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1. Blackmail, murder, and a trail gone cold
By Carys Brown | @HistoryCarys 5 December 1730 Dear Sir, You are desired to leave 19 pounds in the church yard under the further…tree by one a clock to morrow night if you put any Watsh on [or] Disobey our commande by G-d you and your family shall be outerly Destroyd and your house burnt as Jacks was…
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2. The hidden luxury of the artisan casa in Sixteenth-Century Venice
By Zoe Farrell | @zoeffarrell In 1534, a man named Michele died in Venice and an inventory was taken of his possessions. Proceeding through the different rooms in his casa, Michele’s inventory details a large variety of material goods. Starting with precious objects of gold and silver, it proceeds to detail his fine clothing and furniture. From this…
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3. A Mother to her Son: Isabella of Angoulême and King Henry III
By Emily Ward | @1066unicorn How did Isabella of Angoulême, queen of England, greet her son, King Henry III, when she wrote to him in the years following the nine-year-old boy’s succession to the throne in 1217? A desire to answer this question, and to resolve two conflicting modern transcriptions of a letter sent from Isabella to Henry…
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4. Journal of William Dixon, 1811
By Nicholas Dixon One of the most memorable sets of items I have found in an archive is the journals and notebooks of William Dixon (1756-1824), a farmer from the village of Holton le Moor in Lincolnshire. Deposited in the Lincolnshire Archives, 54 of these roughly bound volumes survive, some of them with pages recycled…
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A Captive Audience?: Prisons as Public History
By Tom Smith (@TomEtesonSmith) Wandering the corridors of Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, it’s difficult not to feel a chill down your spine. The paint peeling from the walls, the crumbling brickwork, and the abandoned operating theatre, complete with a giant broken surgical light, all contribute to a disconcerting sense that you are on the…
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