Victorian True Short Stories from the Whitehern Archives

In this fascinating book, author Mary J. Anderson, PhD, once again dips into the Whitehern Archives to paint an illuminating picture of our Victorian past. Drawing from the thousands of letters to and from the McQuesten family that have been preserved in the archives of the Whitehern Museum in Hamilton, Ontario, Dr. Anderson covers such subjects as Victorian medicine—including women’s health and education, treatments for mental illness, and the “aristocratic vice”—as well as the tragic life of Ruby Baker McQuesten and the accomplishments of her brother, Thomas B. McQuesten, in Ontario politics and government, including the building of such landmark public works as the Queen Elizabeth Way and the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls. More than five dozen period photographs and illustrations bring the past to life. The result is a book no one who is interested in Ontario’s history will want to be without.