The 1870s are the era I most like to visit, because they were the last period before modern times. What makes life modern is our rapid contact with other people. This has come from inventions that first caught on in the last quarter of the 1800s. Especially:

— We can talk with each other on the telephone (invented 1876). But it took many years for most houses to have phones. To send a message in the 1870s you had to get a kid to carry it, or go to the nearest telegraph office where somebody who knew Morse code could send it to another telegraph office, where somebody else would write it down and carry it to the street address of your recipient. This created a lot of jobs for people who were quick learners and fast runners— occasionally women and girls— but it was expensive, slow, and you couldn’t count on getting through. The telegraph had grown fast since the first intercity version in 1844. By the 1870s people complained of the number of ugly poles running wires along streets, but they hadn’t seen anything yet. You paid by the word, and to cut down on the count messages were short and stilted: “NEED SEE DOCTOR SMITH LEG PAIN STOP ADVISE TIME STOP MRS HENRY JONES” (Naming a woman by her husband persisted well into the 1900s, and even 2000s.)

— The best form of communication was still in person, but paying visits at more than walking distance took a lot of hassle. Of course “walking distance” was farther when people were in shape, and horse-drawn busses (omnibusses, carriages for everybody) ran along major routes, at the speed of a fast walk. For more flexibility you needed a horse, which you kept in one of the stables (mews) that lined back streets, or, if your house had a big yard, in a stable at the very back (to reduce the smell—see post on Sanitation). Aside from the cost of feed and shelter and cleaning up, a horse still had to be brought out, saddled and bridled—or hitched to a vehicle—before you could start off.

— A bicycle would one day be much more convenient. Self-propulsion on wheels dated from 1818, when there was a fad for the draisine—a wooden beam from front to back wheels with a saddle, which you rode while you pushed along with your feet. The later velocipede added pedals to the front wheel, but a single turn got you no further than a stride on the ground, so basically you could just sit down while you walked. Since roads were rough, sitting down didn’t make up for the bumpiness of the ride. By the late 1870s some daredevils were experimenting with tall front wheels that went much further with one turn of the pedals-- the high-wheeler, or penny-farthing-- but which you had to ride on top of. Sudden braking would carry you forward over the wheel to land on your face. Less gymnastic riders finally got a break in 1885 with the “safety bicycle” that had a chain connecting the pedals to the rear wheel. This caught on rapidly. At about the same time (1888) trolleys were introduced. With these two inventions even kids could travel freely, subject, of course, to interrogation by your folks.

— In New York City you could soon get news on an almost hourly basis (Pulitzer’s and Hearst’s mass circulation dailies, which would update editions during the day with the help of rapid type-setting by the linotype —1885). To compete for tens of thousands of readers they added family features, puzzles, and comics. Newspapers in 1872 were slower, costlier,and duller.

Many other factors affected how you got through a day: People knew about contagious diseases but didn’t know that you caught them from germs, so sharing dishes, water fountains, and clothes was pretty casual. The city was crowded with immigrants, from Europe and from the rest of America— and with horses. Horses were almost the only source of local transport. Heating was by coal fireplaces or furnaces, without fans to push the air upstairs. People wrote with pencils or straight pens with steel tips that you had to dip, which had replaced feather quills early in the century, (How many movies ever get that right?) Refrigeration was by blocks of ice cut from lakes in winter and stored in insulated sheds. There were many different bathing habits and methods of lighting. I’ll be writing posts about these subjects and more.