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Social History Books to look out for:
[in ascending order of date of publication (year) with each entry dated to earliest edition. Each listing includes later editions and printings]
1985. Contemporary Accounts of the Great Plague of London
1984. The Countryside Between The Wars 1918-1940 by John S. Creasey
1990. Delivering Motherhood. Maternal Ideologies and Practices in the 19th and 20th Centuries
2005. Henbury Dynasties by Marguerite Tonkin
1999. Liquid Pleasures: A Social History of Drinks in Modern Britain
1986. Massacre of the Innocents: Infanticide in Great Britain 1800-1939
1977. Miners, Quarrymen and Saltworkers by Raphael Samuel
1969. The Peterloo Massacre by Joyce Marlow
1966. Tales from the Fens by W. H. Barrett; Edited by Enid Porter
1987. Troubled Waters: Memoirs of a Canal Boatwoman
1995. Women & Children of the Cut
1995. Yeomen of the Cotswolds

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• Contemporary Accounts of the Great Plague of London [top]
  Devised and Written by G. A. Alton with contributions by David Simkin
  Illustrated by David Simkin; Layout by Leslie Coat
  First published in 1985 in Great Britain by Tressell Publications in paperback (A4 format, card covers, staple binding); 35pp, ISBN 0907586198
  Tressell Publications is a co-operative of school teachers concerned with the publication of materials that encourage active learning by pupils

Contents:
Throughout this book, questions are posed to initiate thinking, learning, and further study and reading.
1. 'Sentence of Death' - a story written in third person about a character called Mary Hoskins (fictional), who went to London - the story is designed to illustrate the sights, smells and sounds of London to a newcomer; and to point out the dirt and disease prevalent in the Capital
2. The Plague - what it was and how many deaths it caused in London between 1603 and 1647, these last statistics being presented in table format as follows: Year; Number of Plague Deaths; Number of Total Deaths
3. Plague Symptoms: quotes Boccacio, writing in 1353
4. What Caused the Plague?
5. Doctors, Medical Knowledge & Treatment
6. The Plague Begins:
Source A here gives dates taken from Samuel Pepys' Diary for the year 1665, from 30th April to 17th June
Source B: Deaths recorded as caused by the Plague are presented in table format looking at the dates 25th April to 27th June
Source C: A print from a woodcut contemporary to the Plague shows townspeople fleeing into the country from the diseased-towns
Source D: A small extract from the Reverend Doctor Thomas Vincent is given
Source E: Extracts from Samuel Pepys' diary for the year 1665: dates 20th June to 30th June. Pepys moved his wife to Woolwich on 5th July that year
7. Attempts to avoid the Plague:
Source A: J. Bell writing in about the year 1700
Source B: Daniel Defoe writing in 1722
Source C: An extract from a manuscript written in the Middle Ages
Source D: Illustration of charms and amulets used as protection against the Plague
8. Cures for the Infected:
Source A: Doctors
Source B: Some contemporary plague cures
9. Survival and Recovery:
Source A: Daniel Defoe, writing in 1722
10. How They Fought The Plague: contains illustration of Plague Officials, namely Examiner, Premises searched, Watchman, Nursekeeper, Searcher, Physician, Corpse Bearers with text telling the reader about each of the above.
Source A: A page from the 'Orders for Health' conceived and published by 'The Lord Mayor and Alderman of the City of London concerning the Infection of the Plague [1665].
Also includes b&w illustration of a Pest-house in Toothill Fields, one of three in the area of Westminster; and a b&w illustration of a doctor examining a patient in hospital taken from a contemporary engraving
11. Looking at a Pictorial Source:
Source A: A b&w illustration taken from a woodcut of 1665
12. Looking at a Contemporary Document: with b&w illustration of a contemporary document source, here an account of 'The Diceases and casualties this Week'
Source A: Extracts from Samuel Pepys' Diary for the Year 1665: specifically entries for the 30th and 31st August
Source B: Daniel Defoe, writing in 1722 about the Parish Officers not giving full account of the extent of the Plague because they fell ill themselves
Source C: J. Noorthouck, writing in 1773 about knavery and collusion in the reports of deaths and how Jews and Quakers' figures were not included in the weekly bills due to separate burial grounds
Page 22 shows illustrations of other sources of evidence such as a Bill of Health [1665] signed by Churchwardens to allow particular individuals to leave London (after July, 1665, you had to have one of these certificates to leave London; Contemporary Portraits of figures who remained in London throughout the Plague; Contemporary Prints of 'Dead Carts' returning from Plague Pits outside the City Walls; illustrations of Contemporary Objects such as a Plague Bell (now in the Museum of London); Contemporary Diaries and Journals (e.g. from Samuel Pepys)
13. The Changing Face of London:
Source A: Extracts from Samuel Pepys' Diary for the year 1665
Source B: Daniel Defoe, writing in 1722 about a cart carrying the dead bodies
Source C: Dr. Nathaniel Hodges writing, in 1665, about the months of August and September
Source D: John Evelyn, 7th September 1665, wrote about the huge numbers of deaths, coffins and the silence in the City
Source E: Reverend Thomas Vincent writing, in 1665, that death rides triumphantly through the streets
Source F: Scenes of the Great Plague of London from a woodcut from a contemporary broadsheet, 1665. Shows the multitudes flying from London in boats and barges, by land, burying the dead and carts full of dead to bury
Source G: Extracts from a story written in 1985, reconstructing the scene in a typical London street during the Great Plague
14. The Plague Rages:
Source A: London Plague Deaths (table form) from 6th June 1665 to 1st August 1665.
Includes two black and white illustrations of an ale-house tavern scene in 1672
Source B: Tipling Houses illustration in the Lord Mayor's Orders
Source C: Daniel Defoe, 'A Journal of the Plague Year' [1722] about people letting themselves down out of their windows in the face of the watchman. This source is accompanied by an illustration from a painting by F. Topham showing 'Rescued from the Plague: London, 1665', referring to the rescue of healthy people out of Plague-stricken houses. See also Samuel Pepys, entry for September 3rd, 1665
Source D: W. G. Bell, an historian writing in 1924 about plague nurses
Source E: Doctor Hodges, who stayed in London throughout the Plague, claimed that plague nurses helped increase the number of deaths by foul means, plundering their patients for valuables
Source F: A print from a 1665 woodcut showing a scene inside a plague-stricken house
Source G: Daniel Defoe, writing in 1722, told about theft instigated by corpse-bearers
15. Why the Plague Died Out: gives 7 possible reasons
16. Deaths from the Plague
Source A: Deaths from the Plague [from the weekly Bills of Mortality] from 6th June 1665 to 27th February 1666.
Source B: Extracts from Samuel Pepys' diary looking at entries in 1665 for 30th July, 16th August, 31st August, 14th September, 26th October, 22nd November; and for 1666: 22nd January and 30th January
Source C: Extracts from John Evelyn's Diary, 1665-1666: entries for 1665 being: 2nd August, 28th August, 7th September and 11th October; and for 1666 being 6th February, 1666
17. Modern Disasters
18. The Real Cause of the Plague - illustration of the rat and the rat flea. Only in 1894, 230 years after the Plague broke out was the real cause determined
19. Map of London in 1665
20. Glossary

Other Books on The Great Plague (often called the Plague of London)

Bubonic Plague:

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• The Countryside Between The Wars 1918-1940 [top]
  Introduction & Commentaries by John S. Creasey and Sadie B. Ward. Photographs from Miss M. Wight (1889-1973) and Eric Guy
  First published in 1984 in Great Britain by B. T. Batsford Ltd in hardback with dustjacket, 144pp, ISBN 0713411864. Original UK retail price: £8.50 net

About this book/synopsis: This is said to be the first detailed photographic account of British farming and related activities between WW1 and WW2; and it provides a wealth of information on agricultural methods, implements and machinery, all set within their economic and social framework. The book contains 176 photographs in total.

Some of the photographs were published for the first time in this volume and they mainly come from the collections of the Institute of Agricultural History at the University of Reading, but some come from the contemporary farming press. Changes to the countryside and agriculture during the interwar period are covered briefly in the introduction.

For anyone interested in agricultural, rural and social history in the countryside, the photographs within this book represent a hugely valuable resource.

Some examples of interesting photographs:
Women's Land Army digging for victory in 1918
German prisoners of war bagging potatoes in Surrey in 1919
A Gyrotiller clearing derelict land on the farm of C. E. Best, Fifield Bavant, nr Salisbury, 1937
A steam traction engine-driven thresher at Cholsey Five Ways, Berkshire (undated)
A Ransome traction engine driving a threshing machine at R.W.N. Dawe's farm, Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire (undated)
The moving of Sir John Lloyd's farm by train from Sevenoaks in Kent to Cirencester, Gloucestershire in March 1939
The loading of strawberry chip baskets into shelved railway vans at Swanwick station, Hampshire in June 1936
Photo of Messerschmitt 109 shot down in a field of oats in Wiltshire, August 1940

and many more.

Chapters:
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Notes on photographic sources
Note on the commentaries
The Plates:
Hay and Corn
Potatoes and Vegetables
Fruit and Hops
New Machines
Pest Control
Livestock
Manor Farm, Notgrove
Agricultural Shows
Marketing
Food Processing
Rural Industries
Transport
People
Village Life
Recreation
Social Issues
The Coming of War

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• Delivering Motherhood. Maternal Ideologies and Practices in the 19th and 20th Centuries [top]
  Written by Katherine Arnup
  First published in 1990 in Great Britain by Routledge in hardcover with dustjacket, 322pp, ISBN 0415020182

Contents: In the course of the 19th and 20th Centuries, motherhood in Canada, as elsewhere in the western world became contested terrain. Male medical practitioners vied with midwives, and midwives with nurses, while reform-minded middle-class women joined with the eugenically minded state officials in efforts to control the quantity and quality of the population. As reproduction gained in importance as a political as well as a religious issue, motherhood became the centre of debate over public health and welfare policies and formed the corner-stone of feminist and anti-feminist, as well as nationalist and pacifist ideologies. Delivering Motherhood is the first comprehensive study on the history of this complex development in Canada, where control over the different stages of reproduction, from conception, to delivery, to childcare, has shifted from the central figure of the mother to experts and professionals. The contributions range from the treatment of single mothers in Montreal in the Depression to the La Leche League in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

Chapters:
1. 'Motherhood Issues' in the Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries by Jane Lewis
2. 'The Case of the Missing Midwives':A History of Midwifery in Ontario from 1795-1900 by C. Lesley Briggs
3. The Different Stages of the Elimination of Midwives in Quebec by Hélène Laforce
4. Childbirth in Ontario: The Transition from Home to Hospital in the Early Twentieth Century by Jo Oppenheimer
5. The Confinement of Women: Childbirth and Hospitalization in Vancouver, 1919-1939 by Veronica Strong-Boag and Kathryn McPherson
6. Deviants Anonymous: Single Mothers at the Hôpital de la Miséricorde in Montreal, 1929-1939 by Andrée Lévesque.
7. Discoveries and Dissimulations: The Impact of Abortion Deaths on Maternal Mortality in British Columbia by Angus McLaren and Arlene Tigar McLaren
8. Women's Involvement in the Canadian Birth Control Movement of the 1930s:The Hamilton Clinic by Dianne Dodd
9. Mothering in a Newfoundland Community: 1900-1940 by Cecilia Benoit
10. Educating Mothers:Government Advice for Women in the Inter-War Years by Katherine Arnup
11. Schools for Happiness: Instituts Familiaux and the Education of Ideal Wives and Mothers by Sherene Razack
12. The La Leche League: A Feminist Perspective by Deborah Gorham and Florence Kellner Andrews
13. Ellen Key: Maternalism and Pacifism by Ruth Roach Pierson
14. Desperately Seeking Babies: New Technologies of Hope and Despair by Rona Achilles
Index
Sherene Razack and Joanne Thompson

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• Henbury Dynasties [top]
  Written by Marguerite Tonkin
  First published in 2005 in Great Britain by Redcliffe in paperback, 158pp, ISBN 1904537324
  INFORMATION ABOUT THE SERIES:
  Book 1: Lost Farms of Henbury
  Book 2: Old Henbury (looks at the buildings, social history (i.e. first-hand accounts of life in the village) and archaeological evidence
  Book 3: Henbury Dynasties

About this book/synopsis: Henbury Dynasties is the third and most extensive volume of Henbury histories compiled and written by Marguerite Tonkin from conversations with residents and former residents. In it, she recalls, in words and evocative photographs, the lives of notable Henbury families, and their relations with other local families, neighbours and employees in the village. This is a fascinating source of primary evidence for the social history of a village and the network of relationships, occupations and movements of its residents. Family trees are included to assist the text and have been provided by some of the Henbury families where the trees have been researched and expanded

Contents:
1) Ancient families closely associated with Henbury through ownership and/or residence: Sadleir, Astry and Farr
2) Families who settled in Henbury between late seventeenth and late nineteenth centuries: Sampson Way, Way, Harford, Warburton, and Baker
3) Country families 'born and bred': Woodsford/Talbot, Love, Painter and Clifford
4) Two farming families: Hignell and Biggs (an extended family)
5) Small neighbourhoods and communities: Botany Bay: Godfrey, Goodfield, Cox; Ison Hill: Steer, Lane
6) Families who came to Henbury during the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries: Gunn, Aldridge, Budgett, James, Langfield
7) Families involved in business and trade in Henbury village centre: Newman, Harvey, Grigg. 8) The Powesland family
Finale
The family houses of rural Henbury
Acknowledgements
Sources

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• Liquid Pleasures: A Social History of Drinks in Modern Britain [top]
  Written by John Burnett
  First published in 1999 in Great Britain by Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group) in hardback, ISBN 0415131812
  Published in paperback in 1999 in Great Britain by Routledge, 254pp, ISBN 0415131820

About the book: Liquid Pleasures is an engrossing study of the social history of drinks in Britain from the late 17th Century to the present. From the first cup of tea at breakfast and mid-morning coffee, to an evening beer and a 'night-cap', John Burnett discusses individual drinks and drinking patterns which have varied not least with personal taste, but also with age, gender, region and class. He shows how different ages have viewed the same drink as either demon poison or medicine.

John Burnett traces the history of what has been drunk in Britain from the 'hot beverages revolution' of the late 17th Century - connecting drinks and related substances such as sugar to empire - right up to the 'cold drinks' revolution of the late 20th Century, examining the factors which have determined these major changes in our dietary habit.

Chapters:
List of Figures and Tables
Introduction
1. Water: 'The most useful and necessary part of the creation'
2. Milk: 'No finer investment?'
3. Tea: the cup that cheers
4. Coffee: 'I like coffee, I like tea...'
5. Soft drinks: from cordial waters to Coca-Cola
6. Beer: 'A moral species of beverage'
7. Wine: 'Use a little wine...'
8. Spirits: 'Water of Life'
Conspectus
Notes, Select Bibliography, Index

Figures & Tables Included in the Book:
Figures:
4.1 Graph of Coffee and Tea Consumption figures in the UK, 1815-1938
4.2 Graph of Household consumption of coffee and tea, 1950-1988

About the Author: At the time of publication, John Burnett was Emeritus Professor of Social History at Brunel University; UK. He has also published: 'Plenty and Want: Social History of Diet in England from 1815 to the Present Day', 'Idle Hands: Experience of Unemployment, 1790-1990 (Modern British History)', 'Useful Toil: Autobiographies of Working People from the 1820's to the 1920's', and 'A Social History of Housing, 1815-1985'

1999, Routledge, pbk

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• Massacre of the Innocents: Infanticide in Great Britain 1800-1939 [top]
  Written by Lionel Rose
  First published in 1986 in Great Britain by Routledge & Kegan Paul, 216pp, ISBN 071020339X. Original UK retail price: £16.95 net

Contents: Before contraception was generally available and when abortion was fraught with danger, infanticide was a common solution to the problem of unwanted children. Massacre of the Innocents shows the causes and consequences of the high tide of infanticide in Victorian Britain. Lionel Rose describes the ways in which unwanted and 'surplus' infants were disposed of, and the economic and social pressures on women to rid themselves of their burdens by covert criminal and sub-criminal means. he discusses the activities of infanticidal and abortionist midwives and shows how the practices of wet nursing and baby farming were closely related to infanticide. Unscrupulous insurance salesmen even turned infanticide into a profitable business, in their reckless grab for commissions. Infanticide declined with the growing practice of contraception, the lessening of pressure on unmarried mothers, and as adoption was made easier. This is hard-hitting piece of social history, highly relevant to our own time, for Lionel Rose suggests that the current level of baby battering is a response to the same type of social hardship as produced the 'massacre of the innocents'.

Chapters:
1. Setting the scene
2. Infant Mortality: 'the waste of infant life'
3. The economic and sexual vulnerability of women
4. Bastardy and the Poor Law in mid-Victorian England
5. Infanticide and the mid-Victorian conscience 1830-70 (I)
6. Infanticide and the mid-Victorian conscience (II): the milk of human kindness
7. Coroners, inquests and the exposure of infanticide
8. Infanticide and the law 1803-70
9. Lifting the lid on midwives and baby-farmers 1868-71
10. 'Churchyard luck':midwives and murder
11. The South London Baby-Farmers 1870
12. Infant life protection legislation 1870-90
13. Bastardy, seduction and infanticide law reform 1870-1900
14. Cradle and grave:birth and death registration and infanticide
15. Burial insurance and child murder (I)
16. Burial insurance and child murder (II)
17. Infant life protection 1890-1914
18. Bastardy, eugenics and affiliation law reform to 1939
19. Infant conservation 1890-1920
20. The disappearance of baby-farming 1920-39
Conclusion; Notes & References; Select bibliography and abbreviations; Index

List of Illustrations:
Fig. 1. 'Dropped' babies, c. 1740
Fig. 2. Middlesex: showing selected parishes and coroners' divisional boundaries 1860s
Fig. 3. Marylebone: social composition 1860s
Fig. 4. Facsimile of a toutng letting from a midwife
Fig. 5. From a baby-farm (c. 1891)
Fig. 6. An artist's impression of incidents from Margaret Waters's career
Fig. 7. Notice from the General Register Office 1850
Fig. 8. A selection of midwives' stillbirth attestations
Fig. 9. Typical ads found in the popular papers of the period

Other books on Infanticide in Britain

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• Miners, Quarrymen and Saltworkers [top]
  Edited by Raphael Samuel
  First published in 1977 in Great Britain in Routledge & Kegan Paul's History Workshop Series, in paperback, 363pp, ISBN 0710083548. Original UK retail price: £3.75 net. Cover illustration: Durham pitmen near Sacriston about 1890

About this book: synopsis: Industrial discipline in mining, quarrying, brickmaking and other types of mineral work was very different from that in the 19th Century factories and mills. Mineral workers had no purpose-built premises to house them in - they only had endless galleries, scattered excavations or open-fronted sheds. In terms of tools, they also did not have expensive machinery to operate - rather they were working with shovels and hand-picks. Supervision of the workers, their efforts and output was difficult because of the open air or underground nature of the work. Some mineral workers like the Derbyshire lead miners or Cornish tin miners had no supervision whatsoever. The threat, or sanction of unemployment was absent in some mining locations where there was no reserve pool of labour to take the place of a sacked or redundant man or men. This applies to locations like the Isle of Purbeck, or the Forest of Dean. Whilst there was no reserve pool of labour, there was also an abundance of auxiliary jobs for the population local to the mines which allowed the miner's family to support itself in many different ways. Mining and quarrying were also very safe from the threat of the machine being sweat and muscle jobs and so a good proportion of the work was in the hands of self-governing workers companionships. Coal miners are the only class of mineral worker to have lodged themselves in the consciousness of historians. This is partly due to their sheer numbers and somewhat due to trade union strength, but also partly due to uneven survival into the twentieth-century. Other types of mining have disappeared from the written record either because they were too localised to achieve a national recognisable identity (like the arsenic miners of Devon) or because like the sett-makers, sand-getters and gravel-drawers, they were too dispersed.

This book deals with mineral workers of every class, discusses the peculiarities and common features of their work and at the same time showcases three detailed local studies: Pit Life in County Durham, Slate Quarrying in North Wales; and Salt Workers in Cheshire

Chapters:
Notes on Contributors
General Editor's Introduction

Part 1. Mineral Workers by Raphael Samuel
Part 2. Y Chwarelwyr: the slate quarrymen of North Wales by Merfyn Jones
Part 3. Cheshire Saltworkers
Part 4. The Durham Pitman by Dave Douglass
Part 5. Pit talk in County Durham by Dave Douglass
Subject Index
Index of Places

Plates:
1. Screenwomen in Whitehaven
2. Gravel Pits at Hampstead Heath, circa 1867
3. Sand crushing at Gornal
4. Jet workers in Whitby, circa 1890
5. Slatemaker's shanty at Stonesfield, Oxfordshire, circa 1900
6. Lead miners of the Yorkshire dales, circa 1904
7. Clay workers on Dartmoor
8. Cornish tinners, 1904
9. Explosion Alert, Penrhyn Quarry
10. Rockmen working their 'bargain' in Penrhyn Quarry
11. In the shed or slate mill, Penrhyn Quarry
12. The final process in transforming rocks into slates
13. Making slates: slate splitters in the Penrhyn Quarry
14. Outside the office on pay-day at Llechwedd slate mine, Blaenau Ffestiniog, in the 1890s
15. Sixteenth-century saltworks (Cheshire)
16. The Old Bridge at Northwich
17. Firing the pans
18. Making the squares
19. Bagging the salt
20. Drawing broad salt
21. Loading broad salt
22. Subsidence at Northwich
23. Percy Pit Colliery, 1844
24. Drops at Wallsend
25. At bank, circa 1913
26. Hewers at Cannock Chase, circa 1920
27. Picking coals on the screens
28. The Washington disaster of 1908
29. Gravestones at Heworth
30. Cover of a pamphlet by George Harvey

Figure:
1. Salt borings in the Northwich district

• The Peterloo Massacre [top]
  Written by Joyce Marlow; Jacket Design by John Richards
  1st published in 1969 in Great Britain by Rapp and Whiting Ltd in hardback with dustjacket, 238pp, ISBN 0853911223

About this book/synopsis: On a hot August day in 1819, over 60,000 men, women and children assembled on St. Peter's Field, near the centre of Manchester, to hear 'Orator' Hunt speak on the urgent need for parliamentary reform. Almost immediately on Hunt's arrival, troops were ordered to disperse the crowd. Within twenty minutes, the field was deserted and 60,000 people, among them the dying and wounded, were fleeing through the narrow streets of Manchester, adding the word Peterloo to the English language. This is the first book for the general reader to set this most memorable of Manchester days, which affected the whole English political climate, in the context of its background - the traumatic upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, the emergence of the new urban 'working class' and the particular plight and struggles of the most organised and articulate of these newcomers, the Lancashire cotton workers. The author, herself a Mancunian with a localised knowledge of the area and its ethos, has drawn the protagonists in human terms - on the Radical side, the vain, arrogant, but sincere Henry Hunt; the ebullient, romantic, touchy Samuel Bamford; the self-taught, self-opinionated father of popular English journalism, William Cobbett; on the Government side, the colourless, but tough Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool; the personally kindly, politically inadequate Lord Sidmouth; the handsome, hated Lord Castlereagh; and the timid panic-stricken local magistrates who wielded such immense power. Most of the story is told in the words of the contemporary documents and representing the anonymous thousands is John Lees, a cotton spinner who survived the Battle of Waterloo only to die a long and painful death as a result of his injuries at Peterloo

Contents:
1. Agriculture could not have made such a place as Manchester
2. The most wicked and seditious part of the country
3. The Constitution of England is the business of every Englishman
4. Britain's Guardian Ganders
5. That anomalous hermaphrodite race called Parson-Justices
6. All the gaols of the County are remarkably crowded
7. The lower classes are radically corrupted
8. Do unto others as you would they should do unto you
9. I accept with pleasure the Invitation of the Committee
10. A general insurrection is seriously meditated
11. Manchester knew nought of misery until now
12. The town has been deluged with placards
13. The alarm in all the neighbouring towns begins to be excessive
14. The most numerous meeting that ever took place in Great Britain
15. Then you shall have military force
16. Ah, behold their sabres gleaming
17. The Battle of Manchester is over
18. I never saw such a corpse as this in all my life
19. Shame! wind your blood sprinkled surplice around you
20. What do reasonable people think of the Manchester business?
21. There is an end to liberty
22. Rise like lions after slumber in unvanquishable number
Postcript; Notes and Sources; Bibliography; Index

List of Plates:
1. Viscount Sidmouth
2. Viscount Castlereagh
3. Samuel Bamford
4. Joseph Nadin
5. Henry Hunt
6. Map of Saint Peter's Field, Manchester
7. A contemporary print of the 'Massacre' on the Field of Peterloo
8. The only surviving Peterloo Banner
9. The only other relics of Peterloo
10. A vivid contemporary print entitled 'The Manchester Reform Meeting Dispered by the Civil and Military Power, August 16th, 1819

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• Tales from the Fens [top]
  By W. H. Barrett; Edited by Enid Porter (Curator of the Cambridge and County Folk Museum)
  First published in 1963 in Great Britain by Routledge & Kegan Paul in hardback with dustjacket
  Reprinted (second impression) in 1966 in Great Britain by RKP, in hardback with dustjacket, 203pp
  
  Also recommended:
  More Tales from the Fens by W. H. Barrett
  60 Years a Fensman by Arthur Randell
  The Furrow Behind Me: The Autobiography of a Hebridean Crofter by Angus MacLellan

About this book/synopsis: Reprinted in 1966 in hardback with dustjacket by Routledge & Kegan Paul, this 203 page volume (illustrated with 11 illustrations) tells some of the stories heard by a Fenlander in his youth in the area around Littleport, Brandon Creek and Southery on the Cambridgeshire-Norfolk borders; and recorded by him to ensure that the ancient Fenland art of storytelling should remain alive and not forgotten. In amongst these tales are place legends whose origins reach far back into history; character sketches of 19th Century Fenland villagers; stories of floods and their effects on Fenland agricultural and social life and stark accounts of poverty and economic unrest in the Fens of the last century. There is gaiety and humour, however, in many of the tales while in some of them can be seen the influence of the dons and undergraduates of Cambridge who spent vacations in the Fins, mingling with the Fenmen and ex-changing stories with them in the riverside inns. Mr. Barrett writes in a letter: "I started life with a caul [a portion of the Amnion, especially when it covers the head at birth]. This is preserved in the Folk Museum, Cambridge, as this was supposed to endow one with the gift of the gab. I came along too late to prove it, for story telling as an art died out when the old men of my youth died too. I have written the stories they used to tell, starting work in the Fens at eleven years of age - 'crow-scaring' for threepence a day, and perks which consisted of frozen hands and chillblained feet, suffering at times from bouts of 'foot and mouth disease', (an empty gut and badly shod). I finished my working days as a gardener to the Archdeacon of Norwich."

Contents:
Introduction
Story-telling in the fens: W. H. Barrett
The Stories and Their Background: Enid Porter

Part One: Fenland People
Chafer Legge at Newnham
Start and Finish
Tricky's Mother and the Widow
Cadilly
Joshua
The Policeman and the Gibbet's Offspring
Dowser and Sam
Peggy Thornhill

Part Two: Fenland History
A Sermon on Skating
A Journey to London
French Prisoners in the Fens
The Littleport Riots
Hunger in the Fens
The Drown of 1861
After the Flood: One Horse Farmers

Part Three: Legends of the Fens
The Legend of the Bulldog Bridge
The Legend of Gold Hill
The Legend of the Southery Wolf-Hound
The Nun's Ring
Grey Goose Feathers
How Littleport Began
The Priest's House at Brandon Creek
How Stilts Came into the Fens

Part Four: For Amusement Only
Old Nick in the Fens
A Strange Creature

Illustrations
(Between Pages 92 and 93)
1. W.H. Barrett
2. The Old Brandon Creek Bridge, 1830
3. The Ship Inn, Brandon Creek
4. An old Fen Shack (By courtesy of Alan Bloom)
5. A Typical Fend Drove
6. Digging a Fen Dyke by Hand (By courtesy of Alan Bloom)
7. Gang Labourers Deepening a Dyke in Sedge Fen
8. A Fen Cock-Up Bridge (By courtesy of Alan Bloom)
9. The river lark at Prickwillow
10. Primitive Methodist Chapel, Brandon Creek
11. Ruins of St. Peter's Church: Feltwell Fen Floods, 1915

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• Troubled Waters: Memoirs of a Canal Boatwoman [top]
  Biography of Margaret Cornish
  First published in 1987 in Great Britain by Robert Hale, in hardback with dustjacket, 204pp, ISBN 0709029551
  Jacket design by Wendy Taylor. Original UK retail price: £10.95

Synopsis: This book contains an engaging personal account of life on the inland waterways of England in wartime. During the Second World War, when shortage of manpower forced the Ministry of Transport to recruit women for work with the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company, Margaret Cornish was one of the small band of uncertain novices who stepped aboard the narrow boats. It proved a challenging experience as the 'trainees' struggled with heavy boats loaded with 40-45 tons of cargo from Limehouse docks to Birmingham and then with coal from the Coventry coalfields southwards to supply the canalside factories. Working through ice-ups, rain and summer droughts, real comradeship sprang up between the young women as they acquired the competence and traditions of the boat people for themselves. This is the true story behind Margaret Cornish's highly popular fictionalized tales in Still Waters. The life was tough, but it had a lasting appeal and since those days, Margaret has never completely left the canals. This is her story.

Chapters:
List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Author's Preface.

1. Nostalgia
2. A Step Sideways
3. Training Boats: First Trip
4. Jo
5. Training Boats: Second Trip
6. The Lower Road
7. Trainer's Mate
8. Two-Handed
9. Working Boats
10. Steerer of a Pair
11. Hyperion
12. Endings and Beginnings

Author's Postscript; Glossary; Further Reading; Index

1987, John Hale, hbk, 1st Ed.

1994, M.& M. Baldwin, pbk

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• Women and Children of the Cut [top]
  Written by Wendy Freer
  First published in 1995 in Great Britain by the Canal & Railway Historical Society, pbk, 80pp, ISBN 0901461180
  Originally sold at £11.95

About the author: Wendy Freer is a social historian with a particular interest in canals and in the employment of women and children

Contents: The book contains 42 illustrations; and sets out to describe the everyday life of the families who lived wholly or mainly on long-distance narrow boats. There is no attempt to romanticise the boat people and their way of life. Instead, every effort has been made to set their experiences and circumstances firmly in context and to make accurate comparisons with other occupational and social groups. Canal-boat work is one of the few occupations employing a significant number of women and children where no specific legislation was ever enacted to control the hours and conditions of their work. Child labour was common far into the 20th Century and children were denied even the most elementary education. One of the main purposes of the book is, therefore, to look at why this was so; what attempts were made to remedy the situation, and why they failed. There are other books about canal life, but few have concentrated on the lives of women and children. One notable exception is Sheila Stewart's splendid book Ramlin Rose which draws on her many conversations with boat women as well as on her extensive research among the literature of the canals. It is hoped that Women and Children of the Cut, drawing as it does on the little known wealth of source material amongst the files of the government departments of the day, will form a useful companion work.

Chapters: Acknowledgements; Preface

The Canal Carrying Trade
Working Life
Family Life
School
Why wasn't something done? Part one, 1840-1914
Why wasn't something done? Part two, 1914-1960

References; Index

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• Yeomen of the Cotswolds:A Journey of Discovery Which Traces The History of a Cotswold Farming Family Back to the 14th Century [top]
  Written by Eleanor Porter and Mary Abbott
  Published in 1995 in Great Britain by Images (Publishing) Ltd, Malvern in hardcover, 288pp. ISBN 1897817487

Contents: This book tells the story of a remarkable journey into the past. Intrigued by the richness of her husband's family records, Eleanor Porter began a major search. She eventually traced the family down six centuries of England's history, discovering that almost all its members were farmers with strong church loyalties, and deeply rooted in the land. Eleanor's research was followed closely by historian and writer Mary Abbott, and eventually they began working together. The result is an engaging study that begins with the occasion of the 100th birthday of Eleanor Porter's father-in-law and takes us back to medieval times. Against the background of national and international events, the authors paint a more immediate picture of the history that actually shaped lives:the births, marriages and deaths, the rhythm of the farming year and the continuing concerns of crop and livestock husbandry.
The Cotswolds epitomise the timeless beauty of rural England and the harmony that can be sustained between nature and man. Mary Abbott's keen eye for important minutiae and the wealth of information garnered by Eleanor Porter combine in a narrative of vivid colour and detail-a celebration of all that has made the Cotswolds what they are today.

Chapters:
A Note on Prices; Preface and Acknowledgements; Family Tree; Map of the Cotswolds; Introduction

Part One-Reliving the Past
1. Manor Farm
2. The Cotswold Shepherd
3. Arable Farming
4. How the Labourer Lived

Part Two-The Last Generation
5. Farming in the Great War
6. Family Life

Part Three-Oxfordshire
7. The Squire
8. Promise and Disaster
9. Family, Church and Brethren

Part Four-Gloucestershire
10. The Porters and the Wests
11. Cotswold Farming 1790-1813
12. Farmers who left Wills
13. Tenuous Links
A Final Note; Sources and Suggested Further Reading; Index

Cotswold history: