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Electrical Entrepreneur? – The Life and work of Henry Massingham
by Kayt Button In the 1880s, long before the concept of Dragons Den, when the electrical supply industry was born it was up to pioneers, experimental entrepreneurs and evangelists who believed that electricity would change the world, to nurture it from a scientific possibility to a desirable and profitable commodity. One such man who believed…
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“In their reckless lust they forget their sex” – LGBT history in the Middle Ages
by Tim Wingard – @Physiololgus Tim is a graduate of the University of York’s Centre for Medieval Studies. His research interests include issues of historical sexuality, the latin bestiary, and medieval travel writing. There is a tendency in popular histories and in the teaching of the subject at school to assume that the Middle Ages were an inherently heterosexual…
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The Case of Betty John – gender ambiguity in a late eighteenth century small-claims court
By Alex Wakelam – @A_Wakelam Alex is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of History. His thesis is entitled “Imprisonment for Debt and Women’s Financial Failure in the Long Eighteenth Century”. Before the eighteenth century, it was potentially possible to stand at the window of an English townhouse and gaze out across the milieu of different classes, ages, and ethnicities…
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Pylons and Protest – invoking the Marmite metaphor of Britishness
by Kayt Button Whatever the period of history, Pylons seem to provoke the marmite response – either love ‘em, like The Pylon Appreciation Society, or hate ‘em like The Friends of The Lake District who are currently protesting against pylons planned for Ravenglass in Cumbria. Curiously enough, Marmite was invented in the late nineteenth century,…
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Crying Wolf in the early middle ages?
By Robert Evans @R_AH_Evans The chronicles and histories of the early middle ages have a reputation for describing somewhat unusual events. In his history of contemporary events, for example, Prudentius, bishop of Troyes (d.861) describes how, in 846 ‘Wolves attacked and devoured with complete audacity the inhabitants of the western part of Gaul. Indeed, in some…
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