Genealogy Chat

Its the way you carry it - I just adore Mark Benton who must be 22 stone, but he has what style, personality? Its the ones walking along with their stomachs hanging out, eating a bar of chocolate and smoking a fag at the same time I dont like!

nudge for Natalie

Heather - I am shocked at you. I shall complain to GR that this thread should be removed as it contains sizeist remarks. What's wrong with 18st? Sounds quite small to me! Tina

Heather.... you've just described me!!! Karen.... that's a fantastic little piece. I will use it in my write-up of this branch of the family. I'm glad I posted this thread now!

eugh Karen, that's GROSE! Sarah :-p

A fur trimmer from Shoreditch you say?
Here's a piece from a book I've recently finished...it may interest you either ref: your rellie, or just from a 'eugh!' point of view.

From the chapter entitled 'Industrial Revelations' in the book 'Bloody Foreigners' by Robert Winder, this particular section refers to poverty stricken German immigrant labourers in London's East End, mid 1800's.
'....the work is stamping raw pelts at a German fur factory. Imagine a big barrel in a very warm room, filled to the very top with ermine and sable skins. A man climbs in to the barrel stark naked and stamps and works with his hands and feet from morning until night. The perspiration pours from his body in streams. This soaks into the skins and gives them their suppleness and durability, without which they would be useless for more elegant purposes. Thus our rich ladies, with their boas and muffs, though they do not suspect it, are literally clothed in the sweat of the democrats.....'.

Is that eugh!! enough, LOL.
Even the fur stamper who probably bathed but once a year went home to a wife and loads of kids where they all probably slept in the same bed etc etc....mmmmm, how nice.


Karen x

And of course Paul, remember all this jigging about procreating was probably going on in one or two room dwellings with the other half dozen kids in the same room and so cold in the winter that they probably had their outdoor clothes on at the time. But lets be honest, how often have you walked down a high street in this day and age and wondered just how the people in front of you could be so attracted to each other they could have two pram fulls of kids with them??? 18 stone wife, weedy little husband with teeth missing, lank hair, tatoos up his arm and round his neck - eugh indeed!

You lot are barmy LOL. Here you go paul... Fellmonger:-1) Dealer in hides and skins , also recycled inedible animal parts for glue, fertiliser, offal, horn, bone, gut etc. Basically, he ran the 'knacker's yard'. More Info. 2) Tree cutter / woodsman Georgina.

Hmmmm.... what's a fellmonger then?

Ah but you don't KNOW that your fur man's wife wasn't having at away with the nice hygenic fellmonger up the road, or the attractive scavenger from round the corner, or even hubby's urinal cleaner.....after all, they all took a bath every other year and therefore didn't small too bad............ Merry

Yeah, youre only a kid - nice and fresh still - Im the one who is rotting away! Nite nite kiddo!

Do you still want to marry me Heather?

lol paul something to sleep on isnt it angie xx

lol Paul - I have to say it has crossed my mind when you see these romantic period dramas set in Tudor times or something - knowing they havent had a bath for a year, hair full of mitzies, parasitic worms, probably sores and gawd knows what and bad teeth/breath. But I guess if you didnt know/see any different then you wouldnt be horrified - you wouldnt know any different. One day they will look back at this period in time and wonder how we could erm be attracted to people who didnt have their daily body sterilisation or something.

Well everyone in the same social class would have looked about the same and smelt the same. I don't suppose she noticed the dead animal smell for the stench of the outside privy and the rubbish in the streets. nell

When you look at Victorian studio photographs of middle-class people, some of them are quite nice-looking. Healthy and well groomed, they would fit in nicely in a modern environment. If, however you look at pictures of poor people taken in their own environment, the hardship of their lives is etched into their faces. I can't help wondering, as I look at my own family tree, how they were ever sufficiently attracted to each other to create these enormous families. Toothless, riddled with parasites, their clothes rotted on distorted bodies. One of my ancestors was a fur trimmer in Shoreditch which basically meant that he stank 24-7 of dead animals. How could his wife let him touch her, let alone father 13 children with her????? It's not that I lack compassion, it's just that their world is completely alien to me.