At last I’m back!!!

Sorry I disappeared, I realise it was nearly a month. But in addition to October being the busiest month of the year at work (which sucks the life out of me, let me tell you) I had problems with my laptop and for more than two weeks I could not access this site, I still don’t know why. I could access it from all other devises, but not from my laptop, where of course I do all the job for this little baby of mine.
But hey, here I am, right? So you know that everything went the right way.

Sorry if this Gang Roudup will be scantier than it normally is. I got my laptop back only yesterday, I basically never went online (except on my phone) for two weeks, but I really want to keep up with this tradition.

So, here it goes!

When Infants in Incubators Were a Sideshow Attraction

I never knew that babies in uncubators had ever been a show, but apparently in the early decades of the XX century, people could go to an exposition of incubators and watch as babies lived and were taken care of on site.

Initially, I was appalled by this idea, but as I read the article and learned that this permitted to raise funds that then helped offer the service to parents who couldn’t afford it, I changed my mind about it.
Yes, it is controversial, but it did save hundreds of children.

Looking Like a Flapper Meant a Diet of Celery and Cigarettes

In the 1920s a new kind of diet became popular. Ut to that time, diets might have given advice on how both gain and lose weight. From the 1920s, ‘dieting’ has meant, try and lose weight.

Advice abounded on all magazines and if some of them are still solid today (like doing sports or eat more vegetables) some others are quite funny. We would say, outright dangerous. Girls starved themselves in order to gain that ‘flapper look’. Well, this also may sound familiar.

In the Shadow of Lakecrestby Elizabeth Blackwell

The year is 1928. Kate Moore is looking for a way out of the poverty and violence of her childhood. When a chance encounter on a transatlantic ocean liner brings her face-to-face with the handsome heir to a Chicago fortune, she thinks she may have found her escape—as long as she can keep her past concealed.

After exchanging wedding vows, Kate quickly discovers that something isn’t quite right with her husband—or her new family. As Mrs. Matthew Lemont, she must contend with her husband’s disturbing past, his domineering mother, and his overly close sister. Isolated at Lakecrest, the sprawling, secluded Lemont estate, she searches desperately for clues to Matthew’s terrors, which she suspects stem from the mysterious disappearance of his aunt years before. As Kate stumbles deeper into a maze of family secrets, she begins to question everyone’s sanity—especially her own. But just how far will she go to break free of this family’s twisted past?

Letters from Alice: A tale of hardship and hope. A search for the truthby Petrina Banfield

Based on extensive research into the archive material held at the London Metropolitan Archives, and enriched with lively social history and excerpts from newspaper articles, LETTERS FROM ALICE is a gripping and deeply moving tale, which brings the colourful world of 1920s London to life. Full of grit, mystery and hope, it will have readers enthralled from the very first page.