of low-income households and giving them access to good-quality housing in safe neighborhoods. We know how to do this. Raising minimum wages to the living-wage level will help the working poor afford housing. Zoning reform can encourage the production of multifamily housing, accessory apartments, and other less-expensive housing formats. Subsidized construction should be targeted for supportive housing and for affordable rental housing in places with actual housing shortages. The most effective housing assistance for low-income households is not found in building more units but in helping low-income households afford the units that already exist through housing vouchers for renter households and down-payment assistance for home buyers. The U.S. cannot build itself out of its housing crisis.

[whencyclopedia]

Social Change in the British Industrial Revolution

The British Industrial Revolution (1760-1840) witnessed a great number of technical innovations, such as steam-powered machines, which resulted in new working practices, which in turn brought many social changes. More women and children worked than ever before, for the first time more people lived in towns and cities than in the countryside, people married younger and had more children, and people's diet improved. The workforce become much less skilled than previously, and many workplaces became unhealthy and dangerous. Cities suffered from pollution, poor sanitation, and crime. The urban middle class expanded, but there was still a wide and unbridgeable gap between the poor, the majority of whom were now unskilled labourers, and the rich, who were no longer measured by the land they owned but by their capital and possessions.

Urbanisation

The population of Britain rose dramatically in the 18th century, so much so that a nationwide census was conducted for the first time in 1801. The census was repeated every decade thereafter and showed interesting results. Between 1750 and 1851, Britain's population rose from 6 million to 21 million. London's population grew from 959,000 in 1801 to 3,254,000 in 1871. The population of Manchester in 1801 was 75,000 but 351,000 in 1871. Other cities witnessed similar growth. The 1851 census revealed that, for the first time, more people were living in towns and cities than in the countryside.

More young people meeting each other in a more confined urban setting meant marriages happened earlier, and the birth rate went up compared to societies in rural areas (which did rise, too, but to a lesser degree). For example, "In urban Lancashire in 1800, 40 per cent of 17-30-year-olds were married, compared to 19 per cent in rural Lancashire. In rural Britain, the average age of marriage was 27, in most industrial areas 24, and in mining areas about 20" (Shelley, 98).

Urbanisation did not mean there was no community spirit in towns and cities. Very often people living in the same street pulled together in a time of crisis. Communities around mines and textile mills were particularly close-knit with everyone being involved in the same profession and with a community spirit and pride fostered by such activities as a colliery or mill band. Workers also got together to form clubs to save up for an annual outing, usually to the seaside.

Life became cramped in the cities that had grown up around factories and coalfields. Many families were obliged to share the same cheaply-built home. "In Liverpool in the 1840s, 40,000 people were living in cellars, with an average of six people per cellar" (Armstrong, 188). Pollution became a serious problem in many places. Poor sanitation – few streets had running water or drains, and non-flushing toilets were often shared between households – led to the spread of diseases. In 1837, 1839, and 1847, there were typhus epidemics. In 1831 and 1849, there were cholera epidemics. Life expectancy rose because of better diet and new vaccinations, but infant mortality could be high in some periods, sometimes over 50% for the under-fives. Not until the 1848 Public Health Act did governments even begin to assume responsibility for improving sanitation, and even then local health boards were slow to form in reality. Another effect of urbanisation was the rise in petty crime. Criminals were now more confident of escaping detection in the ever-increasing anonymity of life in the cities.

Cities became concentrations of the poor, surviving off the charity of those more fortunate. Children roamed the streets begging. Children without homes or a job, if they were boys, were often trained to become a Shoe Black, that is someone who shined shoes in the street. These paupers were given this opportunity by charitable organisations so that they would not have to go to the infamous workhouse. The workhouse was brought into existence in 1834 with the Poor Law Amendment Act. The workhouse was deliberately intended to be such an awful place that it did little more than keep its male, female, and child inhabitants alive, in the belief that any more charity than that would simply encourage the poor not to bother looking for paid work. The workhouse involved what its name suggests – work, but it was tedious work indeed, typically unpleasant and repetitive tasks like crushing bones to make glue or cleaning the workhouse itself. Despite all the problems, urbanisation continued so that by 1880 only 20% of Britain's population lived in rural areas.

Continue reading...

[marzipanandminutiae]

you know, the Horrible Histories "Victorian names were WEIRD!!!!" skit leaves out some important info on some of the names (assisted by Ancestry.com searches):

Lettice Berger: "Lettice" was an anglicization of the Roman name "Leticia." Berger is just a normal German surname. Yes, they had the word "lettuce," and I'm sure the similarities occurred to them. But nobody named their child "lettuce" like the vegetable.

O.K. Johnson: Probably just the kid's initials. "O.K." as a slang term was invented in 1830s Boston, but without any evidence of when little O.K. lived (they don't cite any sourced for these names, how convenient), it's impossible to tell whether it would have crossed the pond by the time he was born.

Never [they pronounce the surname Rookrook]: I found a LOT of Nevers in the UK with Indian surnames. So uh. There's that. And a lot of census records online seem to have notes written by the census-taker mislabeled as names- "never opens door" was one I noticed. Just saying. I also found multiple "NEVA Rook" census entries- which probably would have been pronounced "NEE-vah" but sounds like "Never" with a British accent if you tilt your head and squint.

Toilet: Surprisingly common modern misreading of "Violet" on 19th-century censuses with bad handwriting.

Baboon: Found one census where it's a misreading of "Barbara;" others were non-Anglo names like Baban, Babyon, Babboni, etc.

Susan Semolina-Thrower: That's just two unfortuate surnames, I'm guessing? I can't find their sources, again, but I do find a lot of records of "Semolina" as a surname in the UK during the 19th century. The poor parents had no control over that, did they?

Happy: ...yeah, it's a virtue name. And? How is that weirder than Faith, Hope, Grace, Patience, Prudence, etc?

Evil: Another census misreading- usually "Evie."

Minty Badger: "Minty" is short for Araminta/Aminta/Arminta. Still sounds like a Discworld character, but nothing would sound normal with "Badger" as a surname. Araminta Badger at least makes more sense to modern ears, though.

Freezer Breezer: Breezer was a real surname, and parents can be cruel. I don't doubt that- my dad went to school with an "Emily Memily." that being said...I did find a "Fred R. Breezer" born in 1873 in England; see above re: census misreadings. Just throwing that out there. I found it as a corruption/misspelling of "Fraser/Frasier" too.

Scary Looker: I actually found this one. It was a misreading of "Jeany" on a census- the girl's name was Jane Looker, born 1841 in Lancashire to John and Elizabeth Looker. Nice research there, team.

Farting Clack: Fasting Clack or Clark, born 1863 in London. Another lovely misreading from the census. True "Fasting Clark" is not NOT a weird name, but it's a lot less horrible than "Farting Clack" and it makes sense under the Hyper-Christian Parents category.

Princess Cheese was real, not a nickname, and not a misreading or misspelling. Princess May Cheese was born in 1896 in West Bromwich. She married one John T. Brookes in 1914- possibly eager to no longer be a Cheese?

Multiple people really have been christened Bovril, most notably one Bovril Simpson, married in West Ham in 1911.

Incredibly, Raspberry/Rasberry/Roseberry is a real given name, and Lemon a real surname. Most people named Raspberry seem to have been men.

So that's only three of their Wacky Victorian Names that are actually 100% real. Nice job, there, team. I love Ghosts, but get your collective act together!

(They did once have a skit insisting that Victorians called trousers "the southern necessity" when that's actually a phrase from the writings of famously terrible 19th-century author Amanda McKittrick Ros, whose work her contemporaries loved poking fun at. So I shouldn't be surprised)

[bluesfreakingart]

what would actually happen if one were to go into jervis' cell and hug him? would he like... snap your neck? im confused as to why we are being dissuaded from hugging the cuddle boy

WELL, Jerv wouldn't just snap someones neck for no reason! that's a waste of resources and people he could use or make connections with, if he did manage to make one with staff or something.

Killing is messy and causes a lot of conflict with other parties if it happens to be he somehow snuffed out a semi important person. For the most part he only does that when as stated he has no choice/it's a bigger hassle to let someone live....ooooor you pressed a big huge red button that said "I'm going to hurt someone he is fixated on/loves."

like say for example some poor sods trying to attack the trio of rogues and manage to hurt either Ed or Jon, even worse, both? that's when he'd be like a semi truck sprinting in your direction at full force to straight up take you off the census,regardless of his own status physical or otherwise.

Tipping the emotional teapot over will get an anger that could rival the red queen.

he's just a gamble, less so than the other two but still...