Category Archives: Women’s history

Women's history

Defiant, almost to the end – Alice Clark

October 28, 2006 – 8:03 pm

Roy Booth over on Early Modern Whale has a fascinating post about the gallows priest Henry Goodcole.

Although it was one of his subjects I found most poignant – Alice Clark, who would be burnt at the stake for killing her husband:

“Uppon Wensday morning, on which shee was executed, there assembled unto Newgate multitudes of people to see her, and some conferred with her, but little good they did on her, for shee was of a stout angry disposition.” Goodcole decides that, like Barnadine in Measure for Measure, she was, in her state of mind, “no fitting guest for the Table of the Lord Iesus”. He then plays his last card: “thereupon, I made as though I would have excluded her thence, in denying the benefit of the holy Communion, of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, inferring the benefit of the unspeakeable blesse, by the worthy receiving of it by Repentance and Faith, and the most woefull malediction to all impenitent and unworthy receivers. Whereupon, it pleased God, so to mollifie her heart, that teares from her eyes, and truth from her tongue proceeded, as may appeare by this her ensuing Confession at the very Stake”.

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Early modern history Women's history

Old Mother Red Cap and Mother Shipton

October 21, 2006 – 7:08 pm

These are two of the lost “famous female” pubs of London – a loss chronicled today by Marina Warner in the Guardian.

…when the old hags drop from view, so does an idea of human vagaries and fates, of idiosyncratic and oddball people, with strange histories and surprising fortunes – good and bad. Pub names and signs are some of the oldest surviving traces of exchanges and folklore in a particular place. More and more names and phrases in the public arena are tied to adverts and commodities – global creep of meanings for everybody and no one. They’ve gone because no pub owner wants to admit that there’s any link between disreputable winos and what they are selling. Perhaps they’ve disappeared, too, because we’ve become sensitive to the sight of derelicts with their tins of Strongbow and plastic bagged bottles and don’t want to be reminded. Perhaps the old hag is just too rude for the times.

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Women's history

A site to explore

October 18, 2006 – 11:32 pm

… Bluestocking Women Writers in the 18th century.

Great content, and in interesting exploration of hyperlink structure.

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History Women's history

History Carnival – with lots of women’s history

October 15, 2006 – 10:58 pm

Now up on Clioweb History Carnival No XLI. A great collection, and plenty of women’s history – some of it even positive history about women’s successes (plus the odd infanticide case…)

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Women's history

Powerful women of the Pacific

October 14, 2006 – 11:04 pm

One of the new exhibitions at the British Museum, Power & Taboo: Sacred Objects from the Pacific, has some lovely images of powerful women.

There is a reproduction of a drawing of Paetini, who was “thought to be the granddaughter of Keatonui, the chief who met Russian expedition of 1804 in the Marquesas”. Important women such as her had up to three chief husbands, and “a number of secondary husbands (pekio) often drawn from the servant class”. They often carried out domestic work. All children were considered to be “fathered” by the most important husbands.

One of the pekios drawn in 1804 doesn’t look very domestic. Mufau, it is said, was greatly admired for his physique, tatooing and warrior prowess. Expedition artist drew and measured every aspecg of his body for comparison with Greek statues. Must have really upset the visiting European men, one suspects…

I’ve written more about the exhibition on My London Your London. Why the fearsome gods? is the question I’m asking.

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Early modern history Women's history

Pepys’s abuse – it probably went on for years

October 14, 2006 – 9:55 am

Of course that’s not how The Times puts it, at least not in the headline or intro – using instead “lost lover” and “Deb the maid” … and they wonder why they have trouble getting and keeping women readers.

Nonetheless, there is an interesting story, even if it is one, quite likely, of continuing abuse by a much older man of a young woman almost entirely within his power.

Research now shows that Pepys re-established contact with the maid’s family three years later and suggests that the dirty diarist had the opportunity to resume the affair….
Willet married Jeremiah Wells, a theology graduate, in January 1670. Wells soon wrote to Pepys to ask if the writer could use his contacts in the Royal Navy to get him a job. Pepys obliged, securing Wells a job as a ship’s chaplain. The diarist therefore knew not only where his old flame lived, but also that her husband was away at sea.
Dr Loveman said that there was no direct evidence that Pepys returned to his mistress, but it would not have been out of character. “Given Pepys’s past obsession with Deb, his continued contact with her family raises suspicions about the nature of their relationship,” she said.

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