Answers
Book Quiz:
1. Calves’ foot jelly! This yucky-sounding food was made by boiling calves’ feet and was thought to be good for invalids in Victorian times.
2. By hiding him in the laundry basket! In those days, washing clothes was exhausting. The maids had to boil clothes in a pot, scrub them with such things as milk, chalk or onion juice, and then turn them through a mangle to squeeze out the water.
3. Three dolls, plus one teddy bear! Alice’s dolls would have been much more delicate than modern toys. They often had wool hair and porcelain faces, so care had to be taken when playing with them!
4. A pipe. Victorian gentlemen liked to make a ritual out of smoking tobacco. They wore special velvet jackets and retired to another room after dinner so as not to upset the ladies!
5. A steam train. In the cabin, there would have been a fireman shovelling coal into the firebox, which heated water into steam and turned the engine. Hot, tiring and very dirty!
6. Her pince-nez spectacles. “Pince-nez” means “nose-pincher” and they were a popular style at the time. They even feature in a Sherlock Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez”.
7. To post a letter to Alice’s father. The postal service was reformed during the Victorian times so that people paid in advance to send a letter using the first “Penny Black” stamps, which cost one pence!
8. A secret passageway and a staircase. Grand houses often had small servants’ staircases running between floors, so the owners didn’t have to see their servants going about their business!
9. Kippers. These are whole smoked herrings, and they were very popular as a breakfast dish until the early twentieth century.
10. The magpies! These intelligent birds are related to crows, and there were lots of myths about them in the past, especially because they like to steal things for their nests.
Book Ciphers:
Message 1: Treacle pudding not calves’ foot jelly!
Message 2: Next meeting will be at 31 Albion Street.
Bring your kittens and look out for Miss Sidebotham!