Lucy Worsley is a favorite historian of mine. A couple of months ago I watched something about the history of murder mysteries in Britain. It was interesting and, of course, it sent me down a rabbit hole.
In addition to referencing quite a few early murder mysteries, she also mentioned the first few books in which women were featured as detectives. I immediately went online to the library. The very first woman detective was introduced by Andrew Forrester in 1864 in the very unoriginally titled The Female Detective. I have that on hold but I was particularly drawn to Susan Hopely: The Adventures of a Maid-Servant by Catherine Crowe. This was the first female “detective” authored by a woman. The Hennepin County system didn’t have it but I did find it listed on the InterLibrary Loan page. I immediately requested it.
This began a two-month run around, having to do with the ILL system mis-referencing it and involving several emails between me and two different folks in the ILL department. I had actually forgotten about it when with no notice, it showed up at my local library. Later that night, when I opened it up (hoping to remember why I had asked for it in the first place), I discovered that the pages were REALLY old, despite a fairly new cover. I spent some time looking at things on line and was fairly certain that these were pages from one of the original print run from 1842.
It seemed too incredible that I had a 183-year old book in my hands, so I turned to the one person I know who knows about this kind of thing…. Our Bill! He graciously allowed me to bring the book over and upon inspection he agreed that those pages were mostly likely from the first print run in 1842. He then walked me through some of his book collection, showing me quite a few other books which were as old. This made me feel a little bit better about carrying this book around and I didn’t drag it around with me to the gym or appointments. When reading it at home, I was very very careful and when I returned it to the library after I’d finished it, instead of sending it down the automatic chute, I carried it inside and handed it delicately to a librarian to scan!
Do you have any fragile/delicate antiques?
Trail Baboon 
So if the Forrester was written in 1864 and the Catherine Crowe in 1842; what makes his the first?
I’m not certain what “officially” qualifies as antiques but I generally consider anything pre-20th century to be in that category. Between the two of us we have several collections that fit that definition and all of them have their vulnerabilities, I suppose. Probably the most vulnerable are books and some of our Japanese woodblock prints.
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This is why I always need your discerning eye Bill The 1842 is a date that I trust having seen it printed in the book and confirmed online in several places. Yesterday when I was writing this up, I did a quick search for the Forrester and came up with the 1864 and didn’t even notice that it was after the Catherine Crowe. I’ll need to do some more research because I got the he was first from Lucy Worsley and didn’t do a lot of following up. This is why I would never be a good historian.
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I looked it up and officially anything at least 100 years old is considered antique.
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Don’t tell Nonny.. She’s getting pretty close!
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OK, I’ve seen multiple sites that confirm the 1864 for the Forrester book. In looking through everything I’ve seen (in the last 20 minutes) I’m thinking that he’s getting the credit for the first professional female detective. In the Catherine Crowe book, the female character who solves the murder is not actually a detective. So maybe that’s a distinction that I missed when Lucy Worsley was talking about them.
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Makes sense.
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I’ll look around – I do have a few very old books, but not back to the 1860s…
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Holy crap, I was wrong! I have in front of me The Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. by J. G. Lockhart, Vol. 5., and it says 1837!! A friend gave this stack to us a few years ago, at a very busy time, and I’d never really looked at them.
Gotta run – more later…
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I had some old books for a while. They were literally crumbling. They were from the 1860s or ‘70s, if I recall correctly. They were printed in German. I believe they were psalm books. A couple of them had “Luther College Deborah Iowa” printed in them. I called Luther College and was put in touch with the woman responsible for historical documents. She said they already had copies of these and didn’t need more, thanks. If they didn’t want them, who would? So I sold them to an antique store with a load of other stuff that I downsized.
I do have some old books that are from my family. They’re probably about my age, so pretty old… (chuckle). I keep them because I can’t seem to part with them yet.
My grandma’s ukulele is about the oldest and most fragile thing I have now. Ukuleles aren’t super sturdy instruments. I’m guessing mine is from the early 1900s. If I put strings on it the tension could break it, so it hangs on the wall without strings. It has a crack in it. It’s another thing that’s precious to me. I’ll probably never part with it.
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I have my grandmother’s wooden handled jar lifter that works really well for removing standard Mason jars from canning kettles. I also have the jade scholar’s inkstand my great grandfather won in a poker game from an Italian sea captain when he had a dray service on the Hamburg docks around 1900. Goodness knows how old that thing is.
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My grandmother was born in 1900 and married when she was 19, so I think the jar lifter is about 100 years old.
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Do you think you “got the use of it” after she paid all that money?
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I have a big old oak chest that I purchased in 1961 from an old Dane for 50 kroner. I had to promise him that I wouldn’t paint it, a promise I have kept.
The trunk is unpainted, large, heavy, and in pretty rough shape. On the front, painted in faded gold lettering, are the initials K.E.D to the left of the keyhole and key; to the right of the key is the year 1863.
This is the trunk in which all of my earthly possessions arrived in the US in 1965. My then brother-in-law had constructed a sturdy wooden brace for it without which it would not have survived the trip.
My favorite feature of this old trunk is the original key which has been worn thin from use. Every once in a while I’ll take the key out of the still functioning lock and just hold it while I try to imagine the lives and circumstances of those whose hands have shaped it.
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PJ, I wonder what vintage is the oak pedestal table you gave us, lo these many years ago now.
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Wasband and I purchased that table when we first arrived in the Twin Cities back in 1972. I picked it up at an estate sale on East River Road. My guess at the time was that it was at least fifty years old. The top was in pretty rough shape, all warped, so when I met Hans and he started his own furniture making business, I had him make a new top for it. This would have been in 1979 or 1980. The pedestal is the original pedestal, but top is only 45 years old. It’s a nice old table though.
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It certainly is!
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Better Late than Never, Baboons,
Today has been an appointment day. I am just home from the Orthopedist who successfully helped Lou solve his lower back pinched nerve. I brought Lou home, and next I go to my appointment for my painful left hip.
I have talked before about the 1807 wagon box, so no more about that. I have a canning jar from 1857 (I think, but the date is turned to the back and I can’t see it). Canning and food preservation processes were invented around that time. It is light blue and may be close to 2 quarts in volume. Food preservation was a miracle at the time, stabilizing food supplies through long Midwestern winters. My mother pulled it out of her mother’s canning cave. Lou has an old Mother Goose book that I want Bill to look at. An old rocker of my great grandmother’s is from the 1870s, and a Shaker-like storage box is from the 1850s. Most of these items somehow survived frontier life. I love thinking about the lives of the people who used these items. They had few possessions.
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I have some old kitchen items – a 1940s vintage eggbeater, which still works great; a depression glass platter…
The other antique books in the short stack I found this morning are:
Sunshine of Graystone, a Story for Girls – by E.J. May, 1864
Poems by David Gray with Memoirs of His Life – 1864
A Little Heaven, and What It Wrought at Mrs. Blake’s School – by the author of “Our Little Girls” – 1859
Gregg Shorthand Dictionary 1916 edition (copyright 1901)
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Here’s an ambrotype of two sisters from our modest collection of vintage photos. The hairstyles and the fact it’s an ambrotype suggest it’s from the 1850s. They are not our ancestors.
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OMG, the hair!
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I have a some very old books that were my grandparent’s. One is a Rhymes of Childhood by James Whitcomb Riley, copyright 1894. I fondly remember sitting on my grandfather’s lap while he read (or I think sometimes recited) The Raggedy Man Little Orphan Annie, and others of the101 poems in the 186-page volume.
Also have The Corner House Girls, by Grace Brooke Hill, copyright 1915. And Jewel, a Chapter in Her Life, by Clara Louise Burnham with illustrations by Maude and Genevieve Cowels, copyright 1903.
All are in rough but readable condition and I may see if the novels have the power to grab my attention. I still leaf through the Rhymes of Childhood and wish I had managed to instill an appreciation for poetry in my grandchildren.
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I also have a circa 1920 copy of Poems of James Whitcomb Riley that I picked up at a used book sale quite a few years ago when I didn’t realize that my mom still had the Rhymes of Childhood and was yearning to read the Raggedy Man. It’s in much better condition.
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Although technically not 100-year-old antiques, it’s sobering that any item I have left from the early 1970s, my foray into adulthood, is now 50 (fifty!) years old.
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Seems just like yesterday….
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Yes!
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Even worse, my son’s baby things are 42 yrs old. 👵
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think the oldest thing I own is my house.
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I have old books, some inherited and some purchased at book sales. I couldn’t tell you which is the oldest without doing a lot of digging, but there’s a book of poetry by John Greenleaf Whittier, who was a Quaker and abolitionist. It’s dated 1884 and is in quite good condition; there are still traces of gold edging on the pages. My most treasured old book belonged to my great grandmother from Quebec. It was given to her during a visit by the school “inspector.” The title is “La Terre Paternelle” (roughly “The Fatherland”). There’s a label inside the front cover that he filled out with her name, his name, the date–1885–and the reason she received it “pour son application.” She signed it herself in 1889 with the most beautiful, curvy, flowing handwriting that I could never replicate. It’s very fragile.
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