"Lady E. being lately complimented upon her excellent complexion, assured her friend it was owing to her custom of dipping into cold water every morning. 'But I see,' said she, 'you don't believe me.' 'Pardon me,' said the Gentleman, 'if your Ladyship said you bathed in the Red Sea, I should have believed you.'"—(Times, Nov. 24, 1796.)
"Last Sunday, agreeable to his sentence in the Ecclesiastical Court, a Butcher of Newport Market, did penance in St. Ann's Church, for scandalizing a neighbour's character."—(Times, Dec. 2, 1796.)
"There is a Club in St. James St. called the Transalpine. To be a Member, it is indispensable that you have crossed Mont Cenis. One of the advantages of modern travelling is, to be entitled upon your return to waste your time at home, with those who have wasted their's abroad. This is the reward of what is called seeing the world: namely, seeing those who have seen it too."—(Times, Jan. 25, 1797.)
"A noble Viscount has instituted a Club, called the Ubiquarians—the Club is ambulatory, and held, in turn, at as many chop-houses as there are parishes in the capital. The dinner is at half-a-crown, but it costs as much more to those who are not good walkers to get at it."—(Times, Jan. 25, 1797.)
"It is a very curious fact, that the Turkish custom of taking opium is beginning to prevail in what are called the first circles of London. This dissipation is spreading wide amongst female fashion."—(Times, Feb. 10, 1797.)
"The Gentlemen of the Rainbow (footmen), whose only wear is motley, have within these few days, shewn evident symptoms of uniting. They declare their wages are very inferior in value to their services, and threaten their masters with a revolution in their conduct. When pampered valets claim an increase of salary, on the ground of meritorious service, a general discharge would certainly be the most effectual way of quieting their complaints."—(Times, June 6, 1797.)
"We are pleased to be able to commend one change of fashion, at least, that which has deprived the servants of Officers of the cockade in their hats: and we hope to see it spread, till it becomes as singular, as it is absurd, to dress up a Domestic in the characteristics of the field!"—(Times, June 10, 1797.)
"On Sunday, for the first time, the Civil Power interested itself in breaking up what was called Cooper's Fair in the Spa Fields, in consequence of the weekly holdings forth of a variety of Enthusiasts: such as Mystics, Methodists, Quaking Jews, &c. One of the latter description being eager for persecution, insisted upon going into confinement, and was conveyed to Clerkenwell Bridewell."—(Times, July 20, 1797.)
"On the 25th of February, died in the Barony of Ivereagh, in the County of Kerry, Ireland, in the 112th year of his age Daniel Bull Macarthy Esq. He had been married to five wives: he married the fifth, who survives him, when he was 84 and she 14, by whom he had twenty children, she bearing a child every year. He was very healthy: no cold could affect him: and he could not bear the warmth of a shirt in the night time, but put it under his pillow, for the last seventy years. In company he drank plentifully of rum, and brandy, which he called naked truth; and when, out of complaisance to other gentlemen, he took claret, or port, he always drank an equal glass of rum, or brandy, to qualify those liquors: this he called a wedge. He used to walk eight, or ten, miles in a winter's morning with greyhounds, and finders, and seldom failed to bring home a brace of hares."—(Times, Aug. 5, 1797.)
"On Sunday morning, about five o'clock, ten Police officers came to Norwood in three hackney-coaches, threw down all the gypsey tents, and exposed about 30 men, women, and children, in the primitive state of man. They carried them to prison, to be dealt with according to the Vagrant Act.