Reddit reviews Your Old Wiring (CLS.EDUCATION)

Try very hard to get to wire an entire house from start to finish. It's the best experience possible.

For old work, see these:

Old Electrical Wiring

Your Old Wiring

Circuit Down: How to Solve That Household Electrical Mystery

One thing that stands out to me is that there is wood exposed inside the box even when the receptacle and cover plate are put back. This is not up to code; you need to further trim back the wood and then use a box extension. See Example 6 in this piece except you need a metal one.

How are the wires attached to the receptacle itself? This looks like BX cable (no ground wire; the metal sheath of the BX cable provides the ground) and the wire coming from the top, with the cloth insulation, looks older, and the cable on the right, with thermoplastic insulation, looks newer.

Is the copper wire in the kinked, cloth covered wire from the top (and on the right) actually broken? If the power to the receptacle comes in from here, and if this kink is the problem, you could cut the wire at the kink (with the breaker off!), carefully strip back a bit, then splice to it another piece of wire (use the same gauge, it's OK to buy a coil of Romex and disassemble it) with a wirenut and attach that to the receptacle.

If you have a lot of questionable old wiring in your house, you might want to look at David Shapiro's Your Old Wiring. He has instructions for splices in this type of situation.