circus history | The British Newspaper Archive Blog

Blog

Guest Blog – Discover The Wheelbarrow Influencer of the Victorian Age

In this special guest blog, David Musgrove, content director for BBC History Magazine and HistoryExtra, considers the amazing life of the now-forgotten Victorian showman, athlete, and wheelbarrow pedestrian Bob Carlisle, and how his clever manipulation of newspapers marks him out as a 19th-century influencer. Did the Victorian period have influencers? Yes, but rather than using social media and camera phones, they employed letter-writing and wheelbarrows. I’ve been researching the story of a forgotten 19th-century minor celebrity whose life was widely

Continue Reading

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,