This is an extract from the diaries of Bristol Quaker Sarah Champion Fox published by the Bristol Record Society edited by Madge Dresser. Dresser provides an analysis of the extract. It provides context from the life Sarah Champion Fox, and discusses her role in the history of women. In addition, she also gives an insight into the mindset of Bristol's female icons, placing her in an important period of the city's history.
Tag: eighteenth century
The Severn District Sea Fencibles 1803 to 1810
Although the greatest popular movement in Georgian Britain was probably that formed around military volunteering during the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, historians have written comparatively little on the subject and even when an attempt has been made the maritime volunteers have hardly ever commanded more than a few vague paragraphs. This is unfortunate as an examination of pay lists in the Public Record Office, letters in the Bristol Record Office and the columns of contemporary local newspapers have revealed a useful amount of information. John Penny investigates this shadowy corps, put in place to protect the Severn Estuary against possible French naval incursions.
Bristol and the iron trade in western Britain in the eighteenth century
During the eighteenth-century, Britain was the hub of the international market in iron. Although the British Isles could boast a well-established domestic iron industry, native ironmasters were unable to meet the rapidly growing demand for iron in the major metalworking districts of the Midlands and the north. As a result, large quantities of bar iron had to be imported from the Baltic to meet the shortfall. Much of this iron, destined for the West Midlands, was shipped through Bristol. In this article, Chris Evans looks at Bristol’s iron trade through the business records of Graffin Prankard, a Bristol merchant who played an important role in this commerce in the first half of the eighteenth century.