I love the quote that says, "With God, there are no coincidences!" Case in point, it's happened again!
My plan was to wrap up the trip to Australia with a couple of last photos; it's been wonderful that so many got involved in this and shared additional notes here with me! I have a photo of a full bridge and this sign that references the prisoners who helped build it in the early 1820s.
A recent "obsession" of mine is going through old (really old) newspapers and reading articles on archive.org (I love history!) Tonight I hadn't put up my bridge photo, because I was reading a randomly selected a paper from the early 1800s. It was printed in Chillicothe, Ohio, but covered what was happening in the world...the missionaries in India, the pirates attacking ships overseas, news from Paris and London, and locations where ships were being built.
I'm reading and skimming the text when the word, "transport" jumped off the page at me! What were the chances? To me, THIS is what makes history come alive! Remembering the bleakness of the gaol, the prisoners may have had some idea of their lives about to be turned upside down! Of 120 prisoners, did some build this bridge?
Do you see and feel the gap (that Leap!) I feel when thinking of the men of 1816 reading this in the paper that was delivered to them at breakfast... and the leap into the future when it was over, all were gone, and a memorial plaque remained?
I call these “rabbit holes”, I start googling things in the article that interest me, it never stops, I just have to stop. If Newgate Prison is close to the bridge location, then there you have it!
I get that sort of feeling walking through old graveyards and reading the tombstones. So much of the vissicitudes of human life on display there. I can’t help trying to picture what life was like for these long departed people. A woman who at 27 has already given birth to and buried three children, how must her life have been?
@louannwarren My goodness if don't all know the "rabbit holes" of the day!!! I was already sitting at the bottom of one, reading the historical periodicals I found on that mesmerizing Internet archive! Newgate prison was in England where the prisoners were awaiting *Transport* to "no man's land" in far-off Australia!!! I don't suppose/there weren't reports going back to England about the hellacious conditions for those poor "convicts". @sangwann knows, too that the sentences were harsh for what we could consider minor infractions! If those prisoners in Newgate hadn't rioted before transport, it was unlikely there would have been any report about it!
@gardencat Old graveyards are akin to libraries, given the information that can be gleaned from reading the stones! I *always* made it a point to to walk through and photograph graveyards wherever we traveled! A Japanese friend took us to one where her father was buried and she explained so much about the Japanese culture and how the plots were presented! New Orleans had the stones with coins on top, a nod to Voodoo culture, and in New Zealand, where the geothermal activity was present, the graves were vented! For Americans who love reading history, Boston is incredible; the gravestones tell of so many now-famous names we should recognize!
@agnesvanderlindeicloudcom@pusspup@joansmor I suppose you can tell that I love reading history, and the photographs we all post here on 365 are often like illustrations to go along with the geography and history lessons, classrooms, as it were, filled with friendly teachers! ; )
