Danielle Burton                              The Last English Fatal Duel in England Duelling instantly conjures up images of men duelling with pistols to offset some slight or other to honour that has happened between them. However, duelling existed long before the concept of pistols, with swords being used prior to this. In fact, swords were more common than ..read more

Before starting this book, I had never heard of Endell Street Hospital, a pioneering military hospital run by women from a former workhouse in the Covent Garden area of London, during the First World War. It was established by two suffragette doctors, Flora Murray and Louise Garrett Anderson (daughter of the first ever female qualified ..read more

For this guest post, I am delighted to welcome my friend and colleague, Neil Bettridge. Neil is Project Archivist at the Derbyshire Record Office, and has kindly written a short 2 part series on the life of Eric Liddell, who the film Chariots of Fire is about, to coincide with with 100th anniversary of him ..read more

I am currently trying to organise being a self employed tour guide taking 2 hour walking tours on local Georgian history in Derbyshire. This will include separate tours for Belper and Derby. For the moment, I am further along in organising a Derby route, so I am proud to say that if anyone is interested ..read more

For this guest post, I am delighted to welcome my friend and colleague, Neil Bettridge. Neil is Project Archivist at the Derbyshire Record Office, and has kindly written a short 2 part series on the life of Eric Liddell, who the film Chariots of Fire is about, to coincide with with 100th anniversary of him refusing to run on a Sunday because of his faith at the Paris Olympic games of 1924. Look out for the next part coming soon. As most people are no doubt aware, the Olympic Games will soon be starting in Paris, so it seems the appropriate time to celebrate the man who secured one of the gre ..read more

Today I am pleased to welcome back Laura Adkins, a previous guest, and friend of the blog. Laura is the creator of The Local History Blogger. I have been able to do a few guests posts for that blog myself. She has worked at many historical sites and mainly posts about sites found in Essex, her home county. Do check her blog out if you can, I promise you it’s a very enjoyable read. This year, she also published her debut history book on Katherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII’s wives. More information on where to find that is at the end of this post. Kateryn Parr, sixth wife of Henry ..read more

Today I’m pleased to welcome Susan Moison as a guest for this post on the 1917 campaign in the Middle East. Susan has been a reader of history since childhood and took the decision as she approached forty to pursue a BA in History with the University of London – something she wished she’d done when her brain was twenty years younger. She has a particular love of medieval and Tudor periods and spends a lot of time walking around London trying to ignore the skyscrapers. Her real job is for a company that supplies antiques and furniture for film and TV advising set decorators and buyers on the c ..read more

Great Ormond Street Hospital for children opened in 1852, it was a progressive hospital as the only children’s hospital of its kind. Its aims were not only to provide “medical and surgical treatment” for “poor children”, but also to help further knowledge on children’s health, alongside training nurses especially for dealing with children as patients.[1] Initially, the hospital didn’t have a purpose built site, just a converted Georgian townhouse in Powis Place, which had 52 beds and an infant nursery connected to it.[2] During this time, the hospital was known as simply. ‘The Children’s Hospi ..read more

This post is the second in a two-part series on smuggling. The first, about Thomas Johnstone, smuggler, privateer, and all-round Jack-the-Lad, can be found here. Smuggling has inherited a somewhat romantic reputation. Whilst some who participated in the smuggling of contraband did so as whole communities just wanting items to make their lives a little better, there were others who enjoyed the power and violence that came along with it. One of the most notorious gangs that fell into this category was the Hawkhurst Gang who largely operated on the Kent and Sussex coast. Their reign of terror i ..read more

It’s been a while since I wrote a post about criminal history, one of my favourite subjects, so I decided this month will be a short two part series on smugglers, who I haven’t really covered in previous criminal posts. This first post is on Thomas Johnstone, a smuggler whose life is hard to distinguish from fact or fiction, but is astounding all the same. In fact, his life could easily have come from an adventure novel. The next post will be about the Hawkhurst Gang, a group of smugglers who dominated the coast of South-East England, named after their base of Hawkhurst in Kent. Now, back to T ..read more