Usage &c.

General terms and conditions

The author of talkingdust.net does not assume any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any material on or from this website (on this page or anywhere else).* Moreover, talkingdust.net shall not be liable for any direct or indirect consequence of any kind resulting from visitors’ access to or use of this website, under any theory of liability – it is offered in good faith. 

In particular any medical information contained on these pages is for historical interest only, and is in no way recommended as necessarily appropriate to follow today. In fact much described might be injurious if attempted! Always consult a contemporary appropriately trained medicus! Note also, following retirement from clinical practice, the author of this website ceased to be licensed/registered to practise, so anything you might regard as implied medical advice should be ignored, since it is not intended to be be regarded as such.

* If you spot any errors please do let me know using the email address via the contact navigation on the footer of each page, and I will make appropriate corrections if you turn out to be right – it’s one of the many benefits of making this a website as opposed to a book (others including being able to develop and refine the content more generally, and websites having a wider potential reach, being easier to find by those likely rare and perhaps scattered individuals who might find talkingdust.net of some interest).

This website is copyright © to the author of talkingdust.net (which went live in 2019). Normal fair dealing/use principles apply (see below).

Regarding takingdust.net’s use of material:-

Most of the material used, discussed, quoted, transcribed or referenced etc. on talkingdust.net is out of copyright, being sufficiently old for copyright no longer to apply. For most things copyright expires 70 years after publication (or 70 years after the death of the author if known). My understanding of copyright otherwise is as follows – note this applies to text, not images, for which permission typically is required (see below):-

Some historical material remains in copyright for various reasons. If these are public records, including the Newmarket Union minute books, probate records, census records, apprenticeship tax records, and various other such records and certificates, etc., they should be okay to use under the ‘Open Government Licence’. Moreover, it’s okay to make use of some unpublished manuscripts that are open to public inspection in archives etc., for example if they are more than 100 years old, it’s > 50 years since the death of the author, and any current copyright owner is unknowable. Also, it’s recognised that using data from parish registers is okay, due to their lack of originality (in general, facts can’t be copyrighted).

Otherwise, fair dealing copyright rules apply regarding quotation, criticism or review when material is used in ‘academic’ papers and history ‘books’ etc., i.e. things like talkingdust.net, subject to appropriate referencing and acknowledgement. For all material used on this website, where copyright might still apply and be relevant (i.e. not falling within the above rules, exceptions and permissions) talkingdust.net makes every effort to stick within the rules of fair dealing to err on the side of caution (although, in fact, being of great relevance can be regarded as fair dealing, even for quite substantial quotes, depending on the nature of the material used, and whether it’s set in an appropriate context and used for a legitimate purpose).

So, every effort has been made to apply the principles of fair dealing when talkingdust.net uses references/sources if copyright might still be an issue. Moreover, it’s of significant additional relevance that the research presented on this website is non-commercial in its nature, which is an exception in itself. However, if you are a copyright owner who feels that talkingdust.net is dealing with your material in a way that could be regarded as unfair, or in any other way infringes copyright, please make contact using the email address via the contact navigation on the footer of each page, so that things can be adjusted as and when appropriate.

With the above in mind, talkingdust.net does not guarantee to any third party that the material on this website will not be subject to such objections, and disclaims the author from any secondary consequences resulting from that, or otherwise (for example, what’s fair dealing/use in one context might not be so in another, a lot depends on context, amount used, for what purpose, referencing, etc.) etc.

Also, as mentioned above more generally, talkingdust.net does not assume any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of anything written here about copyright, which is a complex issue in law, with grey areas, and this does not constitute legal advice.

Regarding images, the situation is even more complicated, but basically it’s best to assume that permission is required for images – see the sources and acknowledgements section on each page of talkingdust.net, as indicated via the individual image captions. Also, please be aware that the absence of a copyright © symbol from some such notes does not necessarily mean that the image is not subject to copyright restrictions or that permission from the owner and/or source are not required to reproduce the image concerned – always check wherever possible. If anyone believes that an image on talkingdust.net has been wrongly attributed or used etc., again please make contact using the details via the footer below so that the matter can be addressed. 

Acknowledgements for resources of published material.

Published material, including books, directories, journals and newspapers etc. can be viewed in various places. Most such material referenced and quoted on this website is out of copyright (see comments above), but this note is to acknowledge the resources I’ve used to view them. In many cases I’ve seen and checked the same material in more than one place over time (such is the nature of published works; they can be reviewed wherever copies are available – including some on my own bookshelves!). Sometimes the content can be found in/on other similar works to talkingdust.net, but generally I have gone back to original copies to check facts/accuracy etc. (i.e. actual hard copies or at least images of original copies) – unless otherwise indicated. So I have examined some as real books, directories, journals and newspapers, and viewed others on microfilm or as digital images (often in two forms, sometimes all three), including in Record Offices, Libraries and Online. The resources I’ve made most use of, that I would like particularly to acknowledge here are: The Suffolk Record Office in Bury St Edmunds, The Cambridgeshire Archives, The Cambridge University Library, The British Library, The National Archives, The Society of Apothecaries Archives, ancestry.co.uk, and a particularly helpful online resource for newspapers The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk), which is electronically searchable (although unfortunately it does not yet have The Newmarket Journal – which can be viewed on microfilm at the The Suffolk Record Office in Bury St Edmunds). If you can’t find a copy of a published reference mentioned on this website, and would like to find one, please make contact using the email address via the contact navigation on the footer of each page, and I should be able to let you know where I have seen that publication and/or where you might be able to access a copy that’s most convenient for yourself. However, in some cases I might have lost track of where I saw a copy. Early in this research I didn’t appreciate the usefulness of retaining such records!

The British Newspaper Archive have kindly allowed the use of images from their website on some pages of talkingdust.net, which are subject to copyright regarding the images as opposed to the words on them (in all cases to The British Library Board for the images used on this website – see the Image sources and acknowledgements section on each page, as indicated via the individual image captions), as have the Wellcome Collection, Peter Norman of the Newmarket Local History Society, and others where indicated in the image captions.

The source I’ve used for original unpublished documents is noted after each individual reference, which in many cases is one of the places listed above.

All census records I’ve referenced directly to The National Archives, since images of these are so ubiquitous on microfilm and as digital images that they almost function like published works. Census records are covered by the ‘Open Government Licence’ (see above).

This website provides some external links where deemed appropriate or required (e.g. as a condition of using some material), but is not responsible for and provides no guarantees regarding the content or anything else associated with such links provided.

Privacy and security

In view of GDPR, and to avoid having an ugly, distracting pop-up notice about cookies (or anything else), talkingdust.net has decided to be a cookie free website, and tries to avoid collecting or passing on information about visitors. Some information (i.e. the IP address assigned to your device at the time of your visit) is unavoidably logged on the servers of talkingdust.net’s hosting provider when you visit this website (see paragraph below for more on the hosting provider). Under some circumstances such information can be regarded as personal information, if for example it’s processed with other information that makes it so. Neither talkingdust.net nor the hosting provider process this information in any way that could make it personally identifiable, and it’s only used for things like monitoring and ensuring the proper and optimal functioning of services and security. Such data would only be transferred externally if law enforcement required it.

Regarding security, talkingdust.net operates using a secure https rather than http connection (see url above). This is probably above and beyond what’s necessary for such a site, which does not require inputting of any personal data or the use of shopping carts etc. However, it’s used to indicate that talkingdust.net takes such things seriously. Moreover, this website is housed on the European servers of a major reputable US based international hosting provider that’s GDPR compliant and a member of the EU-US privacy shield framework. In addition to that, security software has been installed that, amongst other things, scans the website daily for malware etc., and ensures that the core software underlying the site is the latest version with any necessary updates and patches applied.