Sara M

“the late tenth-century ‘Aja’ib al-Hind (Marvels of India), attributed to the sea captain Burzug ibn Shahriyar, presented alleged facts about the Sea of Fire, whales, mermaids, cannibals, cattle-eating snakes, ritual suicides and so forth.”
― Malcolm C. Lyons, Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange

“Charles Lewis had investigated the deaths from diphtheria of several children whose parents were Peculiar People, members of a Wesleyan sect formed in Essex in 1838. In accordance with their interpretation of a passage in St James’s Epistle, the parents had not called a doctor when their children fell ill, and instead tried to cure them through prayer and the anointment of oil. The Children’s Act of 1889 enabled the state to prosecute a parent for the ill-treatment or culpable neglect of a child, and an amendment of 1894 specified that failure to obtain medical help could be an offence. Yet all that the coroner’s court was able to do in the Peculiar People cases was give a verdict of death from natural causes – it was hard to prove that a death from diphtheria could have been prevented or even delayed by medical intervention. Lewis announced that he was ‘sick and tired’ of having these cases reported to him when he was powerless to act, and demanded that the law be tightened up. When a Peculiar father explained to him, ‘I stand up for the Lord’, Lewis returned: ‘You can lie [down] and die, if you like, but it is cowardly, most cowardly, to allow helpless children to do so.”
― Kate Summerscale, The Wicked Boy

“In June it took part in an elaborately planned action at Messines Ridge, in Belgian Flanders, which opened with the Allies detonating a million pounds of explosives next to the German trenches, instantly killing 10,000 enemy soldiers. The blast was heard in London and felt across southern England. In the fighting that ensued, Bill Alabaster led the parties carrying grenades, ammunition and water from the 45th Battalion headquarters to the troops at the front line, across open ground raked by artillery and machine-gun fire. Herring recommended him for the Military Medal. The 45th lost seven officers and 344 other ranks over four days of combat.”
― Kate Summerscale, The Wicked Boy

“fifteen-year-old from Shepherd’s Bush, West London, who had poisoned himself with carbolic acid. His father had given him a ‘good hiding’, the paper reported, because he had been out of work for a month. The boy left a note reading ‘I wish you to know the reason I did it is because I could not work’, but the judge none the less ascribed his death to his consumption of ‘literary offal’.”
― Kate Summerscale, The Wicked Boy