Institute of Historical Research, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street
IHR fortnightly, Fridays at 17.15 in Room 203 (John S. Cohen Room) All are welcome
22 January
Lucy Bland (Anglia Ruskin) Interracial Relationships and the “Brown Baby Problem”: White British Women, Black GIs and their Mixed Race Offspring in World War II
When GIs arrived in Britain in 1942 in preparation for an invasion of France, amongst their numbers were 130,000 American Americans. Many British women formed relationships with these black GIs, resulting in the birth of 1700 to 2,000 mixed-race children. Despite racial prejudice and stigma, approximately half of the mothers kept their children. The African-American press named these children “brown babies”. To the African-American newspaper Pittsburgh Courier “the entire ‘Brown Baby’ question is one of the most controversial subjects in this country [USA] today. It is a question that involves two great nations – the United States of America and Great Britain.” The nature of this “controversial subject” is the focus of this talk – a subject that has received little historical attention but at the time filled the pages of the press both sides of the Atlantic.
5 February
Amanda Wilkinson (Essex) Women and Work in Provincial English Towns: 1851-1911
The census is arguably the most important source that we have for carrying out large scale studies of the changing patterns of women’s work in Victorian Britain. Following the launch of the I-CeM project it is now possible to carry out research on a broader scale than ever before, exploring in greater depth the information contained within the censuses. This paper examines the differing experiences and employment patterns for working class women in a number of provincial towns and cities spread across England between 1851 and 1911, and asks how reliable the census is as a source for social and economic historians.
19 February
Cara Driver (KCL) Battered but not Broken: Women’s Resistance to Marital Violence in Post-Independence Ireland, 1922-1970
In the years following Irish independence, abused wives had little hope to escape their violent marriages: they no access to divorce facilities and few legal remedies; most did not work outside of the home and were thus kept in a state of financial dependence; and social and religious pressures dissuaded them from seeking formal or informal marriage separations. However, as this paper will discuss, many women actively resisted the violence of their husbands. Although their options were limited, abused wives fought back with retaliatory violence, sought outside help, and took legal action against their husbands. In the process of resisting their husbands’ violence, abused women involved a wide variety of people in their private plight and drew upon a broad network of support. As this paper will argue, marital violence blurred the boundaries between ‘private’ and ‘public’ behaviour because so many people outside of the conjugal home were forced to confront the issue.
4 March
Tim Stretton (Saint Mary’s University, Nova Scotia/Leverhulme Visiting Professor, Cardiff University) Married Women Pleading their Cases in 17th Century England
This paper uses the extraordinary testimony of Mary Whettenhall from East Peckham in Kent–who was prosecuted for adultery, incest and slander after accusing her father in law of rape and theft–to explore the constraints married women laboured under in the seventeenth century and the limited legal options and remedies available to them. It identifies two divergent patterns of change over the seventeenth century, setting the expansion of equitable possibilities against a narrowing of overall legal options, and reflects on the implications of these developments for the exercising of female agency.
18 March
Rebecca Jennings (Honorary Fellow: Macquarie University, Sydney/Visiting Research Fellow: Kings College, London) Lesbian mothers and practices of conception in post-war Britain and Australia
The post-war period witnessed significant shifts in the experience of lesbian mothering in Britain and Australia. Prior to the 1970s, the typical experience was of a woman who had conceived children in the context of a heterosexual marriage, before recognising or acting upon same-sex desires. For these women, resolving potential conflicts between their roles as wives and mothers and their same-sex desires could pose significant challenges, and some women chose to remain married while others faced contentious custody battles for their children. A small number of women in the 1950s and 1960s sought to become mothers in the context of same-sex relationships, through adoption or extra-marital conception, but it was not until the 1970s that this became an increasingly common experience. The development of reproductive technologies in this period, combined with new ideological approaches to the family, encouraged a growing number of women to explore the possibility of conceiving children in the context of a lesbian relationship. Drawing on oral history interviews with British and Australian women, press reports and other written accounts, this paper will trace the shifting ways in which lesbians became mothers in this period and explore a range of discourses of lesbian motherhood.
Conveners: Dr Kelly Boyd (IHR), Dr Anna Davin, Dr Lucy Delap (Cambridge), Dr Amy Erickson (Cambridge), Professor Laura Gowing (KCL), Professor Clare Midgley (Sheffield Hallam), Professor Jinty Nelson (KCL), Dr Krisztina Robert (Roehampton), Professor Pat Thane (KCL/ICBH), Professor Cornelie Usborne (IHR/Roehampton)
