Author: Lyndsey Jenkins
The Unpaid Careers of Principals’ Wives at Leicester’s University College, 1921-51 – Elizabeth Blood
The Attenborough family, including Mary Attenborough and her three sons, Richard, David and John, lived at University College Leicester between 1932 and 1951 when Frederick Attenborough served as its second Principal. I recently curated an exhibition on their time at…
CfP: Workshop: ‘Labour Pains: Mothers and Motherhood on the Left in the Twentieth Century’
November 17th 2023, Mile End Institute, Queen Mary University of London RHS Transactions Workshop British left-wing politics does not know what to think about mothers. On the one hand, motherhood has often been praised and celebrated. In left-wing women’s movements,…
Miss Mary MacMahon and the Making of a Professional Network of Mobile Businesswomen in Early 20th Century Canada – Kirsten Widdes
Advertisements, such as this one, were placed in trade journals and emphasized the importance of properly trained, competent typists, highlighting both commercial training and the effectiveness of the United Typewriter Co.’s Employment Department. Born in Hamilton Ontario Canada on September…
Kay Midwinter: first female Clerk in the House of Commons – Mari Takayanagi
In this blog Mari Takayanagi and Elizabeth Hallam Smith preview the story of Kay Midwinter, one of the pioneering women staff in Parliament featured in their new book, Necessary Women: the Untold Story of Parliament’s Working Women. In the public…
Textile Designing for the Festival of Britain 1924-2020 – Esther Dobson
When you hear the term ‘Mid-century design’ it may conjure images of Le Corbusier’s Brutalist architecture, Marcel Breuer’s ‘Wassily’ chair, or George Nelson’s clocks, but why do we often hear less about the women of this period? In stark comparison…
Queen Victoria’s Treescapes – Sarah Shields
In 2019 BBC News reported that while on an official engagement in Cambridge, the then 93-year-old Queen Elizabeth II had told onlookers that she was ‘still perfectly capable of planting a tree.[1] The planting of a tree is perhaps one…
Lady Constance Lytton: 1869-1923 – Lyndsey Jenkins
22 May 1923 marks one hundred years since the death of Lady Constance Lytton, militant suffragette. She is most often remembered for the events of January 1910, when she disguised herself as a working-class activist, consciously making herself as ugly…
British women and Latin American independence movements 1800-1825
It is well-known that Mary Wollstonecraft travelled to Paris to witness the French Revolution that she had celebrated in A Vindication of the Rights of Men. Less well-known are British women who supported Latin American revolutionaries fighting for liberation from…