Please note that this article contains content that may be sensitive to readers with herpetophobia In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the British public was reportedly enthralled by a snake charmer’s performances. She was“richly attired in picturesque Hindoo…
2024 marks the centenary of the founding of the Electrical Association for Women (EAW), an organisation that urged women to equip themselves with pliers, scissors, and screwdrivers and learn how to maintain and fix their electrical appliances – no repairman…
Not long after the Korean War broke out in early 1950, calls for expressing socialist solidarity with North Korea appeared throughout the Second World. Hungary, a small country where Communists got into power only two years prior, proved to be…
In 1964, just a few months after British fashion designer Mary Quant became the center of controversy with her Bazaar boutique in Chelsea, the irreverent miniskirt arrived in Spanish society. Modernity was making strides. The consumer society was burgeoning in…
In 1840, Memoirs of Princess Daschkaw, Lady of Honour to Catherine II was published in England. The two-volume text included the personal memoirs of Russian noblewoman Ekaterina Dashkova (1743-1810), one of the most powerful, well-known and misunderstood women figures of…
Born in London in 1877, Constance Chellingworth Radcliffe Cooke was the eldest child of Charles and Frances Radcliffe Cooke. The family moved to Herefordshire in 1881 when Charles inherited Hellens at Much Marcle. After an unadventurous rural upbringing Constance challenged…
When Jan Morris died, aged 94, the Guardian obituary said the ‘greatest distance travelled by Jan’ was not across the Earth’s surface ‘but between extraordinary identities: from being the golden-boy newspaper reporter James Morris to the female voyager and historian…
In the 1970s, Gloria Maldonado and Crystal Lee Sutton decided to become active in their unions. Challenging work conditions in the textile and apparel industry—the low wages and lack of dignity—was a core motivation, but both women also wanted to…
Building on the work I carried out during my internship with the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) on gender identity, this post addresses the role of gender in ancient bathing, focusing on the experience of unwell women and…