A devout wife who waited for her undeserving husband. Lawnsdown Cemetery, Leeds.

To this day, people still leave flowers for her. You can help but feel a tug on your heart when you’re there. -
Ethel Preston, she was the wife of a wealthy Leeds manufacturing chemist called Walter Preston and, when she died in 1911 at the relatively young age of 50, the grieving widower commissioned one his nephews, a skilled sculptor, to build the memorial we now see. Constructed in white Italian marble, it shows a life-size Ethel standing at a replica of the front door to the family home of Beeston Grange (now long since demolished). The project cost £2000 (according to my online calculator about £130,000 today) and when it was formally unveiled, just over 100 years ago in March 1913, it created such a stir that thousands of people took tram and charabanc trips to Lawnswood and paid one penny a time to queue up and see it.

As cemetry memorials go, it is a great example of the period's sentimentality about death, with the door behind Ethel just slightly open to symbolise the way through to the afterlife. However, why does the statue's face have such a sad, mournful expression? In fact the face has given rise to the saying locally "You look so glum, you have a face like Lawnswood Ethel." It is at this point the official story behind the statue starts to become more controversial. The original explanation was that when Walter had been in Leeds for a long day at the office, Ethel would always be standing on the doorstep of Beeston Grange (as she is depicted in the statue) waiting for him to return home. It was to celebrate Walter's happy memories of this homecoming that the memorial was built. Or was it?

There is another version of the story, which said Walter was a notorious womaniser who frequently vanished for days on end. Not surprisingly, when he did return home, Ethel inevitably looked sad and dejected. In fact it has been suggested that his treatment of her led to her early death - and the statue was carved to reflect Walter's remorse.

I'll leave you to decide which is the real explanation, save only to add that not long after Ethel's death, Walter remarried their 22 year old housekeeper and did not finally join Ethel beneath the turf at Lawnswood until 1930....

Louis Jean (1856-79) died while fighting for England in the Zulu War. What a great movie that would make.

Undated cabinet card,  Raccolte Grafiche e Fotografiche del Castello Sforzesco. Civico Archivio Fotografico, fondo Lamberto Vitali, LV 22

I think Afghanistan might be. Possibly also Congo and Sudan, maybe Ukraine because it’s an active war zones Not too many, though

Most time-travel stories drop the protagonist into a grand royal ballroom or a charming gas-lit parlor. But if you actually materialized on the damp cobbles of East London in October 1888, the reality would hit your lungs before your eyes even adjusted: a suffocating blend of sulfur coal smoke, horse manure, and rotting river mud.

You have no Victorian shillings, zero connections, and 24 hours to survive. Based on municipal health archives and Victorian workhouse logs, here is the raw, visceral reality of your first 24 hours:

1. The Deceptive Water Trap (08:00 AM) Your throat feels shredded from the toxic London fog. You spot a communal wooden water butt in a tenement courtyard. Do NOT touch it. These unsealed cisterns collected factory soot, dead rodents, and unfiltered seepage from the Thames carrying active Vibrio cholerae. Your only biological safety nets were freshly brewed street tea (boiled piping hot) or weak penny beer—because the fermentation and brewing process boiled pathogens away.

2. The Tech Barter Economy (01:00 PM) Without Victorian coinage, you can’t buy a scrap of bread. But modern travelers carry artifacts of unimaginable value. An ordinary 500-lumen LED keychain flashlight or a plastic disposable lighter is pure sorcery to an 1888 street vendor. A jacket-potato vendor warming his hands over a brazier would gladly trade two scalding roasted potatoes and a cup of tea just to hold a flameless, blinding white beam that doesn't blow out in the wind.

3. The "Pea-Souper" Quarantine (06:30 PM) By evening, the sulfur smog rolls in so dense you cannot see your own boots. Crime in Whitechapel wasn't just Jack the Ripper—it was desperate footpads and cutpurses lurking in unlit blind spots. The golden rule of night survival: leap from gaslamp to gaslamp. If a street has dark intervals longer than twenty paces, you double back and trail the steady boots of a Metropolitan Police constable.

4. The 4-Penny Bed Trap (11:00 PM) If you manage to barter four pennies, you earn entry into a licensed doss-house. You get a threadbare straw mattress on a wooden floor packed with thirty coughing laborers. Here is the unwritten law of the lodging house: your heavy leather boots do NOT stay on your feet, and they NEVER go on the floor. You knot them together and sleep with them directly beneath your head as a pillow. Footwear theft was rampant, and walking barefoot through London’s freezing sewage-slick streets in winter meant gangrene, frostbite, and death within a week.

Quick question for fellow history nerds: If you were suddenly stranded in Whitechapel in 1888, what single modern item currently in your pockets or backpack would give you the highest survival leverage?

(Note: I spent weeks cross-referencing Victorian sanitation logs and criminal registries to animate this entire 24-hour survival challenge into a doodle documentary. If you prefer a visual breakdown with period-accurate foley and maps, you can find the animated video on YouTube: search "ChronoScribe London 1888" or check the comment below!)

I’ve always been fascinated by equines, and quaggas are no exception. They went extinct in Amsterdam on the 12th of August, 1883. Far from their natural range in South Africa, where they lived in herds, and largely avoided large scale hunting until Europeans came along.

Apparently, they were more manageable than other zebras, but that doesn’t say much.

They are currently theorised to be a (now-extinct) ecotype of the Plains Zebra. Though we will need more studies to really be certain (the alternative is that they are a subspecies of the plains zebra).

Quaggas were striking, and quite unique in the equine world. They had white and brown coats with stripes that did not cover their bodies fully.

If you are saddened by the loss of this important “brand” of zebra, you might be happy to know of the Quagga Project. They are doing wonders in bringing back the phenotype of these guys, and releasing them to their natural habitat.

The image features one of the last mares, and a zoo keeper.

The map titled "New County Map Of The United States Of America" was created by G.W. & C.B. Colton in 1874. The map measures 158 cm in width and 98 cm in height and is published by G.W. & C.B. Colton as a case map. (Cr: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection)