Mary Hamilton was perhaps the most notorious cross-dresser or ‘female-husband’ of her day. She lived in Somerset, among other places, and was the subject of scandal across the country for her habitual crime of marrying other women. Her story was preserved in the pages of an anonymous pamphlet by a famous contemporary novelist and dramatist. Through the story of Mary Hamilton, Sheila Hannon considers the rights and responsibilities of modern-day novelists and dramatists in their use of historical evidence. To what extent can writers take liberties with historical record in the name of ‘dramatic license’, when much of the ‘historical evidence’ that remains is itself fiction?
Tag: Bath
Sites of memory and neglect: John Thelwall and the art of dying quietly
'The burial fields around St Swithin's Church at the top of Walcot in Bath contain some pretty impressive mortal remains. There's Fanny Burney for instance, and Jane Austen's dad. And Sir Edward Berry, one of Nelson's captain's, a veteran of the Nile and Trafalgar. These three eminent visitors to Bath all have more in common than approximation in death however, for their monuments are also the subject of expensive recent face-lifts'.
‘A silly, ridiculous Jack in Office’: Bath’s Town Clerk and the Keppel Affair of 1779
'Admiral Keppel's trial for cowardice in 1779 made him one of the most talked-about naval figures of the age. The political ramifications of his recovery and reinstatement as a popular Whig hero are well-known; much less familiar however, is the enormous impact the affair had upon Georgian Bath. Trevor Fawcett probes the local angle'.
Bristol Association of University Women: The Early Years (1911-1928)
In 1911 a group of women graduates took the important step of forming the first branch in Bristol of the British Federation of University women. In this article, Bardgett looks at the formative years of the organisation, and how different events shaped its attempts to further education, medicine and social work.
Documents in Focus: The Stogursey Rising of 1801
In the spring of 1801, the county of Somerset was convulsed by some of the most severe and sustained food rioting ever experienced in the southwest region. Against a background of wildly spiralling prices in every basic commodity, large crowds toured the county’s mills,markets, baker's shops and farms demanding cheaper bread and forcing fair-price agreements on both producers and local magistrates. Steve Poole introduces a 200 year old letter recording tumultuous events in a small West Somerset village.
Suffragette Photographs
As a small provincial city Bath is not the sort of place that historians would expect to find militant suffrage activity. And yet the city had a thriving branch of the militant group, the Women’s Social and Political Union. June Hannam looks at photographs of some of its integral members, and provides context relating to their activities and contribution to the cause.
In search of the real Ann Green
Associated with Clifton, and in particular with Clifton Court (now The Chesterfield Nuffield Hospital) is a character called Ann Green. Her simple gravestone is in Clifton churchyard: died 1864, aged 55. Upon those two facts, a Clifton woman wrote a romantic historical novel, Ann Green of Clifton, published in 1936. Scores of details of the topography, the history and even the botany of Clifton and Bristol are worked into the story: the gallows in Pembroke Road, horseracing on The Downs, the chemist's shop in Clifton village, Rolinda Sharples the painter, and the visit of Princess Victoria to Clifton at the age of 10. In this article, William Evans goes in search of the real Ann Green.