Freethought,Free Love and Feminism: secularist debates on marriage and sexual morality,England c. 1850–1885

This article examines the previously unexplored current of Freethinking feminism in the second half of the nineteenth century. Active in the women’s movement of this period, Freethinking feminists were nonetheless viewed as a liability—an attitude that contributed to their exclusion from much of the subsequent historiography. Such marginalisation was due not only to their vocal opposition to all forms of religion, but also their openness to discussing new ways of organising heterosexual relationships. This article focuses on Freethinking feminist critiques of marriage and support for free unions. It demonstrates that these issues continued to be debated in the Secularist movement at a time when many other radical organisations—including much of the women’s movement—kept silent on such topics. In this way, Freethinking feminists kept alive the more radical and libertarian critiques of traditional sexual morality developed by Owenite feminists in the 1830s and 40s. The author argues that the ideology of Freethought propelled its adherents to readdress questions of sex within a new ‘Secularist’ ethical framework. Fierce debate ensued, yet commitment to freedom of discussion ensured that ‘unrespectable’, libertarian voices were never entirely silenced. Freethinking feminism might, then, be viewed as the ‘missing link’ between early nineteenth‐century feminist visions of greater sexual freedom and the more radical discussions of sexuality and free love that began to emerge at the fin de siècle.     

‘Do not forget your bit wife’: love,marriage and the negotiation of patriarchy in Irish Presbyterian marriages,c. 1780–1850

Drawing on the marital correspondence of Isabella Marshall and William John Campbell Allen, an Ulster Presbyterian couple, alongside a number of other Presbyterian families, this article explores how patriarchy was negotiated within Irish Presbyterian marriages, c. 1780–1850. It begins by framing the Campbell Allens as a case-study, and examines how the couple negotiated three elements of the patriarchal marriage ideal: love, obedience and the control of economic resources. Next, it uses the family papers and personal correspondence of two other Presbyterian couples, and considers how typical their examples are of love, marriage and patriarchy. This article argues that patriarchy was not a fixed principle in marriage. Rather, it was subject to a constant process of negotiation and refinement during the course of marriage. The roles played by women and men in marriage were also fluid and elastic.     

Love,labour, loss: women,refugees and the servant crisis in Britain, 1933–1939

Between 1933 and 1939, around 20,000 Jewish, ‘non-Aryan’ or politically active refugee women from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia entered Britain on domestic service permits. Their immigration, mostly organised by women in the British voluntary sector, served as a moral response to the humanitarian crisis caused by Fascism in Europe, and a practical response to the ‘servant crisis’ in Britain as working-class women increasingly rejected domestic labour. This paper considers the practical and emotional relationships around domestic service and argues that the acceptance of refugee women into the metropolitan British home was conditional on the tacit expectation they could fill the vacancy left by the working classes, becoming British through their labour.     

Seamen,national welfare and global deregulation, 1850–1914

In nineteenth-century Britain, the status of seamen revealed the ambiguities of the modernisation paradigm: Were seamen slaves? Why did the abolitionist movement refuse to put them in this category? And how can we explain the fact that, even today, the global market for seamen includes a large number of ‘global seamen’ with no rights? The global market of seamen expresses the connections between the lack of rights, persistent bondage, colonialism and deregulation. It blurs the difference between recruitment for the Navy and recruitment in the labour market. The current seamen’s labour market still reflects the tensions between global deregulation and national welfare, between global and national unionised seamen. We show that, contrary to conventional beliefs, these are not opposing realities, but fully integrated dynamics and ideologies.     

Making Places of Intimacy—Ethnicity,Friendship, and Masculinities in Oslo

Through transnational migration, practices of gender, intimacy, and sexuality “travel” with people, get incorporated into new social and cultural contexts, and are negotiated and transformed in the encounter with other such practices. The discussion here will focus on the fluid boundaries between male–male emotional and physical intimacy, male–male sexual practice, and homosexual imagery, as they are culturally understood in Pakistan and incorporated into a minority context in Norway by migrants from Pakistan. While homosexuality in Norway is gradually gaining public and political support, it is regarded as unacceptable by Muslim authorities in the country, thus making the issue of homosexuality a vital marker separating the majority population from the Muslim minority. Against this scenario, which is much debated among politicians, activists and various spokespersons from the ethnic and religious communities, practices of friendship and intimacy among Pakistani men in Norway take place. The significance given to the heterosexual–homosexual divide, however, creates a more vulnerable situation for practices of intimacy among men that are not necessarily judged against the homosexual imagery in Pakistan. By using the concept of unmanliness, it is shown how the boundaries of manliness are differently positioned within dominant Norwegian and Pakistani masculinities respectively. This can cause tension on an individual level, as well as on a group level. Therefore, Pakistani men in Norway must create particular places of intimacy, within which culturally specific practices of gender, sexuality, and intimacy are maintained and transformed.     

Sharecropping and the management of large rural estates in Catalonia, 1850–1950

This article examines the role of sharecropping in the operation of great estates in Catalonia (Spain) from the mid‐nineteenth to the mid‐twentieth century. Noting that the sharecropping option was not the fruit of inertia, but of the failure of alternatives, we look at the various factors which led to its predominance. Next, we show the adaptability of sharecropping to a variety of ecological and social contexts. Finally, we argue that the backwardness of Catalan agriculture is not to be attributed to sharecropping, which, on the contrary, proved comparable to other forms of tenure in terms of economic efficiency, and was also a successful instrument for the reproduction of social inequalities and labour exploitation.     

Preventing ‘robotised women workers’: women,sport and the workplace in Scotland 1919–1939

This article examines a new area of women's leisure; women's participation in work-related sport. The growth and development of industrial welfare in Scotland in the interwar period will be discussed. Within broader studies, Stephen Jones, Helen Jones and Melling have all indicated that there was a growth in industrial welfarism in Britain from the turn of the twentieth century. This development of welfarism, which included provision of educational classes, pensions and medical support, increasingly also encompassed a variety of sports and physical activities. By looking at case studies, developments in provision across a range of industries will be examined. This discussion will draw on a wide range of sources from a variety of women's employment, from factories to clerical positions and from the retail sector to the civil service. This article will examine the types of sporting opportunities open to women through their workplaces, including organised welfare schemes and independent employee-led activities. Moreover, it will explore working women's experiences of these activities and the ways in which they chose to participate in sport.     

Menstrual fictions: languages of medicine and menstruation,c. 1850–1930

Abstract

Gynaecological narratives of menstruation in the late nineteenth century placed woman firmly within the orbit of domesticity by virtue of her biology. In the rhetoric of medical ‘truths’, menstruation was defined as a ‘ldisability’, a physical ‘illness’ and a threat to emotional stability. Thus, it was argued, women could not hope to achieve equality with men when the dictates of Nature (as opposed to society) stipulated that they remain mothers, carers and homemakers. This article explores the notion that narratives of menstruation were created and articulated through subjective readings of social and cultural truths: menstruation was perceived and defined through the medium of ideas relating to what femininity was and ought to be. An examination of the medical languages of menstruation articulated between 1850 and 1930 reveals that the creation of menstrual knowledge was in perpetual flux. What remained a constant, however, was the appropriation of the female body as a field for the definition of ‘difference’     

Wielding the Power of Popular Sentiment: Woman's Agency in Courtship and the Love Letters of Anna Todd∗

If you want to break [our engagement], and do not like to for fear it would be wronging me, then let the trouble be settled at once. Of course I do admit that it would be wronging me—yes, it would be taking away my love, my life—my whole existence. But I would sacrifice all that if such a proceeding would rid you of all these trials and troubles, and make you happy once again.     

Historical tradition and community mobilisation: narratives of Red Clydeside in memories of the anti-poll tax movement in Scotland, 1988–1990

Contemporary scholarship has shifted focus from a ‘labour history’ focused on industrial movements to a more comprehensive ‘working-class history’, encompassing the broader social parameters of protest with community and industrial struggles unified in material interest and consciousness. This article locates the poll tax non-payment campaign of 1988–1990 on Clydeside, a major expression of working-class mobilisation which contributed to the demise of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, within this international historiography. The analysis is based on oral history interviews with twelve activists who represented all the major political trends from the non-payment campaign. The anti-poll tax movement was embedded in traditions of community mobilisation shaped by a moral economy of housing and amenities, which had roots in the First World War era ‘Red Clydeside’ struggles, and developed through the post-Second World War predominance of public sector housing. The analysis demonstrates how activists constructed narratives of their own resistance in the anti-poll tax movement within a powerful cultural circuit, where the collective memory of past mobilisations and the consciousness associated with the moral economy of housing and amenities informed contemporary perspectives and political activity. The campaign was not politically monocultural. Differences between political groups involved in the non-payment campaign are analysed showing that the need of composure (of memories) led to contrasting interpretations of Red Clydeside. These were influenced by geographical distinctions between traditional working-class areas with strong tenants’ organisations and the peripheral estates where such organisation was weaker. The impact of deindustrialisation and the welfare policies of the Thatcher government created a popular resentment in these areas. This strengthened moral economy opposition to the poll tax, whilst the traditions of community mobilisation provided effective means of harnessing this through non-payment and direct action against sheriff officers.     

Domination,Subordination and Struggle: middle‐class marriage in early twentieth‐century Wolverhampton,England

The aim of the article is to modify our understanding of the history of middle‐class marriage. It draws upon the detailed examination of one Wolverhampton couple’s marriage to explore relationships between husbands and wives—and between ex‐husbands and ex‐wives—in early twentieth‐century provincial England. It argues that patriarchal and companionate marriages co‐existed alongside one another; that even in patriarchal marriages wives were prepared to seek legal redress for their grievances; and that even in insular and unfashionable regions of the country such as the Black Country the courts, both civil and criminal, policed masculinity and femininity in their assessment of where fault lay.     

“Social physical exercise?” Football,industrial paternalism,and professionalism in west Dunbartonshire,Scotland, c. 1870–1900

This article examines the interrelationship of sport, community and industry in west Dunbartonshire during the period 1870–1900. During the early years of the Scottish Football Association (SFA)– the 1870s and 1880s – the county's main football clubs were amongst the SFA's most dominant, regularly challenging Glasgow's major clubs for supremacy in the Scottish Cup. These clubs were part of an industrial landscape, based as they were in shipbuilding and textile communities significantly comprised of Irish and Highland Scottish migrant populations. Local industrialists acted as patrons out of a paternalistic desire to mould the message of football. Their attempts were nevertheless undermined by the existence of professionalism in the game, which in turn encouraged an alternate method of social mobility.     

Pills,potions, and purgatives: women and abortion methods in Ireland, 1900–1950

This article examines women's efforts to induce miscarriage in Ireland (the Irish Free State, Éire, and the Republic) from 1900 to 1950. It demonstrates that, when possible, Irish women avoided surgical procedures, preferring instead to consume pills, potions, and purgatives to cause abortion. Irish women viewed emmenagogues and abortifacients as more natural than surgery and in keeping with women's traditions; these substances, they understood, had been used for centuries to restore menstruation and return the female body to normalcy and health. Overall, it was control—control over the methods of abortion and control over what they put into their own bodies, as well as autonomy when it came to managing their own reproductive health—that mattered most to Irish women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Irish women's abortion efforts expose their resolve to manage their reproductive lives and thus remind us how they sometimes rejected the dictates of the conservative twentieth-century state-Church consensus, bypassing legislation and negotiating religious cultural norms.     

The development of the English rural proletariat and social protest, 1700–1850

This paper suggests that covert social protest, including theft, the sending of anonymous threatening letters, and arson, was the most enduring mode of protest in the English countryside after the 1790s. Developments in this exceptional decade were responsible for increasing the scale of covert protest. Inflation, under and unemployment, with standards of living falling beneath subsistence levels, necessitated a massive increase in poor relief. Its administration required an unprecedented extension of authority over the lives of working people. This generated class conflict, but the establishment successfully suppressed overt protest, demonstrations, ‘food riots’ and strikes. Protest was driven underground, and in spite of two important semi‐covert movements in 1816 and 1830–1, protest remained essentially covert until after 1850.