Category: Archive

  • 8. School attendance medals: a status symbol?

    8. School attendance medals: a status symbol?

    By Helen Sunderland (@hl_sunderland) In the first decades of mass schooling in late nineteenth-century Britain, attendance was a persistent issue. Parents often resented having to send their children to school, which for many meant forfeiting much-needed income. To improve attendance levels, education authorities rewarded children who had spotless attendance records with medals. A year without…

  • 9. 1891 Map from Populations Past

    9. 1891 Map from Populations Past

    By Dr Alice Reid (@amrcampop) This map, from PopulationsPast.org, shows the sex ratio among working-age adults in 1891, calculated from census data. Areas in red have more men than women and areas in blue have more women than men. Geographical differences in the sex ratio reflect nineteenth century migration patterns and employment opportunities which pulled…

  • Critiquing cultural spaces: an interview with Alice Procter of the Uncomfortable Art Tours

    Critiquing cultural spaces: an interview with Alice Procter of the Uncomfortable Art Tours

    By Alice Procter (@aaprocter) and  Mobeen Hussain (@amhuss27) Alice Procter is a historian of material culture based at UCL. She has six years of tour guiding experience at heritage sites and galleries and runs Uncomfortable Art Tours, podcasts and writes under the umbrella of The Exhibitionist. I had the chance to interview you her about her work…

  • 10. A Ticket for the Gift of the King’s Cure

    10. A Ticket for the Gift of the King’s Cure

    By Christopher Whittell (@ChrisWhittell)  The object for today’s calendar is this entry ticket to the ceremony of the Healing of the King’s Evil, issued during the reign of Charles II.  Due to the very high demand to attend the ceremony, it was given to invited guests, whom were sufferers from a disease called scrofula, as…

  • 11. The not so invisible college of Cambridge

    11. The not so invisible college of Cambridge

    By Anna Gibbons This picture depicts the first permanent home of the ‘invisible college’ of Cambridge. The National Extension College (NEC) was set up in 1963 by Michael Young. He wanted to help adult learners who needed a ‘second chance’, the generation who had had their educations disrupted by the Second World War. He envisaged…