With her button nose, piles of heavy, lustrous brunette locks, and doe eyes, Lily Elsie walked across the stage as a child star and into the hearts of Victorian and Edwardian audiences, where she remained for the majority of her life. She was born Elsie Hodder to an unmarried seamstress in West Ridi[...]
Archive for the ‘Professions’ Category
The Edwardian Publishing Industry
Much as today, the publishing industry of the Edwardian era wrestled with such familiar issues as distribution, declining interest in reading, literary fiction versus “trash” for the masses, competition for bookstores from cheap editions & used book sales, and the eternal assumption [...]
The Care and Feeding of the First Family
As “First Family,” the President, his wife and children, and any other dependents, had their needs and cares were catered to by a bevy of secretaries, secret service agents, and most important of all, domestic servants! According to Helen Taft, “the management of the White House is[...]
Secret History of the Secret Service
The roots of our modern-day intelligence agencies are to be found in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Certainly espionage is one of the oldest professions (second to prostitution), and impressive spy networks were to be found in Elizabethan England under Francis Walsingham and in Commonwealth Engla[...]






