The Child’s Guide to Knowledge: 1865

Dedicated to my English friends across the pond.

The Child’s Guide to Knowledge: Being a Collection of Useful and Familiar Questions and Answers on Every-Day Subjects, Adapted for Young Persons, and Arranged in the Most Simple and Easy Language, By a lady has one heck of a title. My electronic edition was published in London in 1865 (it is the 38th printing) and almost seems like a school primer.

I have chosen the The Child’s Guide as my historical book of the week as it is real unique. Certainly, it has a section on asbestos, but it is also full of well-organized facts critical to all young readers growing up in England during the era of 1865 and before. Subjects such as the proper punishment for brewing bad ale, God making England the most powerful of all nations, and how to use lemons to take out ink-stains from linen were certainly critical to those youngers. So, let’s get started.

The books discussion on asbestos in the pre-asbestos age is pretty good. It is as follows:

For people who may not speak Middle English, “&c” was their “etc.”

Let’s talk beer and the appropriate punishment for brewing a batch of bad ale.

Seems fair.

How about how to treat the people in India?

Does not seem as fair as dunking a person for bad ale. The English were so “proper” with the colonies back then, especially the India continent. At least the English put an end to the Indian practice of burning a wife alive on the funeral pyre of her husband. If you have not studied this practice in history class, get yourself a good subaltern book and enjoy the reading. You will quickly discover that the treatment of Indians by the English prior to 1948 was a whole lot worse than a tea tax, although there are two side to every story — in India, maybe three — English, Indian males, and Indian females.

Next, we turn to coffee. Always, we need to turn to coffee.

On an adult topic, how do you choose the proper hat? You need to catch a few beavers first.

Finally, all children need to know about White Elephants and using lemons to remove ink stains.

If the above are not enough and you want more, then drop me a comment or send me an email to TheAsbestosBlog@gmail.com and I will send you an electronic version of this book. Thanks and enjoy. Marty