A bit of foolishness

Some one on The Lead Adventurers Forum introduced me to Professor Elemental the Gentlemen Rapper.

I enjoy the animation on the last one. He his on of several performers to come out of the American NorthWest Steampunk lifestyle movement.

Please Note that Professor Elemental is Not approved off by Lunatic R. who finds him irritating.

I've returned

Hello all I'm sorry for my sudden absence but I've had a bit of a forced holiday.

I had a tiny little stroke, a very tiny tear in my cerebellum. Personally I think it has more to do with the tumble down the stairs I had earlier in the week but I didn't have any outward damage so the doctors called it a "spontaneous eruption". But  I didn't have any of the signs of a stroke either, no loss of muscle control, memory or anything of that sort. I lost my sense of balance and some coordination in my left foot. Any way I'm back home walking, cooking and cleaning for myself again. I live alone and the hospital doctor didn't like that and was holding me longer than I need to try to get me to move in with relatives. I had to get a little rough to secure my release.

Poor Lunatic R. watched the EMTs and the police carry be out of my apartment (at that time I couldn't stand) I felt sorry for the poor chaps 4 of them had to carry my 6'6" 268lbs frame down a flight of stairs. He is still fussing about the whole thing. Here is the giant air bed the hospital dug up to accommodate me it was 7' long.

Normal posts should resume soon.

The Future is Bright Blog update

This is the cover of the IPN issue reporting the late 1800's reappearance of Spring Heeld Jack the Terror of London. I know I did the INP but I collected a ton of IPN illustrations and I can't help myself they're just so cool.

So this is a quick blog update about the direction of Fiends in Waistcoats. I see I have more followers now (hooray) so please add your comments at the bottom of this post. The North East American heat wave is over and I can now pick up glue and paint again. You'll see painted miniatures posts starting tomorrow.  And then then some London Board updates down the road (80% humidity and 96 f temperatures are not conducive to terrain making).

Now that the INP article was well received I intend to interject similar articles between the hobby content. Now what sort of articles will they be you may ask, well I've been working on an article on the "Penny Bloods" and "Spring Heeld Jack the Terror of London".

But you my dear readers can assist me by indicating your interest in reading particular articles in this blog. Simply mention what strikes your fancy in the comments below.

1) Victorian Vampires
2) The Order of the Golden Dawn
3)  Sears & Roebuck Catalog Victorianises the American West
I have a complete catalog from 1901 I can digitize the advertising for you guys to use but they are only B&W.
4) Movie reviews, I own all the API Poe films and many of the Hammer films. I can put together a Gothic horror inspiration article.
5) American Civil War creates walking corpse/zombie fears in America

These are all the ideas I've come up with in the past few days please let me know if you find any of them interesting.

(Note all talky posts will continue to have a random picture on them because everything is better with pictures.)

The IPN

I should be posting painted models and finishing off my backlog and I will very soon, but right now I’m still training Tiger to leave them alone. She stops after being kicked off the painting table 5or 6 times. I have six nearly finished miniatures so there should be a glut very soon. I the mean time I haven’t posted anything so here is a fact filled post for you.

  The Illustrated Police News

The Illustrated Police News was a weekly illustrated newspaper which was one of the earliest British tabloids. It featured sensational and melodramatic reports and illustrations of murders and hangings and was a direct descendant of the execution broadsheets of the 18th century. The name was inspired by The Illustrated London News, which had been launched in 1842 and revealed that newspapers with illustrations could achieve very high sales. The IPN was first published in 1864, and ceased publication in 1938. It consisted of one pictorial page and three text pages in folio, and sold for one penny. The normal weekly circulation was between 150,000 and 200,000 copies, but spec­ial issues could sell as many as 600,000. The paper had most buyers and subscribers in the Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham areas; its London circulation was just one eighth of the total issue.

 

 

 

 In November 1886 a more traditional newspaper ran a poll where the readers voted the Illustrated Police News “the worst newspaper in England". But that didn't matter to the mostly young lower class readership of the IPN, the graphically sensational illustrations like the one picture above did. The IPN employed as many as 70 freelance artists at a time. Like photographers in modern times these artists where on call day and night to be dispatched to the scene of an crime or public disaster. Graphic representations of horrific murders, police discoveries of corpses and representations of tragic fires where the bread and butter of the Illustrated Police News.

If crime was slow in the British Isles then animal attacks will fill the pages.


If the news in Britain was very slow the IPN had a solution for that, it employed cutting services all over the world to dig up weird and sensational stories to fill the IPN pages. Women somnambulists was a common filler article they where always accompanied buy a graphic of a scandalously clad lady. Illustrations from some of these filler stories can be found below.

The IPN is most famous for its infamous coverage of the Jack The Ripper Murders. IPN's willingness to print depictions of the victims corpses, maps to the crime sites and most of all likeness of the upper class suspects caused a backlash from the highest level of British society. IPN was accused of instilling a paranoid "Ripper" hysteria among the lower classes. Ironically many of the map illustrations found in Jack the Ripper articles and books are taken directly from the IPN coverage. 

 I hope you like this article. If you want me to publish more articles on Victoriana please let me know in the comments below.

Empire of the Dead Requiem Update

I'm a backer of the Empire of the Dead Requiem kickstarter as are most of my readers. But for those of you who aren't here is the latest update photo of painted Requiem figures.

 

I'm very sorry now that I didn't have the cash on hand to purchase the Order of the Dragon Thugs shown here in the middle of the front row. I like them so much more the the original vampire thrall models.

Her is the previous update picture.

Waiting for the release of this figures keeps one on pins and needles.

Breaking News Brumm horse and horseless carriages in 1/43 scale

Brumm horse and horseless carriages in 1/43 scale. First a horse drawn carriage.

Horseless carriages from the "old Fire" line.

Brumm, this company was created in 1972 in Italy to produce a line of horse drawn Carriages, the "Carriage" line.  In 1976, the "Old Fire" series of steam powered horseless carriages followed.   The "Old Fire" series at first focused on steam fire engines and other fairly well known pre-gas engine vehicles such as Richard Trevithick's 1803 steam carriage. Soon, the line was expanded into a unique set of steam powered vehicles - something no toy manufacturer had ever done before. This included Cugnot's 1769 steam tractor from France, proposed for pulling military cannon, and later, two fantastical steam cars: one supposedly made by Ferdinand Verbiest in 1681, and another proposed by Newton in 1680 - neither confirmed to have ever been actually constructed. Such novel choices for steam propulsion did not stop with European concoctions; for example Oliver Evans' 'Oruktor Amphibolos' was a steam dredge demonstrated in Philadelphia in 1804. I think that's the one with the paddle.

The Carriage and Old Fire series were produced in detailed plastic. The Carriage line and Old Fire lines have been out of production for years, Brumm only produces car models in die cast metal now. But they are showing up for sale on British ebay.

Look at this. 

Or this. 

You Limeys get all the good stuff.

A question of Scale

Ladies and Gentlemen a new building has begun a corner store. This is the first floor of said corner store.

 

The figure in the pictures is a Reaper? harlot who is the same size as the West Wind figures on a 30mm lipped base. Now this is just the bare bones of the first floor but the question before you here is; was there another mistake in scale like this one. So is this building too small?