Strange & Terrible News From Spittle-Fields

1. Marina B permalink

   April 24, 2012

   Ah, such magnificence!
2. Karen permalink

   April 24, 2012

   What a fascinating post!

   Do you think their meat was bad, or do I just have a suspicious mind?
3. Sue permalink

   April 24, 2012

   Goodness me!
4. Ros permalink

   April 24, 2012

   Spitalfields/Spittalfields Life indeed…
5. Teresa Stokes permalink

   April 24, 2012

   Ratsbane is arsenic trixoide, which is easily digestible. It would have given the poor victims terrible vomiting, convulsions, stomach ache, bloody urine and diarrhoea. The fact the writer says they won’t recover means they have probably entered the coma stage which leads to death.
6. Annette permalink

   April 24, 2012

   Great to see Bishopsgate Institute collaborating to make such fantastic things available online. Sadly, in my neck of the woods, it’s difficult to get permission to reproduce archive material on my blog or elsewhere because of Draconian attitudes towards copyright, but it does the heart good for this Midlander to be able to sample some of the excellent material at the Bishopsgate Institute while sitting at her desk in Coventry. Thanks, as ever, for another superb post.
7. Gary permalink

   April 24, 2012

   It is very interesting to see how the English language has evolved over the centuries.
   Gary
8. librarygirl permalink

   April 24, 2012

   Amazing stuff – thank you for posting this.
9. andrea permalink

   April 25, 2012

   Interesting that it begins with an abstract, almost as if the writer knows the piece is a bit too long and florid.
10. Julie Elders permalink

    May 6, 2012

    how interesting … love all the posts on spitalfields life
11. Lorena permalink

    October 4, 2012

    I, being a reasonably critical-thinking person and a lifelong and avid lover of history, am reminded once again of just how different the world was from the world we inhabit. The idea that news would be so full of claims that this was involved in some sort of Devil`s doing and, even, perhaps, a fight between God and the Devil, is so foreign an idea. Humans have always had this obsession with finding reasons for things unreasonable. An early case of a recounting of the effects of a serial murderer, surely, and almost AS surely done by a member of the family or someone closely known to them.
12. Nerea permalink

    November 28, 2012

    What an interesting article, thanks so much for sharing it, tragic food poisoning! Perhaps some envious competitors who wanted to ruin the business. We shall never know!
13. Jennifer permalink

    February 6, 2013

    Interesting reading.
14. Linda permalink

    June 16, 2013

    The most heartening thing about reading first hand accounts of these tragedies is that things ain’t so bad now!!!

    Despite the media recent studies demonstrate that the human species is more civilized and compassionate now than in times of yore.

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