How to Make History Come Alive

When I wrote this, I had just spent some time researching life in Victorian London, and I had far too much material about how awful it was to fit in one strip. Here are some details I had to cut:

Between the horse hooves and wagon wheels hitting the brick pavers, people shouting to be heard, the animals and the other people shouting, and the echoes off of the brick buildings, visitors to the city compared the sound to standing at the base of a tall waterfall.

Poor people stood on most of the street corners selling fresh watercress for people to eat. They got the watercress by picking it themselves along the banks of the Thames. They would get up early in the morning and fight to get the best watercress picking spots, which were always close to pipes releasing untreated sewage into the river.

The bear grease thing I mention in the comic was real, and barbers really did trumpet the freshness of their bear grease. In fact, often they would have a live bear chained up out in front of the shop with a sign saying they had just bought the bear and promising that they would soon kill it to harvest and sell its grease. Only the savviest Londoners knew that a bunch of barbers all owned one bear, and they just passed it around, transporting it all over the city and chaining it up in front of a different shop every few weeks as a marketing tool.

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