History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | nineteenth century

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London’s female gangsters: press responses and gendered implications 1890-1940

By on May 22, 2023 in Alumni, Events, News, Research in Focus, Uncategorized

On 17 May 2023 University of Portsmouth PhD researcher, Emily Burgess, presented her paper on the press’s treatment of female gangsters from the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. If you missed the paper, the recording is available to watch here. You will need the following password T19#MUVU to access the recording. An abstract for Emily’s paper can be found below. Emily is a graduate of the University, having studied for a BA (Hons) History degree between 2017 and 2020 (awarded First Class honours) and an MRes in History between 2020 and 2021 (Distinction). She was awarded the ‘Robbie Gray Memorial Prize’ for the Best Undergraduate History Dissertation in 2020, and started […]

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“Officers of the society”: Lloyd’s Register surveyors in China and transnational maritime networks, 1869-1918

By on December 21, 2022 in Events, Research in Focus, Uncategorized

On 14 December 2022 University of Portsmouth PhD researcher, Corey Watson, presented at the second joint Naval History/ History research seminar of the year. In the paper Corey, who is in the second year of his doctoral programme, discussed the crucial role that the small group of surveyors who worked for Lloyd’s Register in China played as middle-men in this global maritime system. If you missed the paper, the recording is available to watch here. You will need the following password MLFv8c.z to access the recording. An abstract for Corey’s paper is below. To read more about Corey’s PhD programme, generously funded by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, see Dr Melanie […]

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Poisonous Reading – James Greenwood attacks the Victorian ‘penny dreadful’

By on May 25, 2021 in Learning in Focus

In this piece, written for the Fear and Fun module, taught by Dr Rob James and Dr Karl Bell, second year UoP student Amber Braddick discusses journalist James Greenwood’s exaggerated denouncement of the Victorian ‘penny dreadful’.  Despite such middle-class anxietes over the corrupting influence of cheap print on working class youth, many of their stories strike a highly moralistic tone. James Greenwood’s, A Short Way to Newgate (1874) demonstrates the anxieties felt by the middle classes towards the extremely popular penny dreadfuls during the late 19th Century. The author, Greenwood, is not only writing in an attempt to show other middle and upper class members of society how dangerous this […]

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Urban football as a nineteenth-century blood sport

By on May 21, 2021 in Learning in Focus

Second-year UoP student Mandy Wrenn discusses a 1846 engraving showing a large group of men playing football in the centre of the town of Kingston in Surrey, and the contemporary concerns over the control of urban spaces and popular leisure activities it reflects. This piece was originally written for the Fear and Fun module, taught by Dr Rob James and Dr Karl Bell. The primary source is set in 1846, at a time of continued transition in Victorian Britain from the past to modernity. The depiction of the game, with a large crowd of men playing a game of football in the centre of a town, will have been received […]

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The ‘Whitechapel Horrors’ – Victorian newspapers report Jack the Ripper as gothic fiction

By on May 4, 2021 in Learning in Focus, Public History

The ‘Jack the Ripper’ murders in East London in the late Victorian period have become infamous. In this piece, first year UoP history student Seamus McLoughlin looks at how an article in a Victorian newspaper was of its time in choosing to ignore known facts about the case, or any compassion towards the victims, in favour of speculation, sensation and gothic horror.  This piece was originally written for the first year ‘Fragments’ module, which looks at primary sources, and is taught by Dr Maria Cannon and Dr Katy Gibbons. Over a hundred and thirty years later, Jack the Ripper’s murders are still regarded as some of the most infamous acts […]

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The Forty Elephants – a forgotten female gang of South London

By on April 22, 2021 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

Last year Emily Burgess produced an outstanding dissertation on the all-female working-class gang from South London known as the Forty elephants.  Here she writes about how she came up with the idea and carried out the research, with Rob James as supervisor.  Emily concludes with some useful advice for all our students currently writing proposals for their third-year dissertation.  Emily has since set up her own consultancy for historical research and consultancy – see our previous post. From a young age I was fascinated by criminal history. My grandmother and family from the East End of London would often tell me tales about the Krays and other villainous figures from […]

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