Life in the Hawaiian Islands, Nottingham Evening Post, 5 November 1934. Outside Honolulu, most of the European homes in Hawaii are on sugar or pineapple plantations. The planter will install his wife and family in some great rambling house which…
Tag: Katie Barclay
Women’s History Month: Encounters with Empire, Hawaii, no. 1
Literary Extracts. Hawaii in the Past. (From the King’s Own). Evening Telegraph, 21 March 1894. It was in the year 1778 that Captain Cook, in company with Captain King, was voyaging in the North Pacific Ocean, and discovered the lovely…
Women’s History Month: Advice to Mothers
Observations upon the Proper Nursing of Children, Edinburgh Magazine, June 1761, pp. 304-5. A child, when it comes into the world, is almost a round ball: it is the nurse’s part to assist nature in bringing it to a proper…
Women’s History Month: Seventeenth-Century Agony Aunts
This question and answer appeared in the Athenian Mercury’s regular advice column, where readers wrote in to the London newspaper for advice. It was published on the 7th February 1693. Quest. 4. A Married Lady meets another Womans Husband, stays…
Women’s History Month: Bedding Rituals in Scotland
Bedding rituals have been a popular part of a wedding in many parts of the world and can be found in societies dating back several thousand years. Although the nuances of the ritual vary from place to place, a bedding…
Historical Lessons from the Worsley Case
The last two posts at the blog have told the story of the Worsley scandal. This post explores some of the press reactions to the case and thinks about what sort of emotions it produced it eighteenth century audiences and…
Seymour Dorothy Fleming (1757-1818), part 2
Richard’s vengeance had badly backfired. He and his sexual proclivities were now the talk of London society. For the press, Richard’s hobby of collecting ancient art and showing it off to the public, gave rise to the question of whether…
Seymour Dorothy Fleming (1757-1818), part 1
Born in October 1757, Seymour Dorothy Fleming was the fourth of five children of Irish career soldier, Sir John Fleming and his wife, Jane Colman, granddaughter of the Duke of Somerset. Seymour was the surname of the Somerset dynasty and…
Women’s History: Approaches from the History of Emotion
At particular moments in history, women have thought to be more emotional than men. The Victorians thought women were more emotionally unstable and inclined to hysteria. As late as 1912, one prominent doctor in the UK was arguing that women…