News items of interest to WHN Members
During the sixteenth to seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire saw a change in its political dynamic, as Imperial women began to influence the decisions of the Imperial court.[1] 1534-1683 is known as the ‘Sultanate of Women’ as Imperial women within…
The research for my book, Suffragettes of Kent, provided insight into many historic journeys of hope, determination and courage. In the course of my research I discovered many heart-warming stories, including the fruit farmers who provided a place to stay…
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)…
In my book, Measuring Difference, numbering normal: setting the standards for disability in the interwar period, I show how specific conceptions of normalcy and disability emerged in the interwar period. The First World War necessitated new ways of thinking about…
Our interest in widows was sparked when writing about the British women’s suffrage movement; we noticed all three leaders of the major suffrage organisations were widows. Was this, we wondered, something of a coincidence, or a more complex and common…
The grand narrative of the Second World War as the ‘People’s War’ remains a dominant theme in British cultural memory. Within that narrative, warfare and traditional ideas about masculinity are inextricably linked. Courage, valour and aggression are all worlds associated…
In 2019 the BBC released a documentary[1] which showcased interviews with nurses that had worked during ‘The Troubles.’ Compelling and poignant, one of the exceptional features of the documentary was just how willing and keen nurses were to share their…
“Uncleanliness of the mind and body act and react,” wrote the Edinburgh-trained physician J. Milner Fothergill in his 1874 Maintenance of Health, “and perfect health of one is incompatible with an unhealthy state of the other.” The Victorian middle classes…