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The Battle of Blore Heath: Sources, Historiography and Implications for the Outbreak of Conflict, 1459-60 Midland History Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Tim Thornton
Discussion of the battle of Blore Heath (23 September 1459) has focused on the role of Cheshire gentry. This reflects a historiographical tradition that began early in the sixteenth century with Ed...
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Views of England and Wales: A New Online Collection Midland History Pub Date : 2024-01-18 Juliet Bailey, Alister Sutherland, William Farrell
Published in Midland History (Ahead of Print, 2024)
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The Family of Aethelwig, Abbot of Evesham 1058–78 and Acting Justiciar of the Mercian Province Midland History Pub Date : 2024-01-18 Sally Dickson
This article arises from research into people named in the Worcestershire Domesday Book. Counties were administrative units rather than limits on landholding, and estates could stretch across many ...
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Bricks, Brickmaking, and the Economies of the Old Poor Law: Staffordshire 1750–1834 Midland History Pub Date : 2024-01-15 Alannah Tomkins
This article considers the place of brickmaking as an activity supported or promoted by parish poor relief. Parochial work schemes were typically founded on agricultural work, textile manufacturing...
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Economics and the Cult of Death in Late Medieval England: The Guild of St. George in Nottingham, 1459-1546 Midland History Pub Date : 2024-01-11 Richard Goddard, George Smalley
This paper examines the decline of the fraternity of St. George in Nottingham between 1459 and 1546. It uses the guild’s accounts in conjunction with Nottingham’s rich surviving documentary materia...
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A Ward Level Economic Topography of Sixteenth-Century Coventry Midland History Pub Date : 2024-01-10 Donald Leech
Subsidy rolls of the 1540s and 1560s from the collection of Thomas Gregory, Coventry city clerk from 1528 to 1570, provide relative comparisons among Coventry’s wards over time. The various wards r...
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‘That so Ancient a City Should Have Elected a Woman as Mayor Is a Sign of the times’: Women and Local Government in Worcester before 1939 Midland History Pub Date : 2023-11-20 Anna Muggeridge
This article explores women’s experiences of local government in Worcester between 1907 and 1939. The city saw a limited suffrage movement, and to date has never elected a female MP. Yet while wome...
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Introduction: New Perspectives on Worcester Since the Seventeenth Century Midland History Pub Date : 2023-11-20 N. C. Fleming
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 3, 2023)
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Oliver Cromwell and the Devil in Worcester Midland History Pub Date : 2023-11-20 Darren Oldridge
On the eve of the Battle of Worcester in 1651, Oliver Cromwell was reputed to have sold his soul to the Devil. This article examines the construction of this legend and places it in the larger cont...
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Freemasons and Their Contribution to the Economic Development of Worcester c. 1750–1850 Midland History Pub Date : 2023-11-20 Alan T. Robertson
This article addresses a topic which has been neglected by academic historians – namely, Freemasonry as a business network. Between 1750 and 1850 431 men, predominantly drawn from the business sect...
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Worcester as a Pioneering Provincial Centre of Medical Publishing and Reform, 1828–1854 Midland History Pub Date : 2023-11-20 Howard Cox
The fact that Worcester Infirmary provided the location for the founding of the Provincial (later British) Medical Association has long been commemorated as a highlight of the city’s history. This ...
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Empire, Community, and the Limits of ‘Sea-Mindedness’: The Navy League and Worcester, c. 1896–1914 Midland History Pub Date : 2023-11-20 N. C. Fleming
Worcester was the site of one of the earliest branches of the Navy League. It attracted the support of leading political figures in the area, as well as working- and lower-middle class members. It ...
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Rent Arrears, Food Shortages and Evacuees: How War Enters the Worcester Home in Two World Wars Midland History Pub Date : 2023-11-20 Maggie Andrews
The strong military traditions of Worcester may mean the city’s engagement in two world wars is often thought about in terms of the soldiers or even the ammunition produced at Blackpole Munitions W...
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The Soho Manufactory, Mint and Foundry, West Midlands. Where Boulton, Watt and Murdoch Made History Midland History Pub Date : 2023-09-11 Malcolm Dick
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 2, 2023)
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A Spark of Revolution. William Small, Thomas Jefferson and James Watt. The Curious Connection Between the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution Midland History Pub Date : 2023-09-04 Ruth M. Larsen
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 2, 2023)
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Midland History Summer 2023 Midland History Pub Date : 2023-08-30 Malcolm Dick
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 2, 2023)
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The Victoria History of the Counties of England. A History of the County of Stafford: Volume XII, Tamworth and Drayton Bassett Midland History Pub Date : 2023-08-30 Malcolm Dick
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 2, 2023)
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Changes in Attitudes to Immigrants in Britain, 1841-1921: From Foreigner to Alien Midland History Pub Date : 2023-08-23 Robert Lawson
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 2, 2023)
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A High Street Inheritance: Henley-in-Arden in 1419-20 Midland History Pub Date : 2023-08-09 Steven Bassett, Sarah Wager
The contents of a previously overlooked rental of the borough of Henley-in-Arden, composed in 1419–20 when the co-heirs to the Freville lands were trying to decide how to share out their inheritanc...
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Out of the Land of Ice and Fire: Icelandic Immigrants in the Midlands During the Fifteenth Century Midland History Pub Date : 2023-06-06 Scott C. Lomax
English towns during the medieval period have, in recent years, become increasingly recognised as places of diversity, with some of their inhabitants born in several European regions. Studies of im...
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Women, Late Chartism, and the Land Plan in Nottinghamshire Midland History Pub Date : 2023-05-30 Matthew Roberts
This article explores the relationship between working-class women and Chartism, focusing chiefly on Nottingham. It argues that the opportunities for women to participate in the movement were much ...
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Local Magistracy and the Rule of the Major Generals: Robert Beake Coventry’s Godly Mayor 1655-6 Midland History Pub Date : 2023-05-29 Stewart Fergusson
This paper will explore a local aspect of what Bernard Capp characterized as England’s Culture Wars. Robert Beake, mayor of Coventry in 1655/6, worked closely with the region’s ‘Major General’, Edw...
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The Birmingham Pen Factories, and Their Female Workforce, 1850-1914 Midland History Pub Date : 2023-05-29 Joan Turner
From the mid-nineteenth century, the Birmingham pen factories supplied the world with steel pens. The industry was completely reliant on the high productivity levels and compliance of its predomina...
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Midlands Industrialists, Liberal Education and the Founding of the University of Warwick Midland History Pub Date : 2023-05-24 Josh Patel
The University of Warwick has been subjected to two apparently contradictory critiques. The first, associated with social historian EP Thompson, is that the university had been captured by a cabal ...
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The Private Life of William Shakespeare Midland History Pub Date : 2023-03-15 Francesca Rhodes
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 1, 2023)
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It’s Your History: Birmingham People’s History Archive (BPHA) Midland History Pub Date : 2023-03-15 Gill Binnie
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 1, 2023)
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Stratford-Upon-Avon Wills 1348-1701 [2 Vols] Midland History Pub Date : 2023-03-13 Joe Saunders
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 1, 2023)
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New Hall: The History of England in One House Midland History Pub Date : 2023-03-03 Justine Pick
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 1, 2023)
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The Buildings of England: Birmingham and the Black Country Midland History Pub Date : 2023-03-03 Alexander Hibberts
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 1, 2023)
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Editorial Midland History Spring 2023 Midland History Pub Date : 2023-03-02 Malcolm Dick
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 1, 2023)
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The Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Society and its Transactions Midland History Pub Date : 2023-03-01 Nigel Tringham
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 1, 2023)
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The Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgwood and the Transformation of Britain Midland History Pub Date : 2023-02-27 Malcolm Dick
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 1, 2023)
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The Rise and Decline of England’s Watchmaking Industry, 1550-1930 Midland History Pub Date : 2023-02-27 Rebecca Struthers
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 1, 2023)
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The Forced Loan and Men Fit to Serve as Soldiers, 1523 Midland History Pub Date : 2023-02-27 Ian Atherton
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 1, 2023)
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The March of Ewyas. The Story of Longtown Castle and the de Lacy Dynasty Midland History Pub Date : 2023-02-27 John Hunt
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 1, 2023)
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Medieval Birmingham. People and places, 1070–1553 Midland History Pub Date : 2023-02-27 Christopher Dyer
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 1, 2023)
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Herefordshire Farming through Time. Fellers, Tillers and Cider Makers Midland History Pub Date : 2023-02-27 Charles Watkins
Published in Midland History (Vol. 48, No. 1, 2023)
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Murder in a Landscape: The Significance of the Death of Henry Flackett in the Staffordshire Moorlands in 1515 Midland History Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Christopher Dyer
ABSTRACT The history of crime offers us insights into private vengeance, community cohesion, social tensions, the defence of honour and property disputes. Henry Flackett of Stanshope in Alstonefield, Staffordshire, was killed by three assailants known to him in 1515, provoked by a contested heap of manure. A combination of sources provides an unusually vivid and detailed picture of the crime, in which
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‘The Shame of Me and My Poor Ruinate House’: The Fourth Earl of Huntingdon and the Decline of Aristocratic Power in Elizabethan Leicestershire Midland History Pub Date : 2023-02-20 Richard Cust
ABSTRACT This article focusses on the Leicester parliamentary election of 1601 as a moment that exposed the rapid decline in the power of an aristocratic family. It analyses the various components of the third earl of Huntingdon’s dominance of Leicestershire for much of Elizabeth’s reign and the causes of the unravelling of this following his death in 1595. Foremost among these were the political failings
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‘We Did Not Go’; Domestic Sociability in Early Nineteenth-Century Lutterworth, Leicestershire Midland History Pub Date : 2023-02-20 Denise Greany
ABSTRACT This study of the diary of a middling woman in a rural provincial location in the 1820s, considers the operation of domestic visit culture and argues that the domestic realm was more expansive, productive, and heterosocial than other studies have suggested, characterized by widespread female mobility and agency. This article suggests that care for the sick provided as significant a motivation
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‘The Fall of Needwood’: Social Dimensions of Landscape Change in Eighteenth-Century Staffordshire Midland History Pub Date : 2023-02-07 Thomas Banbury
ABSTRACT The 1801 enclosure of Needwood Forest by the Duchy of Lancaster demonstrates the differences in environmental thought across different social classes in Staffordshire. By comparing correspondence and poems from belle-lettres society in Lichfield and Stafford with petitions and pamphlets produced by tenant farmers and cottagers of Needwood, two different motivations for anti-enclosure action
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Canvassing, Constituents And Cobblers: Richard Brinsley Sheridan As MP For Stafford 1780-1806 And Late Eighteenth-Century Electioneering Midland History Pub Date : 2023-02-02 James Peate
ABSTRACT This article explores Whig MP, playwright, theatre manager, press manager and orator Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s relationship with his constituency of Stafford and his role as a constituency MP. It addresses the web of patronage that was important for obtaining and maintaining a freeman borough seat such as Stafford in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It considers a range
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Midland History Autumn 2022 Midland History Pub Date : 2022-11-03 Malcolm Dick
Published in Midland History (Vol. 47, No. 3, 2022)
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Remembering the Dead Poor in the Midlands, 1750s to 1880s Midland History Pub Date : 2022-10-09 Steven Andrew King
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
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Unwelcome Legacies: The Effects of Wardship on Widows in the English Midlands, 1616–1625 Midland History Pub Date : 2022-10-06 Diane Strange
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
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‘Transforming Sorrow into a Thousand Flowers’: Refashioning a Midlands’ Celebration of Death from the 1890s Midland History Pub Date : 2022-09-23 Elizabeth T. Hurren
ABSTRACT A cultural revival in funeral floriography – the secret language of flowers – is a novel feature of modernity neglected by historiography. A ‘Russian flu’ pandemic which swept across Britain in the 1890s was a commercial catalyst for the floral industry. An excess in mortality of 125,000 people, reflected how 60% of the population were infected with influenza between 1889 and 1895. The floristry
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‘John Duncalf the Man that Did Rott Both Hands & Leggs’: Chronicle of a Staffordshire Death Retold in the Long Eighteenth Century Midland History Pub Date : 2022-09-23 Ian Atherton
ABSTRACT In 1677 John Duncalf, a Staffordshire labourer, fell ill after falsely swearing that he had not stolen a bible. He was visited by droves as he lay helpless, the flesh of his legs and arms mysteriously rotting away until they dropped off and he died. His suffering and death were publicized and debated, and his case was recirculated throughout the eighteenth century. This article analyses the
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Death, Grief and the Victorian GP: A Case Study of Edward Wrench of Baslow, Derbyshire, 1862 - 1898 Midland History Pub Date : 2022-09-22 Carol Anne Beardmore
ABSTRACT While historians such as Anne Digby and Irvine Loudon have explored and examined the processes of general medical practice in the nineteenth century, we still know relatively about individual doctors' emotional responses to death, grief and dying. The diaries of Edward Wrench, a Derbyshire GP, act as a lens through which to examine his responses when faced with the deaths of his own children
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Introduction: Death, Memory and Commemoration in the English Midlands, 1600-1900 Midland History Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Steven Andrew King
ABSTRACT Our special issue makes five new contributions. Firstly, methodological advances including the need to focus on the boundaries between ‘active’ and passive memory and on the theoretical perspectives of the wider discipline of memory studies. Secondly, the importance of ‘telling the dead’, through intricate stories. Thirdly, we capture collectively the importance of ‘legacy’ for the dying and
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Inhuming and Exhuming: John Baskerville’s Death, Burial and Post-Mortem Life Midland History Pub Date : 2022-09-21 Caroline Archer-Parré
ABSTRACT Baskerville, with its well-considered design and elegant proportions, is one of the world’s most widely used and influential typefaces. It was created by John Baskerville (1707–75) of Birmingham, an eighteenth-century typographer, printer and industrialist; an Enlightenment figure with a worldwide reputation who changed the course of type design. Whilst printing historians have lauded Baskerville
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Edward Bindon Marten: Sanitation Engineering and Industrial Safety in the Black Country Midland History Pub Date : 2022-06-09 Sarah Jordan
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
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Midland History Summer 2022 Midland History Pub Date : 2022-05-19 Malcolm Dick
Published in Midland History (Vol. 47, No. 2, 2022)
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Keeping up Appearances in the Nineteenth Century in Moseley, a Middle-Class Birmingham Suburb, 1850–1900 Midland History Pub Date : 2022-05-17 Janet Berry
ABSTRACT This article explores how middle-class homes in Moseley, a suburb of Birmingham, were divided up, used, decorated, and furnished towards the end of the nineteenth century. It addresses issues of status, class, gender, the separate spheres ideology, new technology and mass production, and consumerism. It uncovers how a particular social group lived as individuals and families and reveals important
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National Identity in Mid-Nineteenth Century Birmingham Midland History Pub Date : 2022-05-13 Samuel Taylor
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
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BCLM: Forging Ahead at Black Country Living Museum Midland History Pub Date : 2022-05-10 Simon Briercliffe
Published in Midland History (Vol. 47, No. 2, 2022)
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Forging Ahead: Austerity to Prosperity in the Black Country, 1945–1968 Midland History Pub Date : 2022-05-09 John Hinks
Published in Midland History (Vol. 47, No. 2, 2022)
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Chebsey Parish Local History Society Midland History Pub Date : 2022-05-09 Sue Wardle
Published in Midland History (Vol. 47, No. 2, 2022)
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The Continuing Importance of the Manor in Late Sixteenth-Century England: The Example of the Blount Family of the West Midlands Midland History Pub Date : 2022-05-09 Elizabeth Norton
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
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The Industrious Child Worker: Child Labour and Childhood in Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1750–1900 Midland History Pub Date : 2022-05-06 Guy Sjögren
Published in Midland History (Vol. 47, No. 2, 2022)
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Worcestershire’s First Historian: Thomas Habington of Hindlip (1560–1647) Midland History Pub Date : 2022-05-05 Stephen K. Roberts
Published in Midland History (Vol. 47, No. 2, 2022)