During the late nineteenth century, women played a substantial role in the Irish farming economy. Farmwork was gendered and women were associated with tending animals, particularly pigs and poultry, dairying, both milking and creating products for market, and tending the…
Category: Blog
The Women’s History Network blog
Seduction: Virtue on Trial
In February 1841 at the Henry Street office of the Dublin police, a girl named Mary Anne Quirk, aged 17, was charged with theft by her father Michael Quirk. It was her second appearance in front of Dr Kelly, the…
Marital Sex in the Eighteenth Century
Uncovering the nature of marital sex in the past is difficult as few people leave a written record of their sexual activity. A study of over one hundred upper-class couples’ letters across a two-hundred year period found no explicit references…
The Foundling Hospital
The Foundling Museum, located in Bloomsbury, London WC1, tells the story of London’s first home for foundlings which was established in 1739 to care for destitute and abandoned children. Three major figures in British social history – philanthropist Thomas Coram,…
From the TUC Library Collections
“Housewives! Please finish travelling by 4 o’clock”. This poster was issued by the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Labour and National Service c.1940. The TUC Library Collections have a large research collection relating to women living and working…
Amazing Women
[Editor’s note: Dr Charles Magerison’s new book Amazing Women uses a form of storytelling, which he calls the Bioview. I asked him to explain what this was and why he thought it was a useful way to write women’s history]. What…
Letters for Help!
This postcard was sent to the Archbishop Byrne of Dublin in 1922. It reads ‘May it please your grace to give me £5 to release my clothes out of the pawn shop you have helped me when in [illegible] your…
Social Networks are go!
The Women’s History Network is now on Facebook and Twitter– check us out, friend us, like us, tweet your favourite blogs posts and more! And, while we’re discussing online resources, here are some more for you to check out: 50 fascinating…
Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) Suffragette Leader and Single Parent in Edwardian Britain
As we celebrate Mother’s Day in April 2011, it is salutary to remember women in the past who were single mums struggling to support their children while engaged in public work. Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the suffragette movement in…