The eighteenth century is generally characterised by a sense of improvement and need for politeness, both physically and mentally. Accordingly, major improvements to architecture and infrastructure marked eighteenth-century society. Local pride and an active sense of civic identity came to…
Category: Women’s History
STRIKE!
This month we may see widespread strikes by public workers, but, this isn’t the first time workers have stood up for their rights, whether for better pay, better conditions or fairer treatment. Moreover, women have always been part of this…
Some Early Irish Feminism?
Taken from the Freeman’s Journal, 26 February 1841 Dublin Police- Henry Street Office CHARGE OF BIGAMY An interesting-looking young woman, named Anne Kirwan, applied to Mr. Duffy, the presiding magistrate, to have informations taken against John Kirwan, her husband, on…
Marital Advice from Parents to Children
During the early-eighteenth century, the passing of wisdom from parents to children was an expected part of their relationship and vital to the proper socialisation of children. Throughout their lives, parents offered children advice on their behaviour, passing on their…
Una Marson 1905-65
In a small, sparsely furnished office in Kingston in the spring of 1928 Jamaica’s feisty first woman editor-publisher Una Marson proudly proclaimed, ‘This is the age of woman: what man has done women may do’. Born in 1905 in the…
Irish Farmwives
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…
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,…