Street Life in London | Hacker News Reader

Street Life in London

digital.library.lse.ac.uk

61 pointspepys9 comments

There's a picture of "halpenny ices". There's an interesting bit of public health history there. You can see they're eating the ices from a glass - sometimes called a "penny lick glass". This glass is then swilled in a bucket and refilled for the next customer. Obviously, this is disgusting. A law was made in 1899 to ban it after a TB scare.

Halpenny ices: https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/objects/lse:gox325doj

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_lick

About photos of old London:

There was a similar recent submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12822124

http://hyperallergic.com/299912/the-photographers-of-1870s-l...

I tracked down some of the locations in Google Maps (and got a few wrong): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12824840

"Obviously [...] disgusting" is too strong. Norms change, and in this case legislation was needed to make it happen.

Yes, you're right. I mean that I, looking back on it, shudder at the thought.

I wonder what I do everyday that'll cause some future person to have the same reaction?

Maybe brushing your teeth in the same room as where your toilet is?

toilets actually throw up a lot of fine spray when flushed...

There's a difference between brushing your teeth in the same room as your toilet and storing your toothbrush uncovered in the same room as your toilet.

i recently started brushing/flossing/shaving/etc in my kitchen, which has a better view, and is larger, and usually pretty damn clean.

my tiny bathroom is now for showering and eliminating only.

should have done it years ago. it makes way more sense in an apartment. did you notice nice/large houses usually have the toilet separated from the sinks?!

...And according to the wiki encyclopaedia enry you cite[1], the banning of and health implications led Italo Marchiony to come up with the waffle cone many people enjoy today! [although in following the links, it looks like Italo was inspired more by the labor involved in recycling the glass cups.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_lick

> Obviously, this is disgusting.

Completely unrelated, but speaking of sharing spit with everyone else in the city. Here is what I would be doing in early 1980s in Soviet Union:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/51/4d/0b/514d0bce0...

Lining up behind a public soda machine. You paid 1 kopeks for just soda water or 3 for a little extra vanilla syrup.

The fun part is there would be just one single reusable glass. You'd turn it upside down and press and some water would sprays inside of it and "wash it" and then you'd drink your soda.

Here is a fan-site of those:

http://gazirovka.15kop.ru/gallery/#10

The funny part is. After all these years, I think it is completely disgusting and I would never drink or let my family drink from those. But at the time I can't say I was worried about it or don't remember getting particularly sick either.

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