Helen Parker-Drabble shows how the experiences of her father, Harry Drabble, who was hospitalised for bovine tuberculosis as a child, remain fiercely relevant for families, medical practitioners and policymakers in twenty-first century Britain...

Disabled peoples could be found across the British Empire; at the same time, the process of colonisation could create forms of disability, while the concept of ‘disability’ became embedded in discourses of race and gender. In this article, Esme Cleall demonstrates how thinking about disability is essential to understanding the...

In nineteenth-century England and Wales, the New Poor Law was the state’s solution for those who wouldn’t – as well as those who couldn’t – work. Even for disabled paupers, the line between the two wasn’t always clear cut. In this article, Carol Beardmore shows how those with physical disabilities...

In the pre-modern world, the ability to speak and to hear were fundamental to participation in civil society. How, then, could prelingual deaf people survive and thrive? Rosamund Oates, author of the recently published Silent Histories: Deafness in Early Modern England, charts the long struggle for the recognition of sign...

Expansion into new periods and places, new revelations of human diversity and difference, and a rethink of the tools we use to recover the past – disability history is not just thriving but is also exciting, as Daniel Blackie and Alexia Moncrieff demonstrate in their update on the state of...

Life in medieval cities could be violent and dangerous, and the records generated by state officials charged with regulating that violence offer invaluable insight into everyday life. Stephanie Emma Brown takes us behind the scenes of the recently launched Medieval Murder Map project, which was based on coroners’ rolls, to...

Hulks – former naval ships used as prisons for those convicted of serious crime and sentenced to transportation – were intended to be a temporary solution to a penal crisis caused by the American Revolutionary Wars. These ‘schools of vice’, or ‘floating hells’ lasted 80 years, casting a shadow over...

In this article Matthew Taylor explores the history of women’s boxing in Britain from the early eighteenth century onwards, showing how prevailing gender norms have led to this activity being marginalised by historians. It is argued that the key women boxers he discusses should be celebrated as key figures, not just in the history of sport but...

The modern Olympic Games were first held in 1896, but it was not until their fourth edition, held in London 1908, that they had a purpose-built stadium as their sporting and ceremonial heart. This article by Martin Polley explores the history of that stadium – White City. As well as...

Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live and we are affected to greater and lesser degrees by the big events that happen on a daily...

Historical research takes place in many forms and in many locations. This research, which has been translated for us, introduces us to an heroic pioneering Ukrainian woman surgeon. During the Spring of 1932 in the Ukrainian city of Kiev, on a sunny day in March, a very small group of...

Patrick J Pead writes about a truly remarkable woman whose contribution to advances in medicine deserves far wider recognition. Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live...

In her lecture to the General Strand of the HA Conference, Christine Fox describes the successes and failures of London institutions in dealing with the sixteenth-century crisis of poverty and elderly care. In late medieval and early modern thinking, human life was divided into three stages; youth, maturity, and old age. The latter...

In an unusual Out and About feature, the Young Historian Local History Senior Prize winner Flora Wilton Tregear shows us what her local area can tell us about the history of public health. Taking the DLR out from Lewisham you pass through Deptford Bridge station towards Greenwich. Here my father...

Michael Crumplin comments on the injuries and illnesses that Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson suffered during his shortened career. His bold leadership style, much admired by his naval companions, inevitably led to a series of wounds. Using a combination of contemporary accounts and current clinical, anatomical and physiological interpretation, this article...

Richard Bates reveals how the expertise of Florence Nightingale is just as relevant now as it was in her own life-time. Late in 2020, the Merriam-Webster dictionary chose ‘pandemic’ as its word of the year, writing that, ‘it’s probably the word by which we’ll refer to this period [i.e. Covid-19...

Trevor James introduces a victim of an earlier pandemic. As we explore churchyards and appreciate the range of memorials that are revealed, they convey a variety of emotions and other messages. Sometimes they still contain quite unexpected surprises.  The single Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial in the relatively remote rural Staffordshire village...

Alannah Tomkins introduces a well-chronicled early example of how a local community dealt with cholera. In September 1832 James Holmes, the governor of the workhouse at Bilston in Staffordshire wrote a letter to the salaried parish overseer of Uttoxeter. The initial impetus for the letter came from the two parishes’ shared interest...

Caroline Smith provides a perspective, past and present, of the experiences of epidemics on the Isle of Man.  In recent times health has been at the forefront of everyone’s minds. Epidemics and pandemics are not new, but the Covid-19 outbreak is probably the first to have such a noticeable effect...

Richard Stone explores the self-sacrifice of a Seventeenth Century village during an epidemic. History shows us these ‘unprecedented times’ are not that far from previous historical experiences. Lockdown, quarantine, self-isolation, ‘second wave’, ‘third wave’, airborne disease, churches closed; the Covid-19 experience resonates with the plight of the villagers of Eyam, three-and-a-half centuries...