The Diary of Nathaniel Bryceson (Part 7)

[Mongibello]

Reply to Ruskie re my grandfather.    He may have got the job because the family were stonemasons and perhaps gt grandfather had contacts with the church or the undertakers.    Most of my paternal ancestors were hatched, matched or despatched in one or other of the St Pancras Churches.
Incidentally the Old Boot pub, which NB mentions in his trip to Edgware, survived until 1965.   If you are looking at google maps it was on the North East corner of the Junction of the High Street and Station Road.

[drykid]

I'm amused by today's entry with the pipe; it seems like the kind of amusing mishap that someone might write in their diary today.  Or two hundred years before Nat, for that matter.  It's very timeless.

[Siamese Girl]

And there was me thinking all the broken bits of pipe I've dug up in the garden were broken by accident. Now I'll be imagining one old Ag Lab saying to another 'Look 'ere this old pipe 'o mine is so tough I can chuck it at that rock and it won't break' and the other saying 'bet you tuppence it does' It does break. Ag Lab one is tuppence down and goes home to Mrs Ag Lab who then give him an earful for losing tuppence and wanting to buy a new pipe when they haven't got enough money to support all the 23 little Ag Labs as it is. 

Carole

[Ruskie]

I like today's entry too. I wonder if it was his own pipe? Is Nathaniel a smoker?   

Today's equivalent?:
My (foolish  ) daughter did with something similar "to show the hardness" of her mobile phone.  Luckily it was not "a sorry job". 

(PS. Thanks for the information about your Grandfather Mongibello 

[Daisy Loo]

hehe - so...according to Ancestry, on this day in history 23rd September 1846 (so same day that NB was aimlessly throwing pipe to see how hard it was!), French astronomer Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier & British astronomer John Couch Adams discovered Neptune!  I wonder if NB will comment on that in the next few days, if it made the news at all?!

[Ruskie]

Thursday
Sent a ton of coals from Wharf to Mrs Mitchell, first floor lodger

 

Isn't that an awful lot of coal to send to a lodger? 
(Or maybe it was one of those pranks like when you order a truck load of gravel to be dumped in someone's driveway.)  

[steve_gus]

I thought the same

When i was a child, my grandparents used to have coal delivered for their coal fire, The 2up 2down house had a stairway in the middle of the house, and the coal was put into this understair cupboard.  This meant a mucky coalman walking halfway into the house, not ideal. I think nan had about half a dozen sacks at a time. A sack was  a hundredweight, which would be 1/20th of a ton. So, lodger would have had 20 sacks for a ton - perhaps a bulk buy at good price pre winter? Esp as the yard had bank issues - perhaps Nat was doing a bit of sales work @ home?

Thursday
Sent a ton of coals from Wharf to Mrs Mitchell, first floor lodger

 

Isn't that an awful lot of coal to send to a lodger? 
(Or maybe it was one of those pranks like when you order a truck load of gravel to be dumped in someone's driveway.)  

[Siamese Girl]

It did make me think - as it was what you'd call now, a building of multiple occupancy, just how they did organise all the coal? Did each separate household have their own little heap of it in the cellar? Did people steal other peoples coal, or did they keep it in their own rooms? Obviously you couldn't keep a ton of the stuff in your room!


Carole

[Ruskie]

I thought the same

When i was a child, my grandparents used to have coal delivered for their coal fire, The 2up 2down house had a stairway in the middle of the house, and the coal was put into this understair cupboard.  This meant a mucky coalman walking halfway into the house, not ideal. I think nan had about half a dozen sacks at a time. A sack was  a hundredweight, which would be 1/20th of a ton. So, lodger would have had 20 sacks for a ton - perhaps a bulk buy at good price pre winter? Esp as the yard had bank issues - perhaps Nat was doing a bit of sales work @ home?

It helps that you've explained it that way Steve. I suppose getting 20 sacks delivered isn't as unreasonable as I imagined. Maybe it was to share with others in the building. I'd love to know where everyone kept their coal too Carole.

Isn't it amazing how such a simple little comment by Nathaniel opens up a conversation and gets us all thinking about these practical day to day events from 1846 that are so alien to many of us today.