Ruined by the war.

Mrs T and I are both descended from long lines of hoarders. This woodcut entitled Ruined by the War is from a magazine that I "inherited" from a great aunt who had cherished it all her life.

You could be forgiven for thinking that it dates from the end of the First World War, but in fact it is from an earlier conflict; the Magazine is dated December 1st 1870. The accompanying caption reads:

"Our engraving is from a painting by a celebrated French artist. It gives a picture of what many a happy home presented last year. Alas! how sad a change has come over many a French and Prussian family since then! The fearful war which has raged between France and Prussia, has made thousands of widows and orphans. Oh, cruel war! how many fond fathers, husbands, and brothers hast thou slain? Let English children be thankful for the blessings of peace.
.........
May the day soon arrive when the nations of the earth shall learn war no more."

Little did they know of what was to come 40 years later.

The illustration is from the Band of Hope Review, an ‘improving’ magazine for the children of the poor and working classes. Set up by the Methodist reformer Thomas Bywater Smithies (1817–83), and taking its name from the Temperance Movement, its principal message was one of abstinence. It also had a wider application; in the words of The Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism, it was ‘intended to supplement Sunday school instruction, providing temperance advice to the young’ while ‘serving as a resource for religious and moral teaching in the home’. Published by Partridge and Co. of Paternoster Row, London, one of several Evangelical publishers set up in the mid-nineteenth century, it was aimed at the enlightenment of the working classes.