- The Past and the Present What is perhaps the biggest challenge for social historians is to wrap our heads around the continuum of time: around the past and the present. We study the past even as we live in the present and we struggle to imagine what it was like when our ancestors walked the earth. Think about that for […]
- CSI – The Prologue Journey back only a short time in history, when esteemed judges and assembled juries had only the testimony of witnesses and sometimes the coerced confessions of the accused to rely on, and there can be little doubt that every now and then innocent parties were executed, and the guilty went free. These were the days […]
- 10 Examples of Fake News from History This month, Facebook began prompting users in fourteen countries to read a guide on the fake news phenomenon, with a list of tips that included being sceptical about headlines and checking the source of the story. ‘False news is harmful to our community, it makes the world less informed, and it erodes trust,’ Facebook’s Adam Mosseri […]
- 300 years ago in England Once upon a time, about 300 years ago, my British ancestors were farmers, living off the land, battling against nature to support their families through hard manual labour. Bolton-upon-Swale, Yorkshire My seventh great-grandparents Allan and Ann Layfield were farmers in the small village of Bolton-upon-Swale in the Richmondshire district of North Yorkshire. They married sometime around the […]
- Help Wanted: Sobriety, Diligence and Honesty Required Like us, our ancestors, unless they were independently wealthy, had to work to put food on the table and to keep a roof over their heads. For our earlier ancestors, this often meant working the land or fishing the seas but when the industrial revolution brought change to the employment landscape, the growing number of […]
- Leisure in Historical Britain Over the generations, the ways in which our ancestors enjoyed their leisure hours slowly changed. Not only did the activities become less localized, but the activities themselves transformed over time. In earlier years, leisure activities were more community oriented but the changing landscape during the years of the industrial revolution led to activities being more […]
- Public Lending Libraries While the concept of a library is as old as the written word, early libraries were only accessible to a select few. Throughout the Middle Ages, libraries were established, often in monasteries but access was strictly limited. Manuscripts of this era were created by the labourious process of hand copying, making them very valuable and books […]
- Farmer in the Dales And so it was that my fourth great-grandfather, Thomas Bulmer, came into the world in late December of 1782, just as the American War of Independence was coming to an end. It had been a very expensive war for England to fight and Britain was in debt. The British Parliament levied a Stamp Duty against […]
- Gypsies Tramps and Thieves Gypsies tramps and thieves We’d hear it from the people of the town They’d call us gypsies tramps and thieves But every night all the men would come around And lay their money down ~Gypsies Tramps and Thieves by Cher 1971 Gypsy and Romani Travellers A unique people, the Romani do not have the tradition of […]
- The Ghost Days On 24 February 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull or charter that began with the words Inter gravissimas 1Translation: ‘Among the gravest…’ to reform the Julian calendar then in common use in Europe so that the seasonal events that were used to calculate Easter would be back in their proper places. The Julian calendar […]