When London’s Foundling Hospital opened its doors on 25 March 1741, it aimed to provide an alternative to mothers abandoning their babies in the streets of the city. Mothers unable or unwilling to care for their infants could, instead, bring…
Category: Blog
The Women’s History Network blog
‘A Banker’s Daughter’: The Challenge of a Familiar Source – Hazel Vosper
Is there a primary source that you inevitably reference in your work? When reading a new article or listening to a paper being presented do you anticipate the appearance of that familiar source? If the answer to these questions is…
Lucie Rie: Modernist Potter – by Isabella Smith
In September 1938, the Austrian potter Lucie Rie arrived in a London soon to be ravaged by German bombings. She was fleeing a country that had become unsafe for Jewish people like herself dramatically fast. Only a short time prior, she…
Friends of the Women’s Library Talks Programme 2022-23
The Friends of the Women’s Library Talks Programme for 2022-23 recommences on Wednesday 21 September at 2.30pm. Professor June Purvis will speak on Christabel Pankhurst 1880-1958; a Biography. This will be a Zoom presentation only. The link will be: https://lse.zoom.us/j/8146548491?pwd=c0JnUEl1eEpqRDc1Y0V2UXdnVytGUT09 Meeting ID: 814 654…
The ‘Quietly Revolutionary’ Art of Pan Yuliang – Beth Price
The human brain takes as little as 13 milliseconds to process an image that flashes in front of our eyes. By comparison, we generally spend very little brain power thinking about the formation and curation of the images which surround…
The Life and Legacy of Emma Soyer (1809-1842) – Gabriella Ramsden
In Kensal Green cemetery there is a monument with the inscription of ‘TO HER’ written on it and ‘her’ initials (ES) at its base. If you were to come upon it by chance you would wonder who was this person…
Understanding the Suffrage Movement and Hunger Striking in Their Own Words – Celia Hitchen
“you don’t get well […] from forcible feeding, afterwards, ever.”[1] These words were proclaimed by Maude Kate Smith in January 1975, long after the suffrage movement’s fight for the vote had ended. A militant suffragette, Smith slashed paintings, smashed windows,…
Inscribing brooches: women and runes in fifth to seventh century Britain – Jasmin Higgs
Early medieval women from before the mid-seventh century could be dressed, at any given point, in many layers of clothing which required fasteners in the forms of pins and brooches. Brooches from the fifth to seventh centuries in Britain are…
A First: The American Suffrage Story as a Musical – Louise W. Knight
For those of us who love women’s history, there is perhaps nothing more spine-tingling than to watch a piece of it come alive as a musical on a New York stage. I never imagined that, after reading books about the…