Provincial England Research Articles

Navigating the Reformation in Suffolk: the painters’ perspectives

Abstract Scholarship on the impact of the English Reformation on the visual culture of the era has ignored the role of the painters who helped produce it. Yet it was the painters with their brushes no less than the preachers with their sermons who articulated the doctrinal and social developments of the era. Taking the example of Suffolk, this study examines the implications of the Reformation era for the painters’ occupation – including arms painters, glass painters, decorative painters and figurative painters – in provincial England. It supports its discussion with a biographical directory of Suffolk painters in the era c.1490–1640.

Public services and the urban middling sort: the provision of water in Bristol, Chester and Ipswich, 1540–1640

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between public services and the urban middling sort in provincial England from 1550 to 1640 through comparative case-studies of the finance and management of waterworks, the creation of new skilled roles and the cultural import of water systems in Bristol, Chester and Ipswich. It argues that the middling sort were vital in establishing public services and that water provision centred not only on its value as a material and financial resource, but also as an expanding source of patronage and social capital that shaped and entrenched the emergence of middling groups in society.

‘Transforming Sorrow into a Thousand Flowers’: Refashioning a Midlands’ Celebration of Death from the 1890s

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 business flourished, by following the fashion to line graves with flowers and display them at crematoriums. In standard historical accounts, consumers were supposed to be less willing to buy into this elaborate funeral flora. Seldom have historical studies appreciated the popularity of floral tributes for the dead in provincial England. In a Midlands' case study , the experiences across provincial central England, touching on northern communities, highlight how florists were at the forefront of reviving floral death customs, some of which had not been in vogue since the eighteenth century.

Sickness in the Workhouse: Poor Law Medical Care in Provincial England, 1834–1914. By AlistairRitch. University of Rochester Press. 2019. xiii + 298pp. £95.00.

Sickness in the Workhouse: Poor Law Medical Care in Provincial England, 1834–1914. By AlistairRitch. University of Rochester Press. 2019. xiii + 298pp. £95.00.

Alistair Ritch. Sickness in the Workhouse: Poor Law Medical Care in Provincial England, 1834-1914

Alistair Ritch. <i>Sickness in the Workhouse: Poor Law Medical Care in Provincial England, 1834-1914</i>

Sickness in the Workhouse: Poor Law Medical Care in Provincial England, 1834–1914 by Alistair Ritch

<i>Sickness in the Workhouse: Poor Law Medical Care in Provincial England, 1834–1914</i> by Alistair Ritch

Clothing in 17th-Century Provincial England Danae Tankard, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, 272 pp., £85, 9781350098404 hb

Clothing in 17^th-Century Provincial England Danae Tankard, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, 272 pp., £85, 9781350098404 hb

TRUST, FRIENDS, AND INVESTMENT IN LATE VICTORIAN ENGLAND

AbstractWhy people trust is a question that has preoccupied scholars across many disciplines. Historical explorations of trust abound, but we know relatively little about the workings of trust in the history of investment. Despite becoming increasingly mediated and institutionalized in the nineteenth century, the market for stocks and shares remained local and embedded in personal relations to a significant extent. This created a complex trust environment in which old and new forms of trust co-existed. Investors sought information from the press, but they also relied upon friends to help them navigate the market. Rather than studying trust in the aggregate, this article argues that focusing on the particular allows us to appreciate trust as an emotional and ultimately imaginative process depending as much on affective stories as rational calculation. To this end, it takes the case of a Bath clergyman and workhouse schools inspector, James Clutterbuck, who solicited investments from a wide network of friends and colleagues in the 1880s and 1890s. By capturing the complex interplay of friendship, emotions, and narrative in the formation of trust, the article offers a window onto everyday financial life in late Victorian provincial England.

Meningococcal Meningitis and Coal Mining in Provincial England: Geographical Perspectives on a Major Epidemic, 1929–33

This article presents the first systematic study of the spatial transmission of the 1929–33 epidemic of meningococcal meningitis and its association with local coal mining communities in three adjacent high incidence counties of England; Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and the West Riding of Yorkshire. Drawing on a robust method of spatial epidemiological analysis (swash‐backwash model), we demonstrate a gradient response with local levels of employment in coal mining for each of three key parameters of the epidemic wave: spatial velocity of transmission; duration of infectivity; and spatial reach. Partial least squares regression analysis identifies the relatively young and fertile demographic of local mining communities as the principal determinant of the resulting epidemic burden. Other sociodemographic parameters, including established risk factors for invasive meningococcal disease (low social class, high residential density, and overcrowding) are found to play little, or no, role in the spatial distribution of the disease. Our findings have importance for understanding the historic links between the coal mining industry and epidemic meningococcal meningitis, and point to possible present‐day opportunities for intervention through the designation of coal mining communities as defined risk groups for meningococcal vaccines.

Clothing in 17th-Century Provincial England by Danae Tankard

Reviewed by: Clothing in 17th-Century Provincial England by Danae Tankard Sarah A. Bendall Tankard, Danae, Clothing in 17th-Century Provincial England, London, Bloomsbury, 2019; hardback; pp. xi, 264; 44 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £91.80; ISBN 9781350098428. In choosing the provincial middling and poorer sorts as its focus, Danae Tankard's new monograph offers a refreshing and much needed perspective on dress practices in seventeenth-century England. Building on the work of historians such as Margaret Spufford and Susan Mee, whose recent monograph, The Clothing of the Common Sort, 1570–1700 (Oxford University Press, 2017), also deals with the sartorial habits of the non-elite, Tankard's study is unapologetically narrow in its geographical focus on Sussex during this period. It primarily utilizes household accounts and personal papers to examine five families of the merchant classes and lower gentry, as well as court records and probate documents in a more general exploration of the rural poor in this English county. After an introductory chapter that familiarizes the reader with Sussex and those chosen as case studies, Tankard's second chapter explores the literary constructions of clothing in seventeenth-century England. Although this chapter is not necessarily groundbreaking in what it explores, it is necessary to contextualize the study within the general cultural themes that are present when examining seventeenth-century dress, such as criticism of foreign fashions, age and gender, and excessive consumption. As such, it provides a good starter for those unfamiliar with this period. The chapter also touches on the divide between urban and rural sartorial codes, as it was presented in literature. However, more could have been done in this chapter to explain the city versus country stereotype that pervaded both politics and popular culture during the seventeenth century, as this is something that is frequently touched on in the monograph. Chapters 3 and 4 are the strongest in the book, as they focus on the underexamined logistics of clothing acquisition in early modern England. Chapter 3 looks at how cloth and clothing was made, distributed, and sold in Sussex. The wool and linen industry, tailoring trade, household production, and even the second-hand clothing market are all explored. Chapter 4 examines how the provincial shopper acquired fashionable goods from London by travelling there themselves, communicating with suppliers via letter, or enlisting the help of a proxy shopper. Tankard's case studies are strongest here, as she uses them to explain in detail how both provincial men and women navigated shopping. Surprisingly, we still know very little about tailoring in seventeenth-century England, and these chapters also provide new information about the relationship that many of these craftspeople had with their clients. The relationship between the rector Giles Moore and the tailor Richard Harland was particularly illuminating, as Moore's records show that Harland accompanied him on various shopping trips and often acted as an intermediary to acquire other clothing goods for his client. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the sartorial behaviours of the country gentry in Sussex and the importance of clothing in maintaining their social identities. Tankard shows here how a close reading of otherwise mundane sources like [End Page 262] household accounts and bills can reveal much information about the sartorial identities of these men and women. Tankard picks up here on themes discussed in Chapter 2, particularly those relating to the perception of country folk and their unfashionable dress. Again, the discussion of city versus country and stereotypes of country gentlemen fell a bit flat (pp. 107–09) and it deserved a more nuanced investigation, especially given the huge political upheavals involving these men during the seventeenth century. However, Tankard does highlight that country gentlemen were certainly not unaware of fashionable trends and many used accessories and trims to keep up with their city counterparts and express notions of gentility. While Chapter 4 largely succeeds in its aims, Chapter 5 on the provincial gentlewoman is much stronger. It focuses on how gender constrained gentlewomen's ability to shop as freely as men and presents the sartorial meanings of dress for gentlewomen in relation to a much wider range of life stages, as the case studies consider virgins, wives, and...

Review: “Sugar &amp; Spice”

Jon Stobart persuasively shows that daily purchasing habits, procurement techniques, and modern retailing practices date as far back as long seventeenth century in Sugar & Spice: Grocers and Groceries in Provincial England.

Sickness in the Workhouse: Poor Law Medical Care in Provincial England, 1834–1914 by Alistair Ritch

Reviewed by: Sickness in the Workhouse: Poor Law Medical Care in Provincial England, 1834–1914 by Alistair Ritch Alannah Tomkins Alistair Ritch. Sickness in the Workhouse: Poor Law Medical Care in Provincial England, 1834–1914. Rochester Studies in Medical History. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2019. 309 pp. $128.00 (978-1-58046-975-3). The divide between professional history and professional medicine is not totally impermeable, but the barrier is seldom crossed. Historians retrain as clinicians very rarely: practitioners more often become historians of their institution or field. It is a brave person who seeks expertise in more than one context, so Alistair Ritch is notable for moving from consultant physician in Birmingham to historian of workhouse infirmaries in the wider West Midlands. This book begins with the contention that workhouse infirmaries inevitably developed in tandem with voluntary hospitals, under different but complementary regimes. The voluntary hospital admitted the curable and exerted a lot of discrimination over the cases they accepted and retained, while workhouses had a statutory responsibility to cater for the poor settled in their areas. This meant that, initially, historians have observed a broad division between the "acute" capacity of a hospital and the "chronic" accommodation offered by a workhouse. Under Ritch's gaze, this difference remains but is substantially complicated. His remit is the Birmingham and Wolverhampton workhouses, wherever possible incorporating institutions before 1834 as well as after. Chapters consider the "fevers" that preyed on the Victorian poor, and that necessarily afflicted workhouse patients, as drivers of institutional refinements including isolation wards and separate buildings. The disorderly lunatic poor were contained in both of the chosen workhouses despite the rapid expansion of institutional provision for the "mad" in England over the nineteenth century, and both were found wanting by Lunacy Commissioners in the 1850s and later. Ritch goes on to analyze the working lives of workhouse medical officers, to account for patients including their occupancy of different wards, and to consider the integration of trained nurses to these poor law institutions. Collectively the chapters assemble a mass of useful data. Nonetheless, a broad question remains: what was the wider significance of the Birmingham or Wolverhampton workhouse experience for the resident poor in English institutions? In illustration of this point: venereal disease is covered in chapter 3 about disorderly behavior, and before reading this short section I anticipated that it might touch on the way that tertiary syphilis deprived its victims of both physical and mental control. Instead the subheading covered some of the circumstances whereby workhouse inmates contracted venereal disease (ensuring that here "disorderly" relates to sexual misdemeanor rather than disease victimhood). The section subsequently provided brief historical summaries of the emergence of syphilis and gonorrhea plus their treatments (both per se and in the English Midlands specifically), without pushing the analysis further. The section therefore misses the chance to consider why Birmingham and Wolverhampton offer us interesting illustrations for the application of venereal therapies. Why was Birmingham one of only eight provincial workhouses to make use of the first diagnostic blood test for syphilis? Did this relate to economies of scale in large institutions, or was it the [End Page 529] result of a specific policy decision at Birmingham? Was the use of salvarsan for selected Wolverhampton paupers instituted very early in context (in 1912, after the drug's development in 1910), or on the contrary was it applied very meanly (being given only to selected patients)? In short, what can we now appreciate about workhouse medicine by considering it in these two places? What was distinctive and what was run-of-the-mill? The discussion throughout is somewhat light on context, and this is reflected in the historiographical remit. Sheldon and Woods's Atlas of Victorian Mortality is missing, for example, despite Ritch's periodic focus on diagnoses and incidence of illness, while too little is made of the advances by research predecessors including Angie Negrine, Kim Price, and others.1 Consequently, some of the general claims are not backed up or made with sufficient finesse: has the case of the sick poor really been neglected up to now (p. 2)? There is undoubtedly a point to be made here about...

At the Margins of the Medical? Educational Psychology, Child Guidance and Therapy in Provincial England, c.1945-74.

This article mobilises archival material from local authorities in England to assess the shifting role of psychologists within local school health services from the 1930s through to the reorganisation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1974. It argues that psychologists were increasingly positioned between therapist, diagnostician and social worker, that this was bound together with a local discourse of children’s emotional well-being and that the increasing fluidity of the psychologist’s role emerged from local policies designed to stress the ‘educational’ nature of their role. In so doing, it extends work by John Stewart on child guidance and more long-standing histories of local, ‘municipal’ medical services. It suggests ways in which the older, localised provision of public health services in Britain persisted after the creation of the NHS and argues the need for a more flexible understanding of what was ‘medical’ about the local welfare state in this period.

The Hibernian Catch Club: Catch and Glee Culture in Georgian and Victorian Dublin

The Hibernian Catch Club was the leading Irish club of its kind, setting the standard in terms of performance. It gained status as Dublin’s longest-standing music society, and must be credited with pioneering catch and glee culture in Ireland. Its existence appears to pre-date the foundation of the most renowned London catch and glee clubs, emphasizing its significance within the wider context of catch and glee culture. This article examines the contribution that the Hibernian Catch Club made to musical life in Georgian and Victorian Dublin, contextualizing how the Club’s activities and membership reflect aspects of Dublin’s wider social, political and cultural life during this period. The extent to which the Club reflects the traditions associated with the culture as established in England is evaluated, before the discussion turns to an exploration of the repertoire. The Hibernian Catch Club was part of a wide performing network, its singers possessing established connections with musical, social and religious organizations in Dublin, London and provincial England. The Hibernians engaged with and maintained the traditions associated with the culture (singing, dining and conviviality) while also representing the social and cultural partnership formed between Dublin’s amateur and professional musicians. Its singers, dominated by vicars choral, represent the religious and social divisions evident in private music-making circles in late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century Dublin. In fact, social, religious and musical exclusivity were inherent in its profile and are reflected by the overall lack of change in its aims and outlook. The Club’s activities and repertoire are comparable with those of the London and provincial English catch and glee clubs, illustrating the strong cultural connections between Britain and Ireland.

'Other Spaces' for the Dangerous Dead of Provincial England, c.1752-1832.

The Murder Act (1752) decreed that homicide perpetrators should be hanged and sent for post‐execution punishment. This article explores the event management of criminal dissections by penal surgeons in situ. It reveals that the punishment parade of the condemned did not stop at the scaffold, contrary to the impression in many standard historical accounts. Instead, ordinary people accompanied criminal corpses to many different types of dissection venues. Penal surgeons hand‐picked these performance spaces that were socially produced for legal and practical reasons. They had to be able to process large numbers of people who wanted to be part of the consumption of post‐mortem ‘harm’ in English communities. Event management on location had to have emotional and visual appeal, moral coherence, be timed appropriately, and, if successful, would enhance the deterrence value of the capital code. Yet, managing the ‘dangerous dead’ involved a great deal of discretionary justice with unpredictable outcomes. It often happened in ‘counter‐sites’ of punishment in the community and involved a great deal of immersive theatre. Some events worked well, others threatened the social order. In ‘Other Spaces’ the ‘Dangerous Dead’ was hence a fascinating feature of the Murder Act outside the Metropolis from 1752 to 1832.

Wheatcroft and Whythorne’s ‘Passports in Rhyme’

The paper explores place and performance in seventeenth-century provincial England. It takes the contexts of performance disclosed or suggested by the texts of Derbyshire writer Leonard Wheatcroft and music master Thomas Whythorne as its central examples. Using this material, and responding to critical writing on place, it develops a thesis concerning the place of performance in seventeenth-century village life.

Some Early Members of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire

A preliminary meeting of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire was held 170 years ago in December 1847. The three founder members were men successful in their various chosen careers, united by an interest in history and antiquities. This article looks at the evolution of the Society over the first few decades of its existence, showing how an initial attempt to broaden its appeal nearly led to its downfall. Brief biographies of some early members of the Society show how the membership reflected developments during these first few decades of the Society. The biographies are linked to discussion of how the Society’s view of its own scope and role in an era of rapid change exemplifies the evolution of early learned societies in contemporary provincial England. It concludes that, although in the nineteenth century there was a move away from the earlier ideal of the cultured polymath, membership of learned societies remained the preserve of the affluent middle classes.

Crime in England 1815-1880: experiencing the criminal justice system

Crime in England, 1815-1880 provides a unique insight into views on crime and criminality and the operation of the criminal justice system in England from the early to the late nineteenth century. This book examines the perceived problem and causes of crime, views about offenders and the consequences of these views for the treatment of offenders in the criminal justice system. The book explores the perceived causes of criminality, as well as concerns about particular groups of offenders, such as the 'criminal classes' and the 'habitual offender', the female offender and the juvenile criminal. It also considers the development of policing, the systems of capital punishment and the transportation of offenders overseas, as well as the evolution of both local and convict prison systems. The discussion primarily investigates those who were drawn into the criminal justice system and the attitudes towards and mechanisms to address crime and offenders. The book draws together original research by the author to locate these broader developments and provides detailed case studies illuminating the lives of those who experienced the criminal justice system and how these changes were experienced in provincial England. With an emphasis on the penal system and case studies on offenders' lives and on provincial criminal justice, this book will be useful to academics and students interested in criminal justice, history and penology, as well as being of interest to the general reader.

Performing Medicine: Medical Culture and Identity in Provincial England, c.1760–1850, by Michael Brown

Performing Medicine: Medical Culture and Identity in Provincial England, c.1760–1850, by Michael Brown

The London Irish and the Antients Grand Lodge

Formed in London in 1751, the Antients Grand Lodge of Freemasons was created as a rival to the pro-establishment Grand Lodge of England, itself created in 1717. The Antients was shaped by the Irish diaspora in London, although disaffection within London Freemasonry was then so great that the new lodge also attracted English Masons. Its rapid growth in London and provincial England was seeded by the bigotry and condescension with which many in England viewed the Irish, but was more a function of the Antients’ social inclusivity and its commitment to mutual support. This resonated not only among the émigré Irish, but also within the lower orders more generally. Under the guidance of Laurence Dermott, its enterprising grand secretary, the Antients extended and altered Freemasonry’s profile in Britain and elsewhere, and the Craft became a means by which a broad cross section of male society could associate and obtain communal support. The movement’s success set an explicit challenge to the authority of the original Grand Lodge of England, which the Antients disparagingly termed “the Moderns,” and led to a schism in English Freemasonry that lasted some sixty years.