In 2020 I wrote a piece for the WHN blog about the biography I’m not writing. In ‘Giants and Geniuses’ https://womenshistorynetwork.org/giants-and-geniuses-by-lucienne-boyce/ I explained my decision not to write about someone very famous, or someone who’s described as a ‘giant’ or…
Carved onto the gravestone of Baroness Mary Vetsera in Heiligenkreuz, this Bible verse provides a sobering outlook on her short life. In the early hours of the 30th of January 1889, seventeen year old Mary was shot – willingly –…
On 26 August 1910, a notice appeared in the San Francisco Examiner: ‘Wanted. For adoption – a newly born infant; must be a boy.’ Four years later, Dorothy Slingsby, an American in her forties, finally confessed to placing the advert.…
Between January and May 2020, I visited the City and County Archives in Cork, Ireland, and mined through the Irish Newspaper Archive, to research the Cork Child Welfare League for my PhD thesis on maternal and infant mortality in twentieth-century…
Nellie Cressall was one of the brave women who went to prison in support of the Poplar Rates Rebellion in 1921, just one episode in a long life of activism, which began after she joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP)…
Whilst the events of this summer have thrown into sharp relief the effects of state sanctioned violence against Black communities, globally, it is important to recognise that alongside the campaigns to end racism there has also been activity that seeks…
In this, our latest great blog post, Professor Angela V. John reflects on her keynote address at the 2019 WHN conference. I began by looking at how the teenage Margaret Haig Thomas (later Margaret Mackworth and, from 1918, the 2nd…
Heritage matters! In our latest brilliant blog post, Dr. Sarah Hellawell tells us about Dr. Marion Phillips, Sunderland’s First Female MP and the installation of a blue heritage plaque at the site of the Sunderland Labour Party’s former offices. Over…
In our latest post Doloranda Pember reflects on her book: In the wake of Mercedes Gleitze: Open Water Swimming Pioneer (The History Press, February 2019). When my mother died in 1981, little did I know of the full extent of…