As the railway grew more popular in the 1850s and 1860s, trains allowed travelers to move about with unprecedented speed and efficiency, cutting the length of travel time drastically. But according to the more fearful Victorians, these technological achievements came at the considerable cost of mental health. As Edwin Fuller Torrey and Judy Miller wrote in The Invisible Plague: The Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the Present, trains were believed to “injure the brain.” In particular, the jarring motion of the train was alleged to unhinge the mind and either drive sane people mad or trigger violent outbursts from a latent “lunatic.” Mixed with the noise of the train car, it could, it was believed, shatter nerves.

Learn more: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/railway-madness-victorian-trains

“If I weren’t born a girl, I’d be a soldier.”

— James Barry (then Margaret), in a letter to his cousin, the original James Barry

Date: 1886; Paris, France

Style: Realism

Genre: self-portrait

Media: oil, canvas

Location: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

A devout wife who waited for her undeserving husband. Lawnsdown Cemetery, Leeds.

To this day, people still leave flowers for her. You can help but feel a tug on your heart when you’re there. -
Ethel Preston, she was the wife of a wealthy Leeds manufacturing chemist called Walter Preston and, when she died in 1911 at the relatively young age of 50, the grieving widower commissioned one his nephews, a skilled sculptor, to build the memorial we now see. Constructed in white Italian marble, it shows a life-size Ethel standing at a replica of the front door to the family home of Beeston Grange (now long since demolished). The project cost £2000 (according to my online calculator about £130,000 today) and when it was formally unveiled, just over 100 years ago in March 1913, it created such a stir that thousands of people took tram and charabanc trips to Lawnswood and paid one penny a time to queue up and see it.

As cemetry memorials go, it is a great example of the period's sentimentality about death, with the door behind Ethel just slightly open to symbolise the way through to the afterlife. However, why does the statue's face have such a sad, mournful expression? In fact the face has given rise to the saying locally "You look so glum, you have a face like Lawnswood Ethel." It is at this point the official story behind the statue starts to become more controversial. The original explanation was that when Walter had been in Leeds for a long day at the office, Ethel would always be standing on the doorstep of Beeston Grange (as she is depicted in the statue) waiting for him to return home. It was to celebrate Walter's happy memories of this homecoming that the memorial was built. Or was it?

There is another version of the story, which said Walter was a notorious womaniser who frequently vanished for days on end. Not surprisingly, when he did return home, Ethel inevitably looked sad and dejected. In fact it has been suggested that his treatment of her led to her early death - and the statue was carved to reflect Walter's remorse.

I'll leave you to decide which is the real explanation, save only to add that not long after Ethel's death, Walter remarried their 22 year old housekeeper and did not finally join Ethel beneath the turf at Lawnswood until 1930....

Louis Jean (1856-79) died while fighting for England in the Zulu War. What a great movie that would make.

Undated cabinet card,  Raccolte Grafiche e Fotografiche del Castello Sforzesco. Civico Archivio Fotografico, fondo Lamberto Vitali, LV 22