Lost Friends, Advertisements and Bizarre Requests The wants and needs of Colonial Queensland come alive in their classified advertisements. Heart-rending tales of separated families sat beside requests for emu skins, and someone to take on their 11-year-old son (state terms to Mr. Doorey). Not to mention miracle hair restorers, moral circuses, and a strange deviceContinue reading “Lost Friends, Advertisements and Bizarre Requests”
Tag Archives: Classifieds
A Sack of Ghosts, Desiccated Canaries, Kilts v Trousers
THE STRANGE WORLD OF THE EARLY 1870s, AS SEEN IN THE CLASSIFIEDS The School of the Arts, hitherto a rather stodgy institution, offered the most peculiar entertainments in the early 1870s. Not since the outbreak of wizardry in the 1850s had Brisbane flocked to anything like Chapman’s Wonders: Legerdemain effects involve sleight of hand, presumablyContinue reading “A Sack of Ghosts, Desiccated Canaries, Kilts v Trousers”
Lewis the Swift and the Same Old Joe
Brisbane’s newspaper classifieds were enlivened considerably in the 1870s by a gentleman who signed himself “Lewis the Swift.” Lewis was a builder by trade, willing to quote on big jobs and small, and able to branch out into sanitary works, business agency and just about anything his lively business mind turned to. His ads areContinue reading “Lewis the Swift and the Same Old Joe”
Moreton Bay and More 