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- Jay
Telfer may have handed over the reigns of the Wayback Times to
Sandy and Peter Neilly, but he is still going to be visible in
the newspaper.
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- The
longtime resident of Prince Edward County will be writing Jay's
Blog, a column on his ongoing love of antiques and life in the
Quinte Bay area.
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- Jay's
Wayback Times, founded in 1995, published 1.7 million papers
in 11 years and more than 258,000 kms
- were
traveled for visits
- and
deliveries to antique
shows, stores and markets.
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- Jay
Telfer's final issue
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- Ad Rates / Articles
/ Classified Ads / Editorial
/ Home / Links
/ Showtime
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- Jay's Wayback Blog
- About lives, then
and now
-
 By Jay Telfer
Reading excerpts from Thomas Burke's` 1940 book The Streets
of London and other wayback tales raise lifestyle issues on a
cold and snowy winter's eve.
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- Comparisons with our lives and in the days of olde create
a tale of two cities mood - early London and 21st century Toronto.
The following are excerpts, followed by my thoughts.
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- Pre-1400 Century Hockey
"On the frozen swamps of Moorfields, the young men engaged
in ice-sports and a crude form of skating: the skates were the
shin-bones of animals fixed under the boot. One of the sports
was to skate towards each other at high speed and, in passing,
crack each others skulls - or try to - with quarter staffs."
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- My guess was the blade was shaped soon after the puck was
invented.
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- I love reading books with true accounts of how life was lived
back then.
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- From a May day celebration:
- "I have heard it credibly reported by men of great gravity,
credit, and reputation that of forty, three-score, or a hundred
maids going to the woods overnight, there have scarcely the third
part of them returned home again undefiled. Naturally; what are
the Rites of Spring for? And what did the may-pole itself mean?"
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- Murphy Brown, where are you?
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- Until the 19th century, there was always cock-fighting, bull-baiting,
bear-baiting, battles of boars against hogs, bowling alleys,
fencing schools, dicing houses and other amusements.
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- "They are fastened behind, and worried by great English
bull-dogs, but not without risk to the dogs from the horns of
one and the teeth of the other; and sometimes they are killed
on the spot; fresh ones are immediately supplied in the places
of those that are wounded and tired." And it goes on to
describe the six men with whips flogging a blind bear . . . Such
clever amusements.
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- Mr. Thomas wrote of "The people of Plantagenet London
were heartier and lustier than ourselves - heartier in their
loves, heartier in their hates, lustier in their labors and their
sports, heartier in their domestic affections and lustier in
their personal and their mass cruelty."
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- From the Chronicles of Grey Friars of London: with
some other 'amusements.'
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- "This yeere was a cooke boyled in a cauldron in Smythfield
for he would a-poysond the Bishop of Rochester, with dyvers of
his servants, and he was lockd in a chain, and pulled up and
down with a gibbet, at dyvers tymes, till he was dede. The X
day of March was a maid boyld in Smithfield for poysoning of
dyvers persons."
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- Hearty gagging for this lad. One round of coliform in the
uncooled meat . . .
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- There was a Spitalfields Silk Weavers Riots in the 18th Century,
due to the importation of cheap calicoes. The weavers ran around
and poured acid on the calico garments they saw and ripped the
dresses off of the wearer. (Great advertising.) The weavers were
assessed a tax of four shillings per loom to make up the losses.
When the military and the Magistrates came to a weaving mill,
the owners of it ran out the back door. A hue and cry went up
and the weavers were caught and hanged . . . for a four-shilling
fee.
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- And while people lived in tiny little London flats, with
no huge big cooking fire, "so the people or the twelfth
century, when preparation of food meant much more trouble, would
send out to the public cooks for a ready-cooked meal, delivered
hot." Advertising would be similar to today's spiel. "Delivered
hot when the sundial reaches the next .V on the VIII."
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- And as for the noise . . .
"The streets held far more noise than this generation has
ever known. Craftsmen worked in open shops or sheds. There was
hammering and planing, sawing and grinding. Women did their needlework
at the door and cried gossip across the street. Prentices bawled
"What d'ye lack?" and cried their particular goods.
Trumpets blared, and musicians played against each other. There
was thunder of iron wheels on stone, the clatter of horses, the
crying of the ballad-singer and the hawker, the wailing of the
beggar, the back-chat of the quarrelsome, the turmoil made by
drovers with their flocks and herds, the insults of the carters,
the lashing of whips and, on a dozen occasions of the day, the
ringing of bells."
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- I am sure there were no regulations for having chickens and
roosters in town.
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- And today, I sit and watch as a streetcar runs by right outside
my apartment, but through triple paned glass I don't hear it.
I needed a break to nuke my popcorn and give that an old-time
thought. What would we do with no stoves, no fridges, no microwaves,
no showers, no tubs, no washing machines, no dryers, no massive
selection of soap - as Queen Elizabeth I said, "I bathe
once a month, whether I need to or not."
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- I believe we are the lucky ones living in modern times.
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- In our lives, we do not fear having Lords stopping by a wedding
and raping the bride - common in country weddings. We do not
fear the noise of jets or other countries attacking, shaking
our houses with gunfire and bombs. We have poverty here but nothing
like the starvation of Ethiopia.
- We might desire to have everything the market has on offer.
Wake up, have a shower, brush your teeth and walk, drive or use
a bus to get to a very regulated work - and live your very pleasant
life. An estimated, 1.1 million immigrants came to Canada between
2001 and 2006. We are living in our dream world and more people
in the world want to live like us.
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- We can dream on about the ease of living with outhouses,
walking to the well three times a day, the pollution caused by
finding, cutting and burning wood. For most people, living in
back the 19th century in Canada, there were no hot and cold water
taps or toilets.
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- Thank goodness for progress.
Other articles by Jay Telfer
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