The Maltreated and the Malcontents on History Workshop blog
An article posted on History Workshop journal website by Mike Richardson on the Great Western Cotton factory in Barton Hill based upon his recent book The Maltreated and the Malcontents published by BRHG.
During the First World War Sylvia Pankhurst's newspaper, The Dreadnought was the most consistently anti-war publication. It not only opposed the global conflict but condemned the crushing of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, supported the 1917 Russian Revolution and campaigned for a revolution in Britain. Professor Newsinger is the author of numerous books including The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire (2006), Fighting Back: The American Working Class in the 1930s […]
Not A BRHG Event
At Waterstones, use Union Street Entrance. Sheila Rowbotham recounts the interweaving lives of four women and two men – Helena Born, Miriam Daniell, Gertrude Dix, Robert Nicol, and William Bailie – as they migrate to America from Bristol, Edinburgh and Manchester. Radicalised by the rise of socialism, they cross the Atlantic dreaming of liberty and equality. Their lives open fascinating slants on both political and cultural movements and upon influential individuals like Walt Whitman, Eleanor […]
The West of England and South Wales Women's History Network is pleased to present a free showing of Make More Noise! Suffragettes in Silent Film. Make More Noise is a selection of silent films from the British Film Institute National Archive exploring the representation of suffragettes in the early 20th century. From footage of suffrage demonstrations to anarchic women's comedy, the collection was brought out to complement the release of Suffragette. The film will be shown at the Salt Café Deli, […]
The history of Bristol’s Great Western Cotton Works in Barton Hill, which opened in 1838, is little known. The story of its workforce — mainly low-paid women and children — has never been told. From the 1830s to the early twentieth century, Barton Hill workers endured long working hours, high rates of industrial accidents and ill-health from the cotton dust and humidity. Moreover, they were subjected to wage cuts and fines by a series of unrelenting managers. Divided along age and gender lines […]
In 1917, socialist, feminist and anti-war activist, Alice Wheeldon, her daughter Winnie and husband Alf Mason were given long prison sentences for supposedly plotting to kill the Prime Minister Lloyd George and Arthur Henderson, the leader of the Labour Party. The evidence was flimsy, their accuser an MI5 agent provocateur so dubious the prosecution kept him away from the trial. It was a time when Britons were increasingly vocal in their opposition to the continuing and pointless carnage of the […]
Rosie MacGregor remembers Angela, that is Angela Gradwell Tuckett (1906-1994); a stalwart Communist, an all-round radical and something of a Renaissance woman. I’ll call her simply Angela too. Angela had a radical family background. She descended on her father’s side from a family of abolitionist (and quite prosperous!) Quakers. Her maternal family line included her grandfather, Bristol artist Henry Stacy and her aunt the pioneering socialist Enid Stacy. Born in Weston-Super-Mare, Stacy was an […]
The Friends of Alice Wheeldon In 1917 a Derby socialist and feminist in the anti-war movement, Alice Wheeldon was sent to prison on the evidence of an agent provocateur for plotting to kill Lloyd George. The evidence was flimsy, her accuser so dubious the prosecution kept him away from the trial. In this new, revised edition of The Friends of Alice Wheeldon Sheila Rowbotham reveals how militarism and fears about security contrived to devastate the lives of an ordinary family in Derby. The […]
The Fair Fight is a pulsating historical novel set within the world of female pugilists and their patrons in late eighteenth-century Bristol. It is an unputdownable story which takes you from a filthy brothel to the finest houses in the town, from the world of street fighters to the world of champions. Alive with the smells and sounds of the streets, The Fair Fight is a major debut. Anna Freeman a lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University as well as a multiple slam-winning performance […]
This book examines the parts played by women in the struggle against fascism across Europe. Strobl acknowledges the importance of so-called “passive” resistance such as hiding people, distributing leaflets and listening for information on radio Moscow and the BBC, which is perceived as the traditional role of women in the resistance. However this book looks as the women who broke away from this traditional role and took part in the armed struggle against fascism. As someone who didn’t know very […]
