September 1806
Alderney Races, among other things, featuring Mackenzie's brown mare, called Snowball!
Social History
Kemp's rock
John Kemp, John Kemp, so bad they hanged him twice! The strange case of John Kemp, and the mystery as to why the rock was named after him is solved.
August 1810
From the Gazette de Guernesey. The illustration shows the prime, from Grisier's 1864 Les Armes et le duel, in the Library. See Monsieur Siordet's fencing school, below.
Dancing and dissolute music, 1583
From the Recueil d'Ordonnances de la Cour Royale, Vol. I, 1852, ed. R. MacCulloch. This seemingly repressive edict in fact represents the desperation felt by the authorities, who were unable to control the excesses of Guernsey youth, no matter how hard they tried.
Flouncing: July 1834
Vive la Flounce! A comic piece in the form of a letter to the Editor of the Star newspaper of July 24, 1834, on the islands' peculiar custom of 'flouncing,' or affiancing, by a visiting wit who called himself 'Time-killer;' and a description of flouncing in Alderney, from Captain Wood's Subaltern Officer, published in 1825. The pictures are from Cruickshank's Sketchbook of 1834-6, part of the Priaulx Library's extensive collection of work by this illustrator.
April 1896: the Cemeteries
From St Peter Port Parish Chronicle, in History of the Guernsey Churches, Scrapbook MS in the Library. The Strangers and the Brothers' Cemeteries and their parlous state of preservation.
A letter to his aunt: April 1834
From the Star of April 28th, 1834. A light-hearted letter to the Editor, purportedly to his aunt, from a frequent correspondent to the newspaper, a military officer resident on the island who went by the name of 'Time-Killer,' with his observations on houses, high society, and the behaviour and looks of Guernsey ladies and gentlemen. The illustration is from Cruikshank's 1834 My Sketchbook, part of the extensive collection held by the Library.
Peter Paul Dobree on Cadiz, Spanish ladies, and politics, 1811
A letter from Peter Paul Dobrée, (1782-1825), who was born in Guernsey and became Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University in 1823. In 1811 he had visited 'Don Pedro' (Peter Carey) Tupper, the Guernsey-born and immensely wealthy British consul in Valencia. The illustration of Cadiz is from Sir John Carr's Descriptive travels in the southern and eastern parts of Spain and the Balearic isles, in the year 1809, London: 1811, in the Library collection.
September 1858
From the Star newspaper.
Bailiwick Prisoners-of-War, 1813
A letter from Paris, dated 3 July 1813, to Harry Dobree, who organised collections for the welfare of the prisoners. [From the Gazette de Guernesey, September 13, 1813.]