Author Archives: dgm

Before the pandemic I’d played about with family history  on hot days in January, but it was only with the pandemic that I started to play with it seriously, and it’s brought a number of puzzles, one of which was … Continue reading →

I have long been fascinated by the events of the Russian revolutions of 1917 in February and October of that year, but over the years I’ve come to realise that that the collapse of the Austro Hungrian Empire at the … Continue reading →

I recently replied to a tweet from @wmarybeard about diaries and the demise of the Cambridge University diary. And that got me thinking about paper diaries and why we use them. All my professional life I’ve used a diary to … Continue reading →

Following on from my post yesterday on how trains services in country Victoria are actually better than they were in 1880 and 1905, I thought I’d look at the comparative costs. Both the 1905 Bradshaw and 1880 Victorian Railways helpfully … Continue reading →

There’s an unspoken assumption that country trains have become less frequent and fewer over the years. In one sense they have with the closure of branch lines, but actually, they seem to be no less frequent than they once were. … Continue reading →

John Kirk is famous for many reasons. For being Livingstone’s deputy, for being instrumental in ending the slave trade in Zanzibar. But in 1854, he was none of these things. He was a newly qualified doctor who volunteered for the … Continue reading →

I’ve always been interested in photography – ever since I was given a box brownie when I was round about eight. The ultimate point and shoot – 127 format film, and 8 shots a roll. You rapidly learned to compose … Continue reading →

I had been to get my flu shot at the local pharmacy, and as is usual these days they asked me to wait for fifteen minutes to make sure I didn’t have a bad reaction. The waiting area obviously doubled … Continue reading →

Yesterday, I posted the following tweet,  really because of my work documenting Dow’s Pharmacy and my interest in the Madeleine Smith trial The podcast is about the work of Fiona MacNeill, a toxicologist at McMaster in Canada. She’s actually well … Continue reading →

A few days ago I tweeted a link to a blogpost from Te Papa about nineteenth century mice. Essentially, and I recommend reading the post yourself, they sequenced DNA from mouse and rat remains from early nineteenth century archaeological deposits … Continue reading →