The Local Historian Volume 50 Number 1 January 2020

By Roger Gilboy

pp 2-20

This paper was selected as the winner of the BALH Publications Awards 2019, for the ‘long article’ category. It provides a detailed and wide-ranging discussion of the impact of the Royalist ‘occupation’ of the walled city of Oxford during the Civil War, when King Charles I made the city his headquarters and de facto capital. The massive influx of soldier, courtiers, government officials and numerous hangers-on completely transformed the demographic structure of the city, leading to extreme overcrowding, a huge increase in in-migration and transient populations, a greatly exacerbated propensity to epidemic disease and infection, a tremendous pressure on the resources and infrastructure of Oxford itself, and a growing conflict or tension between the city council, the university and the royal court and household.

This was a potent and potentially devastating combination of circumstances, and in this paper Roger Gilboy analyses the consequences, basing his research on the surviving parish registers to investigate the mortality patterns within and beyond the city walls. In his analysis he emphasises how the impact of overcrowding, poverty, housing density and other factors led to variable death rates even in a relatively limited and compact area, and how the physical characteristics of the separate sections of the city were a major determinant in shaping the consequences of the crisis. Our assessors agreed that this is an exemplary paper, thoroughly researched and imaginatively analysed. For those fortunate enough to have comparable parish register material for their own locality it could provide a model with many ideas to follow up.

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By David Killingray

pp 21-36

In this paper David Killingray, using the ‘case study’ of West Kent, shows how the past two centuries have seen many examples of grassroots politics, political campaigns and agitation, which fall outside the conventional structures of politics and government which have been the framework for so many local history studies. His particular focus is the non-official, non-formal and often relatively short-lived forms of protest which have a more ephemeral documentary record but are of major community importance. Examples and key topics include: social and humanitarian campaigns such as those against slavery; political reform and the extension of the franchise (from the reform movements of the 1790s and 1800s, via Chartism and the Reform League, to the rise of the Labour Party); women’s rights and women’s roles in politics and local government; agrarian issues such as the Swing Riots, the repeal of the corn laws, agricultural trade unions and the emergence of the National Farmers’ Union; religious controversies, including the rights and status of dissenters, and the major arguments over the pros and cons of denominational education; social and welfare issues—from the New Poor Law to public health reform and war memorials.

The paper highlights the remarkable range of key issues about which public and private argument and debate raged, and points to the circumstances in which such argument might spill over into outright defiance and even violence. Importantly, it provides a research agenda for other local historians working in other parts of the country, showing how the official and formal perspective might—and probably does—conceal a tremendous range of controversies, issues and popular passions.

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By Ivor Slocombe and Roger Ottewill

pp 37-53

This is a paper about a subject which at first glance might seem dry, esoteric and abstracted from grassroots topics. But it is not that, for it deals with the way in which, via the medium of court sessions and bureaucratic procedures, the rules and regulations of who could vote, where, and on what basis were dealt with in the period after the passing of the Great Reform Act in 1832. Taking Wiltshire as its case study, it emphasises the minutiae of a process which lay at the heart of the extension of the franchise, and the expansion of democracy, in Victorian England. For all the grandeur of statements about representative democracy and its virtues, much of the reality was about political manipulation, especially before the advent of the secret ballot (from 1872).

Almost all the original records of the electoral revision courts which oversaw and adjudicated upon claims and counter-claims about voting rights and qualifications, have been lost or destroyed. In this paper Ivor Slocombe and Roger Ottewill demonstrate, with many examples from across the county, how local newspapers and chance survivals in the papers of solicitors allow the researcher to reconstruct the proceedings and, importantly, to try to quantify the effect that claims upheld or claims denied had upon the actual outcome of closely-contested elections. It is a fine study of a specialised subject with significant wider implications within the content of local action, local pressures and influences, and local community circumstances. There are very useful tables about the changing specifications for the franchise in county and borough constituencies.

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By Mark Forrest

pp 54-70

In this paper Mark Forrest focuses on an online resource which is probably unfamiliar to many local historians, but which has much potential for building up a clearer picture of counties and communities in the later medieval period. The records of the Court of Common Pleas and described in detail—the workings of the court and the arrangement of its documentation - and the online resource offered by the Anglo-American Legal Tradition website. The paper provides a case study about how these records can be used to build up a strong picture of occupations and economic activity across one English county—Dorset—and emphasising the way in which studies can be set against the context of what else is known about economic activity, looking at variations between towns and sub-regions of the county to identify specialisations and locally important concentrations of particular trades.

Illustrated with map and tables, it can provide a model from which other local research can be undertaken. The Court of Common Pleas had jurisdiction over most English counties in the fifteenth century, and the online resource has the potential to unlock its resources for other local and county history exploration. There is a very comprehensive set of notes and references offering further guidance and source material.

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By Lucienne Boyce

STRUGGLE AND SUFFRAGE IN HALIFAX: Women’s lives and the fight for equality by Helena Fairfax (Pen and Sword History 2019 202pp ISBN 9781526717771) £14.99; STRUGGLE AND SUFFRAGE IN BRISTOL: Women’s lives and the fight for equality by Christina Hollis (Pen and Sword History 2019 144pp ISBN 9781526717696) £14.99; A HISTORY OF WOMEN’S LIVES IN LIVERPOOL by Gill Rossini (Pen and Sword History 2019 183pp ISBN 9781526718099) £14.99; WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE IN SCOTLAND by Carole O’Connor (Pen and Sword History 2019 152 pp ISBN 9781526723284) £12.99

The first two titles are part of Pen and Sword’s Struggle and Suffrage series which looks at women’s fight for equality from the 1800s to the 1950s. The books focus on local histories on a town-by-town basis. There are already seventeen volumes in the series, ranging from Glasgow to Plymouth. Both books offer accounts of women’s activism which move beyond suffrage to include education, employment, health provision, child care, and so on. They also challenge the exclusion of women from the records. As Helena Fairfax notes in Suffrage and Struggle in Halifax, history has been male-centric with women ‘a completely silent presence, unrecorded in the archives, their mouths bound’. With their focus on telling stories of individual women, the books do much to break this silence.

In Suffrage and Struggle in Halifax, Fairfax describes how the history of women’s rights in the town was inextricably connected with Labour politics. She notes, for example, the presence of women in demonstrations for the improvement of conditions in factories in the 1830s, and their participation in the Chartist movement. In a book of this scope, the author cannot go into very great detail, yet she provides enough to help contextualise the narrative. For example, she not only mentions relevant legislation but also provides brief summaries of key acts such as the Married Women’s Property Acts and the Representation of the People Act 1918. Although the series title suggests that women’s suffrage will form a significant section of each book, it is not dealt with in any depth. Fairfax’s account of the suffrage campaign stops at 1911 with the census boycott, although local and national activity continued long after. Indeed, the end of the book feels rather rushed, with the First World War meriting one short paragraph. We are told that ‘The war changed everything’, but this is not explored, nor is the connection between women’s war work and women’s franchise examined. Overall, though, Fairfax’s writing is passionate and engaging. It’s often funny, and has a refreshingly direct response to the history. “God forbid,” she remarks at one point, “her husband should have to cook his own meal after work”. Suffrage and Struggle in Halifax is a readable, absorbing and well-thought out account of the struggle for women’s rights in Halifax.

While Fairfax does include many individual stories, observing that ‘human stories tell us more than statistics’, Christina Hollis in Struggle and Suffrage in Bristol takes an even more anecdotal approach. She is more adept at telling stories of individual women than, for example, explaining legislative detail. Hollis notes that only a few Bristol women ‘reached the history books’, and seeks to memorialise others who made a contribution to ‘changing the world’. The book sketches in the stories of women about whom much has already been written, and others whose lives have remained obscure until now. Yet as Hollis says, “I’ve been able to include only a fraction” of Bristol’s women. Granted that this is so, there are some strange omissions. Few Bristol suffragettes are mentioned; the only militants who get any notice are Lancashire (not Yorkshire) born Annie Kenney, and Leeds suffragette Theresa Garnett. Not even Bristol-born Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, who was one of the three WSPU leaders between 1906 and 1912, gets a nod. The reference to the 1911 census campaign notes only that many men boycotted it. There is no mention of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), to which the Bristol and West of England Society for Women’s Suffrage (BWESWS) affiliated in 1897. Conversely, the obscure and short-lived West Country League of the Unrepresented is characterised as a ‘movement’, although it was initiated by the BWESWS in May 1886 and seems to have done little more than present a petition to the House of Commons in 1887. Given that the author has to cover so much ground, it is perhaps inevitable that there is not scope to go too deeply into any subject. Nevertheless, Hollis has written a very readable account of local women’s activism. Struggle and Suffrage in Bristol is an inspiring introduction to the story of the amazing women who fought for rights that even now we cannot take for granted.

The next two titles, A History of Women’s Lives in Liverpool and Women’s Suffrage in Scotland, are presented as if they are part of the Struggle and Suffrage series, with a similar cover design and following the same format of subject headings, layout and so on. However, somewhat inexplicably, they are not included in that series. A History of Women’s Lives in Liverpool is described as the story of ‘all the women’ of Liverpool. It’s a bold claim, and in fact the book’s focus is predominantly on working class women. This is its strength but, at times, its weakness. The lives of working class women deserve attention, and it is heartening to see so many of the stories that history often ignores told here. On the other hand, the challenges facing middle class women are given short shrift, and the author rarely misses an opportunity to remind us that they were privileged, affluent, comfortable, and possessed opportunities in education and employment denied to working class women. The struggle to achieve those opportunities, the inequalities within them, and the discouragement which hampered women who tried to take advantage of them, are not considered.

Even when better-off women are depicted as campaigners and reformers we are reminded that they had leisure and servants to lighten their burden. The non-militant suffrage campaigners are dismissed as ‘genteel’ ladies who were largely ineffectual. This hardly does justice to the political acumen of women like Millicent Garrett Fawcett, the NUWSS leader, or Catherine Marshall, the Union’s parliamentary secretary. Incidentally, I wonder if there’s a masculine equivalent of ‘genteel’ for male middle class reformers. Nevertheless, the book’s main theme is an important one and it gives a stark reminder of the hard lives of working women, particularly as the unique conditions in Liverpool affected them. As with the other books under review, the treatment is broad, but this approachable book is a moving tribute to the women who laboured under dreadful disadvantages, and those who struggled to improve their lives.

The final book, Women’s Suffrage in Scotland, looks at its subject on a city by city basis. Each chapter starts with a brief history of the locality, and is then arranged under various headings, such as Education and Health & Welfare, along the lines of the first three books. The suffrage information is mostly contained in the mini-biographies of activists which close the chapter. Unfortunately, the book is muddled (for example, one woman was ‘“not directly involved in suffrage’ but twelve lines later is described as a suffragette). It is confused (Votes for Women did not cease publication after the Pethick Lawrences’ arrest; the Women’s Freedom League was militant; Jacob Bright who ‘seems to have’ fought for the vote was extremely well known for his suffrage work; Chrystal Macmillan was not a Liberal MP; and much more). Finally, some of the material is not well organised (some biographies are included twice). The mini-biographies are sketchy and, where entries exist, the reader would do better to consult Elizabeth Crawford’s The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928 for clear, comprehensive information. Several sentences have words missing, and the meaning of others is obscure. It is a pity, as many of these issues could have been corrected with a thorough edit. Nevertheless, the book introduces a variety of fascinating characters, and does convey something of the vigour of the Scottish suffrage movement.

The Pen and Sword Struggle and Suffrage series, together with the other two books on women’s history which essentially follow the series format, have the making of valuable additions to feminist and local histories. If these accessible and attractive volumes are anything to go by, they will give voice at last to some of the many women who have been silenced by history traditionally focussed not only on male, but also on national narratives. I am sure they will encourage many readers to find out more about women’s history.

Lucienne Boyce writes historical fiction and non-fiction. Her books include The Bristol Suffragettes, a history of the local militant suffrage campaign, and the Dan Foster Mysteries set in the eighteenth century. For more information see www.lucienneboyce.com

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By Rosalind Johnson

THE FOLKLORE OF CORNWALL The oral tradition of a Celtic nation by Ronald M. James (University of Exeter Press 2018 258pp ISBN 978 0 85989 470 8) £45

Ronald James, an academic historian and folklorist from Nevada and also a Cornish bard, here aims to set the folklore of Cornwall in a Northern European context. His main Cornish sources are the folklore collections of Robert Hunt and William Bottrell which first appeared in print in 1865 and 1870 respectively, but Cornish writers and poets from Geoffrey of Monmouth and John de Havillan onwards are also cited. Cornwall was ahead of the game in field collection and the employment of paid field collectors. Hunt, a scientist interested in early photography, made a ten-month Cornish walking tour in 1829 to find stories and in 1862 paid a local postman to assist. Early collectors in Cornwall were spurred on by visions of ‘industrialized Celts’ and the impact of early industrialisation as ‘old-world stories were perishing like the shadows in the mist before the rising sun’, in Hunt’s evocative phrase. More contemporary views of Cornish folklore explored here include ‘periphery phenomena’ and ‘like its neighbours and yet different’. From this rich, if time-limited, vein James identifies eighteen legend and folklore types found elsewhere in Britain and Europe. Clear distinctions are made throughout between the fictional narratives of folklore, and stories ‘told to be believed’ which are classified here as legend.

The book has eleven chapters, starting with the collectors, droll tellers, folkways and stories. Seven overlapping themes are then explored in more detail: piskies, spriggans and buccas; piskies and migratory legends; seeking the companionship of people; mermaids; the spectre bridegroom; giants; and knockers in the mines. An interesting final chapter, ‘Tommyknockers, Immigration and the Modern World’, shows how key elements of the original knocker stories (the anti-entrepreneurship parts) had to be left behind. As a result such stories proved to be more enduring than in Cornwall, belief in tommyknockers still being common in North America around 1910.

Cornish versions of folktales and legends, according to James, show above all the ‘excellent expression of the artistry of droll tellers’ to whom this book is dedicated. This he contrasts with the conservatism of the better known Irish storytellers. Droll tellers included men like Sir Tristram Winslade visiting gentry houses in the late sixteenth century with his harp, as well as the tellers and fiddlers whom Hunt and Bottrell encountered, such as Billy Frost of St Just in Penwith, blind Uncle Anthony James of Cury, or Henry Quick of Zennor. Quick, who died in 1857, seems to have been the last of the last. Bottrell claimed that he had heard a long giant story from an old tinner of Lelant that ‘generally took ... three or four winter’s evenings to get through’ as the teller went into very minute detail including glowing descriptions of tin and treasure. Thus, James argues, the Cornish tendency for long narratives predates Romantic-era embellishment.

The Folklore of Cornwall is a thought-provoking book and a fine introduction to Cornish folktales and legends, challenging many common assumptions about folklore. Writing for an academic and also a more general Cornish audience, Ronald James convincingly shows that while many Cornish narratives reflect a broad swathe of material from Ireland to Sweden, they are nonetheless ‘imbued with the character of its place and people’. Few folktales are peculiar to the Cornish peninsula, but they are dealt with in a unique way and Cornwall, according to James, does indeed have a ‘unique cultural footprint’.

MOOR MEDIEVAL Exploring Dartmoor in the Middle Ages edited by David Stone and Richard Sandover (Moor Medieval Study Group 2019 ISBN 978-1-3273-320-0) £15 + p&p

Building on the work of such luminaries as Harold Fox and Maurice Beresford, this beautifully illustrated A4 format book is a weightier tome than might at first appear, and is very much document-based in its approach including Domesday Book, agistment lists, and manorial and stannary records. Arranged as six chapters (‘Approaching Medieval Dartmoor’, ‘Recreating the Medieval Landscape, 1000-1239’, ‘Before the Black Death, 1239-1348’, ‘The Black Death and its Aftermath, 1349-1400’, ‘The Later Middle Ages, 1400-1525’ and ‘People, Landscape and Communities’) the text is frequently interspersed with illustrated information boxes. No less than 35 of these more detailed discussions range from historic sources, medieval building types, including church houses where fund-raising ales were brewed to support local churches, to specific excavations and test pits measured in ‘spits’, pottery, individual manor and settlement development, and communications. While the work focuses on five parishes—Chagford, Gidleigh, Manaton, North Bovey, Widecombe-in-the-Moor, and the eastern part of Lydford—at times it encompasses the whole of Dartmoor, Devon and beyond. The chronological range is from 1000 to 1525, with an introductory chapter dealing with the prehistoric, Roman, post-Roman and Saxon background. Definitions of ‘medieval’ remain problematical with a nice archaeological and historical balance achieved here, though a case could be made for going as late as 1548 or even further.

The strongest sections are the three middle chapters focusing on 1000-1400 with much material being made available for the first time, supported by tables and maps. Indeed, the depth of research and analysis here is worthy of a group PhD with up-to-date methodology applicable to other parishes across Britain. New manor or upland settlement creation in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries included Widecombe- in- the-Moor with its rare moated manor house site at North Hall, and Houndtor where the 1230s appears to be the foundation date of a high moor settlement. The way in which parishes, manors and tithings are explained and explored throughout is exemplary, with much potential confusion avoided. Transhumance is, not surprisingly, one of the major themes of the book with droveways ‘seldom deviating more than half a mile from the direct route’ according to Harold Fox. These, and halfway stopping points, have been identified and mapped convincingly for Cockington, Kenton, Littlehempston and Rocombe. Dartmoor grazing rights were established in the Saxon period and equated to some 20,000 animals at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Local inhabitants, including women such as Mariota Bremstont and Agnes Donnebrygge, made money as herders for other Devonians.

After the Black Death Dartmoor parishes, in contrast to the rest of England, increased in population rather than declining despite well-known deserted settlement sites like Houndtor or Challacombe. Maps based on the installation of new priests during the Black Death from January to June 1349 effectively show the way the disease spread across Devon (bubonic plague from West Chinese rats now being back in the frame due to DNA analysis of some European burials). A resurgence of medieval tin mining on Dartmoor, with Chagford being one of the three Devon coinage towns, certainly helped population recovery. Another significant finding by this study is that there was a major commercial divide between north and south Dartmoor; the former serviced by the North Devon potteries of Barnstaple and Bideford and the latter by Totnes, at least as far as coarseware is concerned.

The final section is rather less coherent, with very little use made of the 1480-1600 Chagford churchwardens’ accounts which were partly edited, though without an index, by F.M. Osborne in 1980. This source includes much information on local tin mines and St Katharine’s tinners’ guild, as well as other social groupings. Otherwise, I can strongly recommend this book to Devonians and serious historians.

JOANNA MATTINGLY is a freelance researcher and WEA lecturer whose interests and teaching include Cornish folklore. Her publications include Cornwall and the Coast – Mousehole and Newlyn (2009) and an edition of Stratton Churchwardens’ Accounts 1512-1578 for the Devon & Cornwall Record Society published in 2019.

MEDIEVAL PILGRIMAGE with a survey of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset and Bristol by Nicholas Orme (Impress Books 2018 xiii+191pp ISBN 978-1-911293-35-4) £14.99

This book provides an introductory survey of pilgrimage in medieval England and then focuses on pilgrimage sites in the west of England, comprising Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset and Bristol. While pilgrimage tends to be associated with long journeys to distant shrines at Canterbury or Walsingham in England, or to Compostella, Rome, or Jerusalem, the vast majority of pilgrims were making much shorter journeys. Every religious site was a potential place of pilgrimage, and patronal festivals and anniversaries of the day on which the church had been consecrated were particular focal points.

In the first part of this book, Orme explores the motives for pilgrimage and the pilgrim’s experience, as well as critics of pilgrimage like the Lollards in the 1390s and Erasmus of Rotterdam in the 1520s, and the impact of the Reformation. The majority of the book, though, is a detailed gazetteer of pilgrimage sites in the west of England. Sites have been selected where a saint is believed to be buried (apart from Cornwall, where due to the large number of saints, only the major saintly burials are covered to avoid distorting the balance), and where there are records of pilgrimage or this can reasonably be assumed. The region includes only a few nationally significant sites of pilgrimage, at St Michael’s Mount and Glastonbury, while St Anne at Brislington near Bristol also had prominence outside its local area. Revenues collected at shrines give some indication of their relative popularity, ranging from around £40 at St Michael’s Mount in the early sixteenth century to only £1 at the chapels at Montacute and Mortehoe. Some sites were only short-lived, like Luccombe in Somerset, where the rector John Peter built a chapel in the 1460s to encourage pilgrimages to St Anthony. The saints and devotions honoured in the region were representative of England generally.

Orme identifies over eighty sites of pilgrimage in the west of England, drawing on surviving architectural evidence and a range of documentary sources including the writings of antiquarians such as John Leland, as well as references in wills, bishops’ registers and papal indulgences. There are a variety of settings, including fairground sites, like those at Woodbury Hill in Bere Regis (Dorset) and White Down near Crewkerne (Somerset), and wells, such as those at Dupath and St Cleer in Cornwall, still marked by elaborate well-houses. Grid references and Historic Environment Record references are included where required. Among the plentiful illustrations in the book are the votive wax images of human figures and human limbs discovered at the tomb of Bishop Lacy in Exeter Cathedral, hung by pilgrims as prayers or thanks for cures. This book will serve as a useful starting point for any local historian examining this aspect of the medieval Church. It will also be a helpful reference work to carry alongside the relevant Pevsner county guide for anyone exploring churches in the west of England.

JOHN S. LEE is a research associate at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York. He has recently edited with Christian Steer Commemoration in Medieval Cambridge (2018) and his other recent publications include The Medieval Clothier (2018).

HANDLIST OF SOMERSET PROBATE INVENTORIES AND ADMINISTRATORS’ ACCOUNTS, 1482-1924 edited by Adrian James Webb (Somerset Record Society vol.98 2019 xxxvi+282pp ISBN 978-0-901732-46-0) £16; THE CHANGING FACE OF ASHWICK PARISH: Some aspects of local history from Oakhill and Ashwick by Lin Thorley and others (Oakhill and Ashwick Local History Group 2nd edn 2018 vi+150pp ISBN 978-1-5272-2233-5) £14.99

Probate inventories are a rich source for historians. Made after the death of a testator, the inventories detail personal effects, household goods, farm or business equipment, animals, crops, shop and workshop stock, and debts. They can be used to ascertain the economic status of individuals or communities, the nature of local farming practices and manufactures, and (since the inventories were made on a room-by-room basis) the furnishings and layout of a home. The inventories often include the occupation of the deceased, and his or her social distinction (‘Esquire’, ‘Widow’). Administrators’ accounts are less well-known as a source, but may include funeral expenses, payments towards educating the deceased’s children and other costs.

The inventories and accounts in the Handlist of Somerset Probate Inventories and Administrators’ Accounts, 1482-1924, the latest volume from the Somerset Record Society, are listed in online catalogues. But online searching can be tedious and frustrating. The advantage of this handlist, an updated version of the editor’s previous Index of Somerset Probate Inventories, is that all Somerset probate inventories and administrators’ accounts can be easily located in one volume. This new volume adds details of over a thousand new documents not indexed in the previous edition; over 7600 documents in total are listed. Many records from the probate courts of the diocese of Bath and Wells, almost coterminous with the ancient county of Somerset, can be found in the Somerset Heritage Centre. Some inventories have survived elsewhere, not least because two other dioceses held probate jurisdiction over some Somerset parishes. The handlist also includes inventories for testators from outside the county who died in Somerset, and some for testators who lived elsewhere but whose inventories are found among family papers in the Somerset Heritage Centre.

The handlist is prefaced with a detailed introduction, outlining the probate process in the diocese of Bath and Wells, comments on occupations listed in the inventories, and an account of the various repositories and their collections where the documents can be located. Sample transcripts of inventories and accounts are included.

The main part of the volume is taken up with the handlist. This is arranged alphabetically by surname, with each entry including, if known, forename, social designation, occupation, date, document reference and a brief notes field. Place-names, occupations and social distinctions can be searched using the comprehensive indices. The arrangement by surname suggests it would be of most use to those researching family histories in Somerset, but as the editor notes in the introduction, there is considerable scope for further research into probate inventories. This will undoubtedly be facilitated by this handlist, which is a valuable work of reference, and a worthy addition to the Somerset Record Society’s publications list.

A very different volume from Somerset is The Changing Face of Ashwick Parish. In a dozen short chapters and two appendices the author and her contributors from the Oakhill and Ashwick Local History Society cover aspects of the history of Ashwick parish and the village of Oakhill in the Mendips. This does not pretend to be a comprehensive history of parish or village (there is little on coal mining, a major local industry) but a number of themes are covered including roads, places of worship, the poor, local clockmakers, and the history of Ashwick Grove, a large local estate. The Oakhill Brewery features prominently as an important employer in the parish, and a source of philanthropic benevolence; piped water and gas lighting were provided to the village by the brewery owners. A private narrow-gauge railway connected the brewery with the main line station at Binegar.

The author notes in the introduction that the book’s main theme is ‘change with time’. This is most graphically illustrated in the ‘Then and Now’ photographs of chapter 12, but the theme recurs throughout the book. Many buildings have been converted to residential use, including parts of the old brewery and a colliery engine house, while others have been demolished altogether. The Oakhill Inn is still a thriving pub, but a club room and skittles alley were lost to road widening in the 1970s.

This popular local history has clearly been researched and written by those with a deep connection to the locality. It is an attractively produced volume, enhanced by maps and numerous illustrations. It will probably be of most interest to those with an existing interest in the area, but even as an outsider I found it a pleasure to read.

ROSALIND JOHNSON is a visiting research fellow at the University of Winchester, who has worked for the Victoria County History projects in Somerset and Wiltshire. She is currently working on a study of loyalist religion in southern England in the 1650s, and a study of Quakers and marriage in the long eighteenth century.

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By Jonathan Oates

(Pen and Sword History 2018 224pp ISBN 978 1 52672 411 3) £14.99

Jonathan Oates has written a book that will be useful to historians, whether amateur or professional, researching the detail of the history of London’s East End. It starts with a brief but well drawn history of the idea of an ‘East End’ of London. Views on what the area covers continue to change. Some might find, for example, Oates’ view that only the southern parts of the current London Borough of Hackney are not quite what they understand the East End to be! The book is divided into brief but clearly written chapters covering what might be considered many of the core areas at which someone researching aspects of the East End might look—poverty, crime, war, religion, migration, leisure, schooling and health all merit consideration.

In each chapter Oates provides a helpful mix of detail and some well-chosen illustrations. Hence we find information on, for example, poor law records where they exist and for what dates. Oates also provides some interesting extracts from court reports (for example in the crime section) and throughout there are detailed references to the existence and location of relevant archives. The book concludes with two useful summary chapters, one looking at general sources for East End history and the other suggesting places to see and visit. There is a bibliography.

Here, for family and social historians, there should are set out ways into research and leads to be followed. But inevitably any book covering a wide range of issues cannot cover every area that the researcher might want to investigate. There is nothing specific on gender and women’s lives and struggles, an increasingly significant issue in East End history. Nor is there anything on what many would regard as a characteristic of the East End over the past one hundred years—the fight against fascism, perhaps at Cable Street in particular but more recently the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism, both very active in the area. This brings us to one of the most difficult areas for East End history (and beyond)—how to find evidence about the area as recently as the 1960s and 1970s, periods which are now moving into history. The problem is that because so much recent material, and some historic archives, can be accessed on the internet, a focus on keeping paper records is declining. This means that ever more recent historical data cannot easily be found in the original hard copy or on the internet. Those using this accessible volume to research aspects of the East End may find that if their journey takes them into the 1960s and beyond they will need to compile their own source notes, encouraged by the book’s framework.

KEITH FLETT is convenor of the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research and is currently researching the impact of E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class.

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By Keith J. Stringer

(Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Tract Series 28 2019 ISBN 978 1 873124 80 2) £18

For much of the thirteenth century, peaceful relations existed between England and Scotland. This was in large part secured through the treaty of York in 1237, by which Alexander II of Scotland, on behalf of himself and his heirs, agreed to give up his claim to the northern counties of England, thereby fixing the border at the line of the Tweed and Solway. In return, Alexander was to receive land worth £200 p.a. in the north of England. After several years of wrangling and revaluations of property (down to the last lime kiln), it was determined that these lands should be based on the Liberty of Penrith in Cumberland, which was duly held by Alexander II and his son Alexander III as vassals of the English crown from 1242 to 1286. This book offers the first full analysis of the results of this agreement in terms of the relationship between the liberty’s lord/king, his tenants and the English state. In so doing, Stringer offers a masterful demonstration of how to blend the local, national, and even international contexts.

The lack of chapter headings makes this book more reminiscent of an extended essay, but the subheadings are judicious in terms of dividing up a series of complex and intricately connected themes. It begins with a discussion of the treaty and its provisions. The text of the treaty is referred to throughout the book, and is just one of the many original sources that have been examined in detail—sometimes to the extent that Stringer has been able to correct mistakes introduced by copying, mistranslations and misinterpretations. Some of these documents appear in appendix A, together with a full English translation that will no doubt be of help to future researchers. And yet this book is not solely aimed at the academic: the inclusion of a detailed glossary will be welcome to anyone unfamiliar with some of the terminology used in the many legal documents consulted. While this book is based on the evidence of state documents and considers relations between the governing elite, it is not an entirely top-down study. The inhabitants of medieval Penrith and the liberty’s constituent manors feature a great deal, providing insights into their activities and aspirations, including instances of collective endeavours by the community. Appendix B even offers biographies of several local individuals, demonstrating the sort of information that can be gleaned about ordinary folk from medieval government records.

Much of the content is focused on how legal jurisdiction affected the quality of local lordship. Though absent, the lord of Penrith cannot be accused of being neglectful. Scottish royal government was rather ‘light-touch’ when compared to that of England, and it seems both Alexanders had good relations with their Cumberland tenants. However, relations with the English state were less cordial. In his analysis, Stringer offers a nuanced assessment of the extent of the Scottish king’s powers within the liberty, both in theory and in practice. Being an expert on the great border liberty of Tynedale (also held by the King of Scots), he is able to place Penrith in a regional context, showing that while its privileges were by no means insignificant, it was far from autonomous and this made it vulnerable to state intrusion. For example, regarding forest law, the liberty’s inhabitants frequently found themselves in trouble for trespasses against the English Crown, which included the felling of trees for timber or land clearance. Although the lord encouraged local economic development (Penrith grew as an urban centre in this period), accessing the requisite resources could be difficult, particularly given the apparent malevolence English officials.

The lords of Penrith were often engaged in protracted battles to defend the liberty against incursions by over-zealous and corrupt agents of the English Crown. These cases reveal a lack of respect shown to the liberty and the royal status of its possessor, although relations between both Alexanders and their kinsmen, Henry III and Edward I, were friendly. Both English kings intervened on several occasions to provide redress against the actions of their own officials, with one appeal for help even finding its way to Edward I in the Pyrenees. Stringer concludes that ‘the Liberty was more sinned against than sinning’. This in turn leads to his important observation that Penrith served as a potential warning to the Scots, as it gave them an inkling of life as part of an English ‘super-state’ should they lose their sovereignty. Unsurprisingly, many of those engaged in Penrith’s administration and the struggle to protect its rights later supported Independence. A rather timely lesson perhaps ...SARAH ROSE

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Edited by Alan Munden

(Surtees Society vol.223/Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Record Series vol.23 2019 cvi+381pp ISBN 978 0 85444 078 8) £50 www.boydellandbrewer.com

The Religious Census of Cumbria, 1851 is an excellent addition to a number of recently published studies which record and analyse the results of the religious census of 1851. An Anglican clergyman serving in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the editor of The Religious Census of Cumbria, 1851 is also an expert church historian, whose knowledge and skill were amply demonstrated in his editions of The Religious Census 1851: Northumberland and County Durham (Surtees Society vol. 216, 2012) and The Religious Census of Bristol and Gloucestershire 1851 (The Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society: Gloucestershire Record Series vol. 29, 2015). Consequently, this latest offering comes courtesy of a very safe pair of hands.

Books on the religious census of 1851 usually follow a similar pattern. In the Introduction, the reason for the taking of the census, its methodology and any discrepancies in the census returns are carefully noted. A detailed and scholarly essay then discusses the particularities of the geographical area in question, before the results of the census are given, district by district. The overall religious-census results for Cumberland and Westmorland are given on pages xviii-xix of this volume. Local historians will appreciate having such comprehensive information to hand in one volume, and will welcome the opportunities given to compare and contrast results between parishes, but what is particularly impressive is Dr Munden’s comprehensive history of the region’s religious denominations. Using a wide range of primary and secondary sources, Dr Munden discusses Cumbria’s patterns of old and new dissent and Roman Catholicism, before awarding much greater space to the history and clergy of the Church of England in the region, particularly its evangelical clergy (on whom he is an acknowledged expert) and, to a lesser extent, the rise of ritualism. The difficulties of ministry in a poor and mountainous area are listed. These include clerical poverty, lack of education, social isolation and persistent drunkenness; but outstanding clergymen are recorded too, among them luminaries such as Dean Milner and Archdeacon William Paley, and lowly parish clergy like John Maughan of Bewcastle. The Introduction also discusses charity, endowed, private-clergy and Sunday schools; lay philanthropy; freemasonry; pluralism; patronage; and the influence of local architects, who designed new churches in the popular style of medieval gothic whether their congregations liked it or not. Particulars given of Sunday worship are particularly interesting; not only the infrequency of Holy Communion and the difficulties of reaching faraway churches in bad weather, but also the role of the parish clerk, galleries and gallery bands, psalters and hymns, seating traditions and the introduction of pipe organs and surpliced choirs. Dr Munden ends his Introduction by comparing the results of census day 1851 with the numbers attending church in Cumbria now, and contemporary clerical anxieties that the notable decline will lead inexorably to church closures, concluding that the responsibility for renewal felt in 1851 remains a priority still.

JANE PLATT is a visiting fellow and archivist at the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, where she is presently researching Anglican-Methodist ‘Conversations’ on union in the late 20th century. She is the author of Subscribing to Faith? The Anglican Parish Magazine 1859-1929 ( 2015), editor of The Diocese of Carlisle 1814-1855: Chancellor Walter Fletcher’s ‘Diocesan Book’ with additional material from Bishop Percy’s Parish Notebooks (Surtees Society and CWAAS, 2015), and author of Making their Mark: Learning to read and write in nineteenth-century Cumberland (Bookcase, 2019).

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Edited by Chris Upton

(University of Hertfordshire Press 2019 261pp ISBN 9781912260140) £16.99

Chris Upton began his academic career as a classicist, but found his natural calling and life’s work in local history. For over twenty years, in hundreds of talks and newspaper articles, he reminded the people of the West Midlands of their own history. He edited the Birmingham Historian, he made films for local museums, rekindled interest in the back-to-back houses of Birmingham, advised the makers of the first series of Peaky Blinders and wrote A History of Birmingham (1995), A History of Wolverhampton (1998) and A History of Lichfield (2002). While meeting deadlines for the Birmingham Post and criss-crossing the city to address audiences, he was also methodically accumulating a considerable amount of evidence on the treatment of the poor in eighteenth and early nineteenth century Birmingham. Upton read everything there was to read—the minute books of town meetings, of parish overseers, of poor law guardians, cash books and local newspapers. This work is now published posthumously and it is rich in detail, beautifully-written, considered and, above all, deeply humane.

The workhouse in Birmingham stood at the bottom of Lichfield Street; the site is now occupied by the Victoria Law Courts. For over half a century it was ‘the most striking public building in the town and one of the very few to have had a clock’. Local historians have hitherto relied on a famous Birmingham antiquarian for details about its opening, but Upton’s scrupulous research shows that William Hutton got his facts wrong. The workhouse opened not in 1733 and with its two wings added later, but in late 1734 or in 1735 and with its wings attached. It remained in use, in an increasingly dilapidated state, until a new workhouse came into operation in Winson Green in 1852. The number of inmates varied, always rising in the winter months. Upton informs us that, at the end of 1816, 260 males, 265 females and 250 children were in residence, sharing 244 beds. Many of the inmates were too infirm or ill to work, but those able to do so were sent out to dig sand or break stones (taking bread and cheese with them) or were employed in the workhouse in milling corn, making clothes and shoes or in cleaning and washing. For breakfast bread and porridge was provided; bread, suet pudding and, on some days, meat for the main meal (swilled down with beer); and bread and cheese or porridge for supper. The day began at 5.45 am (an hour later in winter) and the inmates retired to their shared beds at 10pm (an hour earlier in winter). ‘While much of Lichfield Street continued late into the night, the pubs open, the traffic trundling past, the night watch on patrol’, Upton writes, ‘the workhouse slept’. Smuggling out provisions to sell led to severe punishment: Mary Colley received ‘ten lashes on her bare back with a cat and nine tails’ and Martha Price was confined ‘in the dark hole’ for twenty four hours.

For the poor, Upton observes with a deep compassion evident throughout this book, ‘the workhouse dealt with the end of things: the end of hope, the end of independence, the end of life, the end of the line’. For Upton the inmates of the workhouse deserved the dignity of having their names recorded. He tells us of Hannah Ivory, aged 36, widowed and with three children; of Maria Buckerfield, aged nineteen, unmarried and pregnant; and of Thomas Parsons, aged six with a mother in prison and a father awaiting transportation. He draws attention to the verse of George Davis, who found himself ‘Midst vulgar wretches – vilest of the base/Creation’s scum – humanity’s disgrace’ and wryly concludes that he ‘no more valued the presence of many of his fellow inmates than the guardians did’.

Upton’s understanding of the situations in which workhouses placed people extends beyond the paupers. He concedes that the master and mistress of the workhouse had ‘a hard job’. He observes that the work of the guardians ‘was not light; there were regular meetings, examinations of paupers, interviews with applicants for outdoor relief … frequent inspections of the workhouse’. Unpaid, these men expected to be looked after when carrying out their responsibilities but found their critics who ‘could quickly turn a fish supper or a complimentary glass of sherry into a public outrage’. Upton’s sympathy, though, does not extend to those who offered such excuses as ‘cannot spare the time’ and ‘so much in London that he thinks he can’t do his duty’ for not serving. ‘As an example of volunteerism’, he observes, ‘it was not impressive’.

There are no gaps in this survey, every aspect of the early workhouse being explored by Upton. How were the sick treated? There is a chapter about the infirmary (where we learn that those with venereal disease had their heads shaven). What about paupers with mental illnesses? There is a chapter about their care (where we are informed restraints were not in regular use). There is also a chapter on death in the workhouse (where we learn that the minister of St Mary’s, the nearest church, raised his burial fees to double those of other churches).

It is difficult to see how this book could have been better done. It is an exemplary study which adds considerably to our knowledge and understanding of Poor Law provision before the legislation of 1834, and will be invaluable to those writing about these issues from a national perspective. It offers proof of the value of local studies and, above all, it offers proof, if proof were necessary, that Chris Upton was one of the pre-eminent local historians of our times.

STEPHEN ROBERTS is the author of a series of books about Birmingham’s nineteenth century: see www.birmingham-biographies.co.uk. He was formerly Reviews Editor of The Local Historian.

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Edited by Joan Barham and Andrew Foster

(Sussex Record Society vol.98 2018 lxxiv+218pp ISBN 978 0 85445 080 0) £25+p&p from http://www.sussexrecordsociety.org/ or West Sussex Record Office

The timing of these surveys is extremely important historically, coming half a century after the Reformation and before the outbreak of Civil War in 1642. The causes and effects of both events were quite different, but a common denominator was their impact on ordinary people and local parish churches. Roy Strong has described in A little history of the English country church how the Reformation tore apart the rhythm of everyday life and piety that had lasted more than a thousand years, while the liturgical revival in the first half of the seventeenth century fuelled divisions in the Church in the build-up to the Civil War, over what form worship should take.

Archdeacons’ visitation records have survived in reasonably large numbers throughout England and provide invaluable information on church maintenance and repairs. In the diocese of Chichester, for example, there were nineteen inspections between 1600 and 1641, and the visitation reports and churchwardens’ presentments demonstrate how closely the diocese was monitored. There is a noticeable difference between the earlier surveys in 1602 and 1606, instructed by Archbishop Whitgift and Bishop Harsnett, and those of 1636 instructed by Archbishop William Laud for the Metropolitical Visitation and implemented by Bishop Montagu specifically for archdeaconry of Chichester. The former predominantly refer to the poor condition of the fabric of the church and, less frequently, to the interior seating, communion table, font and pulpit. The reports of the 1636 survey are noticeably more embroiled in an ideological struggle with what was wrong with the church or what was missing—no Book of Homilies or Canons, no partition between the nave and the chancel, no font cover, inadequate vestments and lack of adequate record keeping for the utensils.

Archbishop Laud became primate in 1633 and sough to abolish local variations in religion, imposing the will of the bishop on the congregation. He was able to do this not only because of his powerful position but also because the Church courts empowered this. Laud preferred catechising to preaching, resulting in local parsons only reciting the prayer book service and thereby restraining long and frequent sermons. James I had adopted an act of toleration for the laity which under Charles I became a persecution of the clergy. Many were silenced, no longer able to preach freely for fear of enquiry by their bishop or a visitation of their parish. The means by which religious feelings could be expressed were lost for a generation together with the loyalty of moderate people. The communion table was moved into the east end of the church and treated as an altar, often against the wishes of the congregation. Laud also prohibited secular use of the church preventing rural villages from transacting parish business in the church.

The editors have emphasised the need for further research to examine inter alia the social, economic, ecclesiastic, architectural and archaeological context in which the changes described took place in the early seventeenth century. This is a very welcome, well-produced, balanced publication by the Sussex Record Society addressing a much under-researched aspect of church history. It will provide future researchers with a solid reference base to extend existing knowledge on how a Protestant church would have appeared in post-Reformation England.

MICHAEL HASLAM specialises in the history and architecture of the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman and Victorian Gothic Revival periods. He has an MA in History from the University of Lancaster and a postgraduate certificate in architectural history from the University of Oxford, and is a member of the Lancaster Archaeological & Historical Society.

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By Hywel Francis

(Y Lolfa 2018 240pp ISBN 9781912631032) £9.99

In this selection of his writings and speeches (1973-2014) Professor Hywel Francis palpably evokes a ‘lost world’ that has disappeared in his life time and is in danger of suffering ‘collective amnesia’. Born in 1946, two years after the 1944 Education Act, Hywel was the first Francis in five generations not to work at the coal face. His working life has been devoted to recording and interpreting the unique society of his early years.

He grew up in the Welsh-speaking pit village of Onllwyn, which like every other south Wales coalfield community between 1918 and 1950 had collectively experienced harsh times, surviving through mutual self-help, communal creativity and proudly contributing to the defeat of fascism. Across south Wales a myriad of associations and organisations flourished: chapels, co-ops, locally-owned shops and businesses, libraries, welfare halls, institutes, with music and dancing, cinemas, galas and seaside outings, rugby clubs. ‘Solidarity’ in this society meant union loyalty. The local pit lodge and committee spoke for the community, not just the men. Pithead baths liberated wives and daughters. Health services for all were the collective aspiration. With a national union created in 1945, the coal industry nationalised in 1947 and the NHS established in 1948, miners and their families saw themselves as the vanguard of a working class that was coming of age.

Hywel learned to speak Welsh at the hearth and there he mastered his family’s oral history and local stories of ‘solidarity’. Dai, his father, related how he started work in 1925 ‘top of pit’ aged 14 and immediately witnessed a strike, forgotten elsewhere, but not in Cwm Dulais, the valley north of Neath where the Francis family lived. Dai Francis knew its importance: the strike brought the ‘Fed’ to the anthracite coalfield and 30,000 miners grew in trade union consciousness.

The Francis family, female and male, supported the Union, were Congregationalists accustomed to democratic procedures, auto-didactics and teachers. Dai Francis was a Sunday School teacher and Marxist lecturer trained by the National Council of Labour College—he worked underground until 1937, when ill-health compelled him to return to surface work. Inspired by the Popular Front, he joined the Communists in 1936, rising through the union ranks to the regional office in 1959, and elected General Secretary of the South Wales NUM in 1963. This meant that Hywel spent most of his teens at Whitchurch High School outside Cardiff. There his history teacher, recognising where his heart lay, suggested ‘i fynd i Abertawe’.

And so at Swansea he studied at the only Welsh university college which in the mid-1960s took a serious interest in working class history and re-entered the world of the anthracite miners of west Glamorgan, setting up home in his ancestral valley with Mair. He worked in the area as an adult education tutor, taking leading roles in the ‘history workshop’ movement that begat the journal Llafur, the South Wales Miners Library (saving remnants of the defunct miners’ libraries) and the South Wales Coalfield Archive (1971-1974), particularly the oral history records that he continuously mined for articles such as The Secret World of the South Wales Miner (1980).

In Llafur (1973) Hywel cut his academic teeth with ‘Anthracite strike and the disturbances of 1925’, weaving the local story into the broad coalfield picture, showing how ‘solidarity’ was forged that year in the pit villages of his valley. It was ‘catch up’ with the miners of the steam and bituminous coal seams further east, whose seven district unions had formed the South Wales Miners Federation in 1898 to counter the growing power of combination ownership. Hywel and Dai Smith, in their magisterial history The Fed (1980) tracked how this ‘bottom up’ organisation was an organic part of the ‘solidarity’ that welded valley life, in what proved to be the most cohesive region of the National Union of Mineworkers formed in 1945.

A decade after the 1984-1985 national strike, writing My Community, My Valley, Hywel declared ‘That confident world, full of hope for the future, came to an abrupt halt with the closure of Onllwyn No.1, the last colliery in the northern end of the valley’ in 1964. In 2010, when he was local MP (Aberavon 2001-2015), in a lecture at the National Library of Wales entitled The Fate of Our Community, Hywel pertinently asked ‘Are our think tanks and our universities connecting to the daily lives of the people of Wales and at the same time locating Wales within a wider world?’

LES JAMES is editor of CHARTISM e-magazine. He is author of Render the Chartists Defenceless (2015) and currently writing The Rising: Y Cyfodiad 1839. He was senior lecturer in history at the University of Wales, Newport (now part of the University of South Wales) and was previously education officer at Newport Museum and Art Gallery.

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Edited by Evelyn Lord

(EAH Press 2019 229pp ISBN 0-978-09576147-3-4) £9.99

In 1662 the diarist Samuel Pepys, walking with his father near the family’s Huntingdonshire home, watched country maids coming home from milking their cows. They were in a joyful mood with, as Pepys described it, music going before them. The delightful image of milkmaids singing their way home gives this book its title.

Huntingdonshire is a ‘lost county’, since 1974 essentially a district of the county of Cambridgeshire, and its eighty-eight parishes (in 1676) are the subject of this collection of essays. These cover early modern transport, social structure, parish politics, agriculture, fields, settlement and poor relief, arrears and non-payment of the hearth tax, the clergy, and religious dissent. Primary sources have been extensively mined for these essays, most notably the hearth tax returns. This is not surprising: the impetus behind this book came from research on the Huntingdonshire hearth tax which spilled over from a forthcoming volume of Huntingdonshire’s hearth tax returns of 1662 and 1674. The aim of these essays is to provide a wider context to the hearth tax volume, not only with reference to Huntingdonshire in the period, but also by including the historical context beyond the county, and modern historical debates. It is a particular strength of the Singing Milkmaids that these debates are addressed and their relevance to Huntingdonshire examined.

As this volume makes clear, it would be incautious to make sweeping statements when examining the early modern period, whatever previous historians have claimed. Social groups are not homogeneous, but contain many gradations, as discussed by several essays in this collection. This is demonstrated in the probate inventories: yeomen might be better off than gentlemen, husbandmen might have more household goods than yeomen. The economic geography of Huntingdonshire should not be over-simplified; there are clear differences between market towns and rural areas, and between the fens and the clay lands.

Overall, this is a well-researched volume, but did Pepys really witness the execution of Charles I, as stated in the introduction? In another essay St Bartholomew’s Day is given as 25 August, rather than the actual date of 24 August. The production process has been afflicted here and there by gremlins, most noticeably in the placing of tables in the text, but this does not affect the overall readability of the volume.

Singing Milkmaids benefits from a glossary of potentially unfamiliar terms, a bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and an index. There are footnotes, illustrations, maps and tables. This is a scholarly collection of essays, thoroughly grounded in original sources. It will undoubtedly be of value to those with an interest in early modern Huntingdonshire. The broader historical context in which these essays are placed also makes this a worthwhile collection for anybody with a more general interest in rural society in the early modern period.

ROSALIND JOHNSON is a visiting research fellow at the University of Winchester, who has worked for the Victoria County History projects in Somerset and Wiltshire. She is currently working on a study of loyalist religion in southern England in the 1650s, and a study of Quakers and marriage in the long eighteenth century.

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By Maggie Andrews with Emma Edwards

(West Midlands History 2019 111pp ISBN 978-1-905036-64-6) £15

This slim volume gives an overview of the influenza pandemic of 1918 to 1920, concentrating on evidence and examples from the West Midlands. In its eight pages the introductory chapter provides a useful overview of the whole subject, covering very succinctly topics such as the pathogens that caused the symptoms we refer to as Spanish Flu, its source, how it spread, the anomaly of the age ranges most affected, the indiscriminate nature of the disease, the three wave structure of the pandemic, and many others.

Chapters 2 and 3 cover the first two waves, in the Spring/Summer and the Autumn/Winter of 1918. The next four chapters pick up a variety of topics under four broad headings: ‘Everyday Life’, ‘Providing Medical Care’, ‘Business Of Dying’ and ‘Schools And The Young’. The final chapter provides a summary of ‘Loss, Legacies and Futures’. Many of these topics could have been given a wider coverage if space allowed, but enough is provided to stimulate further investigation of the subject. Some of the more unusual topics include the sense of condemnation of working-class people for not following the authorities’ sensible but impractical advice, such as rest and isolation; the energy and effectiveness of individuals, especially local doctors and politicians, in dealing with the spread of the disease; and the compounding effect of war and pandemic on morale and attitudes. The book is well illustrated throughout, which adds to the interest. One is curious to know whether the subject of the cartoon of Charles Kean on p.14 is really the nineteenth century actor or another ‘Charles Kean’.

Inevitably, there are occasions when, due to brevity, statements are made which are broader than they should be. For example, the three waves are described as ‘unpredictable’ on p.65 whereas, among others, the Medical Research Committee published in the first week of August 1918 a resume stating that a second wave of greater severity was likely. Also, there is no reference to statistical analyses of the pandemic, which were undertaken both at the time and by a wide range of different specialists since. Therefore, the end date for the book is set as 1920, rather than the usual 1919, because there was a report of a further outbreak in Birmingham in that year. However, statistical analysis shows that ‘normal’ levels of influenza death rates were not typically reached until the mid-1920s. One other drawback is that there is no formal referencing to sources, but the source of information is mostly clear from the narrative. However, on one occasion a very interesting statistic is used with no obvious source provided, making it impossible to follow up the exact calculation.

In summary, this is an attractive, softback book with a useful index, a page of sources and another page of further reading, which should be used as a starting point for other works in this area, for example by David Killingray. A wide range of local history sources have been used including newspapers, private letters and Medical Officer of Health reports. The limited space available means that the narrative progresses at a good pace, which with the adequate prose produces a history that is a very quick and enjoyable introduction to the subject.

DAVID TAYLOR is particularly interested in nineteenth and early twentieth century industrial, economic and social history, concentrating on the West Midlands. He has written books on the First World War in South Staffordshire villages and the General Strike in the Black Country, and was awarded an MA in Local History by the Open University. His paper ‘Factors affecting geographic differences in mortality rates during the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic in the Black Country’ was published in The Local Historian in October 2018.

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