Midland History最新文献

{"title":"Remembering the Dead Poor in the Midlands, 1750s to 1880s","authors":"S. King","doi":"10.1080/0047729X.2022.2126239","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0047729X.2022.2126239","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The deaths of ordinary poor people are, in both the popular imagination and much of the historiography, indelibly linked with pauper funerals, mass graves, anatomization in British medical schools and the striking absence of any of the structures and symbols of remembrance (headstones, death notices, etc.) that we often associate with other classes in 18th and 19th-century England. The dead poor under the Old and New Poor Laws were not remembered except in the sense of leaving behind poor families that might require poor relief, poor children who needed apprenticing or a life story that had to be rehearsed by surviving family members so that their place of settlement could be determined in disputed relief cases. In 2005, Elizabeth Hurren and Steven King talked about the grave and the pauper body but not about the mourners, memorialization and the memory of the dead poor. For this article, a remarkable midland’s dataset has been used to argue that remembrance of the dead poor was more systematic, sustained and meaningful than the current literature allows.","PeriodicalId":41013,"journal":{"name":"Midland History","volume":"47 1","pages":"292 - 312"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41358836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unwelcome Legacies: The Effects of Wardship on Widows in the English Midlands, 1616–1625","authors":"Diane Strange","doi":"10.1080/0047729x.2022.2126236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0047729x.2022.2126236","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT When a tenant of Crown lands died leaving a minor heir, his widow became embroiled in litigation through the Court of Wards and Liveries to retain the custody of her child. This article investigates how women within the midland counties responded to the challenges presented to them by their husbands’ deaths between 1616 and 1625. It uncovers how widows fared at the hands of the court, how they fought to obtain the custody of their children, and how they responded to the pressures of debt. It explores the resistance they faced from male opponents, how they fashioned their arguments, and how their overtures were received in court. By investigating an almost untouched repository of material in The National Archives, London, it offers new insights into female litigation under James I whilst adding to ongoing scholarship about the role of women in the Westminster law courts in the early modern period.","PeriodicalId":41013,"journal":{"name":"Midland History","volume":"47 1","pages":"232 - 248"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41727738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Forging Ahead: Austerity to Prosperity in the Black Country, 1945–1968","authors":"J. Hinks","doi":"10.1080/0047729x.2022.2073522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0047729x.2022.2073522","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41013,"journal":{"name":"Midland History","volume":"47 1","pages":"221 - 221"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44299676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Midland History Summer 2022","authors":"M. Dick","doi":"10.1080/0047729X.2022.2073512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0047729X.2022.2073512","url":null,"abstract":"The Midland History essay prize is awarded each year to an author from any background of a publishable high-quality article. The author must never have published a peer-reviewed article or book chapter in history or a related subject before. We do not necessarily give a prize each year, but as in 2020, we had a number of strong entries, and two prizes were awarded. First prize was awarded to Sarah Jordan, for her essay ‘Edward Bindon Marten: Sanitation Engineering and Industrial Safety in the Black Country’ derived from her dissertation for the MA in West Midlands History at the University of Birmingham. The article adds to our knowledge of engineers and engineering in the nineteenth century beyond the well-known names such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Joseph Bazalgette; it also enhances our understanding of the Black Country, a region which has not been widely explored by historians. The judges noted that Sarah forensically used a wide range of primary sources to reconstruct the life and impact of Marten in his historical context. The second prize went to Janet Berry for ‘Keeping up Appearances in the Nineteenth Century in Moseley, a Middle-Class Birmingham Suburb, 1850–1900’. Based on her University of Birmingham PhD on Moseley, the article brings to life the domestic cultures and aspirations of Victorian middle-class men and women in one local area. With careful attention to recent historical writing, it explores the nature and anxieties surrounding their approaches to the interior decoration of their homes. Three other articles approach different subjects. Elizabeth Norton’s lucid and incisive study: ‘The Continuing Importance of the Manor in Late Sixteenth-Century England: The Example of the Blount Family of the West Midlands’, enhances our understanding of the manor’s continued economic, social and political importance by exploring the influence of a regionally important elite family. Secondly, Samuel Taylor’s, ‘National Identity in Mid-Nineteenth Century Birmingham’ offers a distinctive way of seeing English and British identity, through the words of George Dawson, Joseph Sturge, John Bright and George Edmonds, by applying, for example, the lenses of race and empire. Finally, ‘Women and Politics in Smethwick, 1918–1929’ by Anna Muggeridge, looks at the campaigns of Christabel Pankhurst and Maude Marshall in Smethwick during the general elections of 1918 and 1929, respectively, and the extent to which their campaigning attracted the support of local women. It is great to see that articles are exploring subjects such as the history of women, gender and race as well as uncovering and reinterpreting how individuals shaped the history of the Midlands. As editor, I welcome submissions which reveal the region’s diverse history over two-thousand years and offer different historiographical and cultural perspectives from researchers at different stages of their careers. The next MIDLAND HISTORY 2022, VOL. 47, NO. 2, 111–112 https://doi.org/10.1080","PeriodicalId":41013,"journal":{"name":"Midland History","volume":"47 1","pages":"111 - 112"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41984423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"BCLM: Forging Ahead at Black Country Living Museum","authors":"Simon Briercliffe","doi":"10.1080/0047729x.2022.2073516","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0047729x.2022.2073516","url":null,"abstract":"BCLM: Forging Ahead is a £30 million project at the Black Country Living Museum (BCLM) in Dudley, West Midlands, telling the story of the Black Country region, 1945– 1968. BCLM is an open-air living museum, currently tracing the history of the region between 1712 and 1939, and its interpretation focuses on interactions with costumed historic characters in accurately reproduced historic environments including mines, factories, shops and homes. Forging Ahead is the largest single development since BCLM opened in 1978 and has been supported by several major funders. Alongside new visitor and learning centres the project’s focus is a new historic town and industrial area. The Black Country, comprising the coal and metalworking communities north and west of Birmingham, was central to Britain’s recovery from World War Two. Its industry ran at full capacity during the war, and it was thus ideally placed to meet the manufacturing and export needs of the country in the years after. The Black Country made everything from hammers to washing machines, bicycle saddles to heavy engineering. This capacity, combined with a severe postwar labour shortage, drove up wages and working conditions: for the first time, the Black Country’s working class shared to some degree in its wealth, and the region became one of the country’s most prosperous industrial areas. This was matched by bold new approaches to social democracy and public provision, resulting in the transformation of a notoriously derelict landscape by new housing, town centres and industry (Figure 1). This story will be told using over twenty buildings set in the postwar years. Although changing heritage policy means that the traditional method of moving buildings brickby-brick is less feasible than when the museum first opened, there will be some ‘translocated’ buildings in the project. The most notable is Woodside Library, from Holly Hall, Dudley. Originally opened in 1894 on land donated by the Earl of Dudley, Woodside Library closed in 2008. In its new home at BCLM, it will tell stories of reading and education in the 1960s, including Dudley’s pioneering library service, whose director A. M. Wilson introduced records, paperbacks and children’s clubs to borough libraries. Recreations of lost buildings include Stanton’s music shop from Dudley, Smith Edge Tools from Oldbury, and Langer’s Army & Navy Stores from Stourbridge. We are replicating some buildings that are still in existence to tell other key stories – for instance, an NHS infant welfare centre from Wolverhampton and one of the oldest family-run newsagents in the country, Burgin’s from Dudley.","PeriodicalId":41013,"journal":{"name":"Midland History","volume":"47 1","pages":"208 - 210"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44258877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Erasmus Darwin’s Gardens. Medicine, Agriculture and the Sciences in the Eighteenth Century","authors":"E. Mitchell","doi":"10.1080/0047729x.2022.2073520","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0047729x.2022.2073520","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41013,"journal":{"name":"Midland History","volume":"47 1","pages":"217 - 218"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45953876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Chebsey Parish Local History Society","authors":"Sue Wardle","doi":"10.1080/0047729x.2022.2073517","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0047729x.2022.2073517","url":null,"abstract":"Chebsey Parish Local History Society was formed in 2018 by two friends following a lively discussion of some historical photographs at a local community drop-in, which revealed a keen interest in the Parish’s past. Two quickly became four, but even now, four years later, the actual group consists of only six people with ad hoc informal helpers providing practical support for the group’s activities. Before the pandemic, meetings were weekly. The focus is solely on Chebsey Parish, which is a small rural parish (population 566 in 2011) situated between Eccleshall and Stone in Staffordshire, made up of several small villages and hamlets. Little development has taken place, and the parish has remained relatively unchanged. The group does not have a chairperson or other officers – roles have evolved based on the strengths, experience and likes (and dislikes) of each member – and currently is small enough to function well in this organic way. An additional strength is a commitment to friendship and respect within the group and support for each other. Affiliation to another community group (Friends of Norton Bridge) provides banking and other services where needed. The initial aim of the society was to establish an archive of photographs of people and places in Chebsey Parish and to share these through a series of booklets and exhibitions. This was given an initial boost by the permanent loan of a late local historian’s collection and other present and past residents soon agreed to share their photographs, resulting in a searchable database of over one thousand scanned images, which is currently held by the society. The first ‘Photographic History of Chebsey Parish’ on the theme of ‘People’ was published in 2019 (Figure 1), accompanied by a very well-attended photographic exhibition. In 2018, rather ambitiously for such a fledgling group, a bid was made to the Heritage Lottery Fund’s ‘First World War: Then and Now’ programme, set up to mark the centenary of the ending of the First World War. The bid was successful, and the eighteen-month project, entitled ‘Chebsey Parish in World War I and Beyond’ aimed to raise awareness of the impact of both world wars and included trips, talks, events and exhibitions. The project also researched the impact of war specifically on Chebsey parish. This research, conducted by Justine Pick of the University of Birmingham, was published in 2022 in two booklets, detailing the findings for each of the two conflicts (Figure 1). The research showed that small rural communities were no less impacted by both wars than their urban neighbours. World War One appeared to take a larger toll in lives lost and coupled with the influenza pandemic of 1918/19, it could be argued that this period had greater impact on the community leaving widows, widowers and orphans.","PeriodicalId":41013,"journal":{"name":"Midland History","volume":"47 1","pages":"211 - 213"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47174752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Edward Bindon Marten: Sanitation Engineering and Industrial Safety in the Black Country","authors":"Sarah L. Jordan","doi":"10.1080/0047729X.2022.2073515","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0047729X.2022.2073515","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores the career of Edward Bindon Marten, a civil and mechanical engineer based in the Black Country during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It focuses on his role in sanitation engineering and industrial safety. In order to place him within the context of his time, the sanitary state of the nation and the Black Country is examined, as are steam boiler explosions including their consequences and prevention. Marten’s work supplying clean water, building an effective sewerage system, inspecting steam boilers and undertaking accident analysis for coroners’ inquests is explored. His non-technical abilities are also analysed, including his talent for communicating his knowledge and advice to a wide audience in an engaging manner. The article concludes that Marten made an important contribution to improving Black Country sanitary conditions, and to Black Country and nationwide industrial safety, and was a significant figure in the Black Country and beyond.","PeriodicalId":41013,"journal":{"name":"Midland History","volume":"47 1","pages":"150 - 168"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46146251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"National Identity in Mid-Nineteenth Century Birmingham","authors":"Samuel. Taylor","doi":"10.1080/0047729X.2022.2073514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0047729X.2022.2073514","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Most current academic investigations of national identity by Linda Colley and Peter Mandler et al, are substantially based on the experience of London. This article focuses on how national identity was perceived and represented by four individuals in mid-nineteenth-century Birmingham. Birmingham’s significance as an international manufacturing centre; a centre for campaigns for franchise reform and the abolition of slavery; and a location for migration meant that national identity was a matter of great interest. These four individuals were Joseph Sturge, a middle-class radical abolitionist; John Bright, the Liberal MP; George Edmonds, a campaigner from an artisanal background; and George Dawson, an influential preacher. The article draws out similarities and differences in their views by investigating how they saw the nation and who they thought belonged to it. The article moves beyond the London-centric historiography of national identity by assessing national identity discourses in an important provincial town.","PeriodicalId":41013,"journal":{"name":"Midland History","volume":"47 1","pages":"129 - 149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49412141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Continuing Importance of the Manor in Late Sixteenth-Century England: The Example of the Blount Family of the West Midlands","authors":"E. Norton","doi":"10.1080/0047729X.2022.2073513","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0047729X.2022.2073513","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The parish is acknowledged by historians to be the political unit of fundamental importance to the people of early modern England, with the manor, which had been central to medieval life, traditionally viewed as in decline. Recent work has countered this view of the manor, identifying its continuing vitality in local affairs until well into the early modern period. Using the case study of the Blounts, who were a prominent West Midlands gentry family in the sixteenth century, this article will consider the evidence for the continuing economic, social and political role of the manor, alongside that of the parish, providing further evidence for the continuing importance of the manor in early modern life and as a political and economic unit of some significance.","PeriodicalId":41013,"journal":{"name":"Midland History","volume":"47 1","pages":"113 - 128"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45485707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}