Tuesday 12 July 2016

Who’s Who in Ramsgate in 1839

I imagine that those of you who use my bookshop will know I publish cheap reprints of directories to the Thanet towns for various dates. The main reason for this is helping people with seat of the pants local history right down to the person or the building.

They provide the answer to where did granny, great granny or even great great granny live and the answer to who lived in my house a hundred years ago. I also have these for sale on bookshop website at http://michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/the_isle_of_thanet.htm

The earliest Ramsgate directory that I know of is Pigot and Co.’s published in September of 1839, I should point out here that house numbering before 1900 changed quite a bit as the town expanded and the rating officer renumbered a longer street, so if you find an address in this directory you would need to look at the directories that I publish for 1849, 1878 and 1887 and compare with the 1900 one, otherwise you will probably be venerating the wrong building.


Only the select got into directories at that time, the ordinary people didn’t – probably couldn’t read and didn’t care. So the directory is very short, here it is, you may need to click on the pictures of the paged to make them big enough to read.  






2 comments:

  1. Dear Michael
    I have followed your blog with great interest for the last two and half years I have lived in Thanet. Today I left the isle and shortly will leave for a new life in New Zealand. You have always been very interesting and informative about local issues if prone to the occasional ramble.
    Many thanks for the time and effort you put into your blog, most would give up in despair when dealing with Thanet District Council.
    I wish you well and will continue to follow you from down under
    Many thanks
    Cheers
    Malcolm Walker

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Malcolm, I will do my best to keep it up.

    ReplyDelete

Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.