family
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The Festival of Grime Collection #2
Some more delightful images from the Festival of Grime for you. The costumes of the moth children in photograph #4 and the stick insect in photograph #7 are my personal favourites. However, the carnival float of an Indian elephant in photograph #8 is also impressive. Such a rig would have taken many hours of hard…
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The Importance of Cards During the Victorian Era Collection #5
You may recall from Collection #3 that a collector named Mr Martin had donated some Victorian ritual magic cards to the Fellowship. They tend to depict sealife, land mammals, birds and insects. They were used to ‘take control’ of the elements. Yesterday Mr Martin contacted us again. He has kindly donated a photograph of his…
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The Importance of Cards During the Victorian Era Collection #3
Today we bring you another assortment of Victorian cards. These were submitted by the great grandson of a “white witch” called Godfrey Martin. Mr Martin told us that while they look like tarot cards, they are in fact ritual worship cards used by his grandmother and acquaintances. They were apparently used for taking control of…
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Victorian Fancy Dress Collection #1
With the coronation weekend upon us, we thought it was the perfect time to look at some Victorian fancy dress costumes. These images were taken on Halloween night in 1877. No background stories today. Have a pompous weekend everyone. TVUP
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The Rebel Artists Collection #2
Today’s collection is one of the the most precious in our archives and demonstrates the importance of documenting the fringes of any society so that no life is forgotten. Stencilling as an act of rebellion goes back hundreds of years and we are glad that it had found its way into Victorian life. The images…
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The Deathly One Man Boat Race
Today we take a look at the peculiar, if not disastrous, One Man Boat Race of 1864. A total of 57 people set off from the beaches of Blackpool in tiny one man boats headed for New York. They were only allowed to take one umbrella, a useless map, a flask of tea, tobacco, one…
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Victorian Parents Using Their Children for Pranks Collection #1
As the weekend lands, we decided to share some sinister family photographs of Victorian children which made their way into our archives many years ago. The collector who kindly donated them told us that the photographs were taken around the Black Country circa the 1880s. We have managed to clean them up, but the various…
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Easter Celebrations at the Victorian Underground
At the Victorian Underground Project, we try to provide as much background information on our archival documents as we can. However, today we have requested an Easter holiday. If you look closely you will be able to see that we haven’t cleaned up the first three photographs purely because we believe they look better in…
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A Fortune Teller and Her Apprentice
These exquisite images depict an often ignored and misunderstood community of travellers who occassionally passed through Victorian England during the earlier part of the 19th century. Photograph #1 is of Ravenna Genovese, an Italian fortune teller who was, according to local folklore, 150 years old. More impressive than this is that she never once charged…
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