Do you run your little Victorian households on the advice given by publishing phenomenon Mrs Beeton?  My grandmother, born 1888, really did but I thought the advice could be improved by modern knowledge and science.

Take for example, Mrs Beeton’s recipe for the careless laundry maid to restore whiteness to a scorched white tea dress.  Having first removed the smoking iron from the hole in the middle of the skirt, the maid should then obtain half a pint of wine vinegar, two ounces of soap, one ounce of fowl dung and the juice of two large onions.  A paste made of these should be spread on the dress, allowed to dry and crucially, I feel, washed off twice.

I know you’ve spotted the difficulty.  I saw it immediately.  It’s the time factor, isn’t it?  This dress is for afternoon tea and here we are at half past eleven, in the yard, with a dessert spoon, chasing around behind the chicken waiting for an ounce of its best effort.  What if the chicken has already been this morning?  Come to think of it, this could be how the egg and spoon race was invented as a surprise discovery.

To save time follow Nurse Nightingale’s advice, quoted by Mrs Beeton, to let the children of the house have a glass of light beer.  Thus healthily fortified they can catch the chicken for us and bring it into the laundry.  Here we will tap the wine barrel, teaching the chicken to drink by example, giving the rest, healthily, to the children.  Grasp the chicken firmly and shake it vigorously to turn the wine into vinegar.  See how simple this is?  Getting the chicken to eat the onions may present more difficulty.  Do not get it to eat the soap at all.  Especially do not get it to eat the soap and then shake it.

Clamp the tea dress in place on the ironing table by lying the children on the corners.  Lift the chicken over the dress and squeeze. 

So simple when you know how.

Written by Jane Laverick

The Dolls House Magazine.

I have now put the rest of the Reutter Porcelain on to the website.  For some reason the images did not appear  the last time I did it,  I carefully resized all the photos, wrote the long and short descriptions, but nothing appeared on the site.  I have at last done it all again so hopefully you will find something you like.  Reutter products come in a clear presentation box and make a good present.  I will be adding to this collection over the next few months.  They make a lovely grandfather clock.

Talking of Grandfather Clocks, I will be stocking a Chiming Clock as soon as they arrive from the suppliers, there have been a few hiccups along the way but once perfected they will be on sale in the shop here in Bedford and on my website.

A 15 room dolls’ house built by two Victorian schoolboys has been sold for 124,570 pounds.  Brothers Laurence and Isaac Currie,from Minley Manor near Fleet in Hampshire, constructed the house in the 1870s.

They built it from two bookcases.  It is 10 feet wide and 5 feet high and fitted with five bays, three storeys and an elaborate glass chandelier.

A German toy museum paid over double the expected price for the house, called Dingley Hall, at the auction at Christies in London.  Christie’s said the Norddeutsches Spielzeugmuseum in Hamburg was especially keen to buy it because, unusually for a dolls’ house it was made by boys.

The house and its original contents give a unique glimpse of life in a grand 19th Century household.  A spokeswoman for Christie’s said “The dolls’ house is the most important to appear on the London market for over 20 years”

It has been on display at Londons Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood for over 40 years.

This information was taken from the BBC website.

A collection of about 50 dolls houses has been sold at auction in Devon after attracting international interest.

The houses and thousands of pieces of miniature furniture, dolls and accessories were owned by an unnamed woman from Liskeard in Cornwall.  The collection sold for up to 1,700 pounds for an Edwardian house.  One buyer even bid 1,250 pounds for a kitchen  setting made by a German firm called Bing.  The Stannery Gallery in Tavistock hosted the auction.

This information was taken from the BBC website.