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British Regency Era Archive
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The Development of the English Board Game, 1770 – 1850
Posted on February 4, 2013 | No CommentsIt is known from surviving records, paintings and artifacts that games of the period (and today) are played in a similar way to those of ancient civilisations in the near and far east. There are only a few basic methods of playing games and over the past 250 years many thousands of variations have been created. The basic methods of play come down to four types – race games, strategy games, table games and card games. -
Space, place, and popular politics in northern England, 1789-1848
Posted on November 20, 2012 | No CommentsThese studies underline the crucial role of space and place in this volatile and revolutionary period. They argue that space is socially constructed, which in itself helps to shape behaviour of those who inhabit or imagine the space. -
The Glasgow Royal Infirmary: Aspects of Illness and Health Care in the Victorian City
Posted on October 15, 2012 | No CommentsSince the opening of the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow’s growth had been dramatic. In 1791 the population of the city and its suburbs numbered 66,000; a century later it had swollen to three quarters of a million. During this time the Royal endeavoured to treat diseases and mend bodies of a mushrooming populace: in-house medical and surgical wards were extended; vaccination services commenced in 1857. -
George and Maria: A Reinterpretation of King George IV and the Queen Caroline Affair
Posted on October 7, 2012 | No CommentsHowever, the majority of recent non-biographical scholarship relating to the reign of George IV focuses primarily on the Queen Caroline Affair, which painted an unflattering picture of George as a weak, corrupt, immoral cuckold. Thus, it is only through this narrow focus that George has been judged as a husband and man. Somewhere between the lovelorn and the heartless depictions lies reality. During my quest to reconcile these two vastly different perceptions, I discovered that, despite negative modern portrayals ofthe Queen Caroline Affair by feminist scholars, my initial romantic conception of George was not false. -
Secret Weapons of the Napoleonic Wars
Posted on September 20, 2012 | No CommentsToward the end of the Napoleonic War a British naval architect designed a fighting ship with a rounded instead of a square stern. -
Literary servants’ vanishing act in the eighteenth century
Posted on September 19, 2012 | No CommentsWhere are the servants in Jane Austen's novels? What causes servants to vanish from the literary landscape between the publication of Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740), or Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews (1741) and Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1811). -
Promises broken: Breach of promise of marriage in England and Wales, 1753-1970
Posted on September 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe primary basis for this study was are 875 breach of promise cases between 1750 and 1970. -
MOVIE REVIEW: BYZANTIUM
Posted on September 11, 2012 | No CommentsThis a review of Neil Jordan's new movie, 'Byzantium', released at the Toronto International Film Festival. -
Jane Austen and the History of England
Posted on September 4, 2012 | No CommentsAlthough it is suggested frequently that Jane Austen embraced a particular understanding of English history, historians have only just begun analyzing exactly what this understanding of history might have been, or how her particular understanding of English history shaped her oeuvre. -
The justice of the peace and county government in the East Riding of Yorkshire, 1782-1836
Posted on August 21, 2012 | No CommentsThe Riding was dominated by its geology and geography. It was predominantly agricultural with few major settlements and very little industrial development. -
The English fishing industry, 1790-1914: a case study of the Yorkshire coast
Posted on August 21, 2012 | No CommentsThe work also charts the associated development of the Yorkshire coast herring fishery. It furthermore, seeks to explain the causes of decline which afflicted all sectors of the local industry from the 1880s onwards.In all areas of this thesis, the research work undertaken has utilised a wide variety of primary sources including records of both local and national organisations. -
‘Wanton and torturing punishments’ : patterns of discipline and punishment in the Royal Navy, 1783-1815
Posted on August 20, 2012 | No CommentsThe British Navy of the time of the Napoleonic Wars acquired a fearsome reputation, not only for its success but also, in the eyes of many historians, for the cruelty with which it recruited and treated its men. It is not simply that the forms of punishment, including hanging, flogging and gagging were, to the modern eye, barbaric and unacceptable. -
The reform of punishment and the criminal justice system in England and Wales from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century
Posted on August 20, 2012 | No CommentsDuring the late seventeenth-century and throughout the eighteenth-century crime provided one of the principal subjects for popular literature. -
Dealer in Magic: James Cox’s Jewelry Museum and the Economics of Luxurious Spectacle in Late-Eighteenth-Century London
Posted on August 14, 2012 | No CommentsI suggest that the museum Cox established in the 1770s illuminates an eighteenth- century arts industry located in London, the nature of which needs to be better understood if we are adequately to understand the concept of an alliance between heritage and commerce for the benefit of the nation in which much current economic and cultural discourse is grounded. -
Political Verse in Late Georgian Britain: Poems Referring to William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806)
Posted on August 14, 2012 | No CommentsThough Pitt was remarkable for the length of his tenure of office and for his youth when first appointed – he became Prime Minister at the age of twenty-four and only Sir Robert Walpole held office for a longer period – it is not our intention to suggest that he was in any way a unique phenomenon in the history of political versifying. -
England and the Machinery of Reason 1780 to 1830
Posted on July 18, 2012 | No CommentsThe increasingly sturdy optimism that nature could be understood and controlled both influenced and was equally strengthened by, the growing development of manufactures and attempts to understand labour productivity during this period. -
King George III and porphyria: an elemental hypothesis and investigation
Posted on May 24, 2012 | No CommentsKing George III (1738–1820), who was monarch from 1760 until his death, was one of the longest serving British sovereigns. During his reign, Britain achieved oceanic mastery, the defeat of Napoleonic France, and expansion of its empire to a level similar to a superpower. Despite these achievements, his reign is best remembered for the humiliating loss of the American colonies and his well-documented bouts of madness. -
The blindness, deafness and madness of King George III: psychiatric interactions
Posted on May 24, 2012 | No CommentsIn 1966–69 Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter, mother and son psychiatrists and historians, claimed on the basis of selective reading and interpretation of the medical and contemporary accounts of King George III’s illnesses that he suffered from acute intermittent porphyria. -
Ledger reveals secrets of Victorian espionage
Posted on May 24, 2012 | No CommentsAn Article detailing evidence of Victorian espionage. Ledger reveals secrets of Victorian espionage Cloak of secrecy is torn from the spy world: Boxes of documents released at the Public Record Office chart the activities of British intelligence and its network of agents from a century ago. -
An ordinary metropolis: the evolution of criminal justice in London, 1750-1830
Posted on April 19, 2012 | No CommentsHistorians often view the creation of the police as separate from legal and penal reform. The three are intricately related. Reformers' and pamphleteers' messages for reform joined law reform to a general plea for modernity. -
Playing at Command: Midshipmen and Quarterdeck Boys in the Royal Navy, 1793-1815
Posted on April 11, 2012 | No CommentsThe increasing social status of young gentlemen in the Royal Navy of the Great Wars and the processes that maintained their authority reflected wider social and cultural trends - developments that confirmed the view of Georgian England as an ancien regime. -
The taming of the duel: masculinity, honour and ritual violence in London, 1660–1800
Posted on March 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe duel had a long history, but it was a malleable custom, and has been variously described as fundamentally feudal, early modern, and modern."Although traceable back to medieval tournaments, feuds, and judicial combat, the single combat to resolve questions of honour developed in the sixteenth century in several European countries, arriving in England in the 1570s. -
To the Ends of the Earth: A Study of the Explorative Discourse Promoting British Expansionism in Canada
Posted on February 19, 2012 | No CommentsBetween the second half of the eighteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth century, the British conception of the western Canadian wilderness remained remarkably consistent. The popular British image of western Canada, persisting into the 1830s, was of a wasteland fit only for the fur trade. -
Domestic Shebas: A Response to Ann Rosalind Jones, “Needle, Scepter, Sovereignty”
Posted on February 22, 2010 | No CommentsDomestic Shebas: A Response to Ann Rosalind Jones, "Needle, Scepter, Sovereignty" Summit, Jennifer Early Modern Culture, No. 3 (2003) Abstract In "Needle, Scepter, Sovereignty: the Queen of Sheba in Englishwomen's... -
Needle, Scepter, Sovereignty: The Queen of Sheba in Englishwomen’s Amateur Needlework
Posted on February 22, 2010 | No CommentsNeedle, Scepter, Sovereignty: The Queen of Sheba in Englishwomen's Amateur Needlework Jones, Ann Rosalind Early Modern Culture, No. 3 (2003) Abstract In this essay, I want to propose a similar... -
Agricultural Rent in South, East England, 1788-1825
Posted on January 17, 2010 | No CommentsAgricultural Rent in South, East England, 1788-1825 Hunt, H. G. Agricultural History Review, Volume 7 part 2 (1959) Abstract Most of our knowledge concerning the development of agriculture and the... -
Some Agricultural History Salvaged
Posted on January 14, 2010 | No CommentsSome Agricultural History Salvaged Pawson, Cecil Agricultural History Review, Volume 7, part 1 (1959) Abstract A chance remark, made almost casually by my friend the late Major J. G. G.... -
The Lost Village and the Landscape of the Yorkshire Wolds
Posted on January 14, 2010 | No CommentsThe Lost Village and the Landscape of the Yorkshire Wolds Harris, Alan Agricultural History Review, Volume 6 part 2 (1958) Abstract The enquiries of the historian and the archaeologist have... -
Agricultural Returns and the Government during the Napoleonic Wars
Posted on January 7, 2010 | No CommentsAgricultural Returns and the Government during the Napoleonic Wars Minchington, W. E. Agricultural History Review, Volume 1 (1953) Abstract In the course of the second half of the eighteenth century Great... -
The analysis of census-type documents
Posted on January 7, 2010 | No CommentsThe analysis of census-type documents Smith, Valerie Local Population Studies Number 2 (Spring 1969) Abstract Local population studies usually centre on the parish register, which gives a running record of... -
Easingwold Marriage Horizons
Posted on January 7, 2010 | No CommentsEasingwold Marriage Horizons Maltby, Bessie Local Population Studies Number 2 (Spring 1969) Abstract The problem of how mobile people were in the past is of interest in many contexts, yet...