Work Placement Blog

In my previous blog I alluded to the difficulties I encountered in choosing such a broad topic as British Literature, however I continued along this theme and decided to create a connection of all things related to capital punishment, and the number of results were astounding.

I decided to use four consecutive searches, so that my connections could be listed thematically. For example, having all pamphlets together and all court cases together, regardless of the search term used. It is unfortunate that once connections are created there is not a feature that enables you to change the order of the sources involved, so this is how I attempted to get round that very issue. The searches I used together were “Death Penalty”, “Capital Punishment”, “Death Sentence” and “Execution”, keeping the quotation marks in place so that the terms were searched as an entire phrase. The searches yielded these results respectively; 274, 3,505, 194 and finally 364,580 which was just too unmanagable to go through given my time restrictions.

The House of Commons Parliamentary Papers online yielded a significant number of results, which is unsurprising considering the number of changes in the legal status of Capital Punishment across the period Connected Histories covers, with its complete abolition not occurring until the twentieth century. The Nineteenth Century British Pamphlet collection provided an interesting comparative insight, with articles and pamphlets promulgating views both for and against the death penalty, providing me with over 30 sources for the connection. The John Johnson Collection presented a number of repeat results , however I was also gifted satirical cartoons and a mumber of quite graphic images that may interest the more gore-minded viewer! The Old Bailey Online unsurprisingly provided a plethora of cases which ended in the recommendation of the outcome of death, most of which occurred in light of murder or royal offences. I selected a handful of these to provided examples in my connection, however there are many more to view at http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

The vast majority of sources I encountrered were governmental documents or propagandized pamphlets. However, almost none of these have free universal access and so this connection may well be more useful for a student or academic audience. Furthermore, as mentioned above, Capital Punishment may have been too broad a topic to create a succinct collection of sources which, in my opinion, makes for the best connections. In future, I would perhaps break this down into different types of capital punishment; creating connections on, say, ‘gibbeting’, ‘hung, drawn and quatering’, or ‘burning at the stake’. Would these be the sorts of things you would like to see, or do yourself?

See the work I did at Connected Histories here: http://www.connectedhistories.org/connection.aspx?c=140

Following a conversation with non-history peer about Connected Histories, I was curious to see if the website could be used for a cross-discipline purpose and settled on the topic of British Literature, given the wealth of British authors from the period that Connected Histories covers (1500-1900). However, I hit a stumbling block when I found out the search ‘British Literature’ provided me with over 500,000 hits, a little more than managable for one person with many more connections to create! Not wanting to give up that easily, I decided instead to create the connection by searching individual authors, and collate the subsequent sources under the one overarching connection.

I began with Jane Austen, searching without quotation marks, to be greeted with over 100,000 results, 5000 of which were from origins.net. It did not take long to realise that my search had included all people from the archives Connected Histories accesses with either the name ‘Jane’ or ‘Austen’, which was not what I was looking for! “Jane Austen” searched provided only 51 hits, including decorative book designs from the British Museum Image Collection, library collection records from Nineteenth Century British Pamphlets and even laws regarding books to be taught in British and Irish schools from the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers. However only 3 of which were free for public access. I did further searches for Charles Dickens, Daniel Defoe, Mary Shelley and William Wordsworth, finding similar but huge amounts of results.

I soon realised that a topic as broad as ‘British Literature’ was perhaps too vast for just one connection, and the number of sources I was adding perhaps became a little unmanagable for students and non-students alike looking for historical information on their favourite authors. In future I would instead categorize my findings further, perhaps by individual author or genre, for example ‘gothic fiction’ or ‘romantic poetry’. Even so, setting out on this connection was very interesting. As a history student myself it opened my eyes to another discipline, and proved that Connected Histories even provides a huge amount of information for those whose interests lie outside of the field of history.

To have a look at my connection on British Literature at the link below:

http://www.connectedhistories.org/connection.aspx?c=138

How would you have done it differently?

At the beginning of March I restarted my quest to create a number of connections concerning women’s history, just in time for International Women’s Day on the 8th March. This time I set about creating connections which provided a slightly more positive portrayal of women throughout history than the previous one on Prostitution had done.

‘International Women’s Day’ itself yielded no results, which in light of subsequent research was unsurprising given that this celebration only began in 1909 in the USA, both outside the time period and country which Connected Histories covers. Not to be deterred by this I started on a connection concerning women at work, beginning with a search for “working women” (with the imperative use of quotation marks so that the search engine searched the entire phrase) which provided 442 hits, however these only came from 4 out of the 15 resources.

Almost a quarter of these results came from Nineteenth Century British Pamphlets, and given their relatively recent publication in terms of the wide range of sources on Connected Histories, they were on the whole rather progressive, for example ‘A dream of 1900’, a pamphlet published in 1885 calling for equal rights for women in work. In terms of the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, only two of 326 results appeared to be directly relevant to working women, and both of these grouped women with children and young persons, rather than a group in their own right.

Searching ‘working women’, however, did throw up a problem, especially with regard to the Old Baily Online, from which the court records used this phrase to describe prostitutes, not what I was looking for this time! Instead, I decided to search ‘women at work’ which provided a further 1,200 results, many of which were repeats from the previous search, however it did include a print from the British Museum Image Database entitled ‘Women at work’ detailing women spinning and weaving, from 1654!

During my searches to create the Women at Work connection, I managed to find a number of sources directly relevent to the connection on women’s suffrage that I was yet to create. I made this connection there and then so I could save these results before they were lost in the millions of sources available on Connected Histories, but left the connection as invisible to anyone but myself before it was finished - a nice feature of Connected Histories which enables you to create personal connections if for some reason you do not want to share them.

With 8 sources already added to this connection, I went on to research ‘female suffrage’ in more depth, and was surprised that I came across a mere 70 results, none of which were free. 59 of these results were from Nineteenth Century British Pamphlets, including a whole range written by women and men both for and against the vote for women. I further found a particularly interesting anti-universal suffrage satire, found in the John Johnson Collection, written by the acclaimed author ofKing Solomon’s Mines, Rider Haggard, entitled ‘A magazine you will want to buy’.

I concluded my search for women’s history with a rather neglected topic of women’s history, owing to a lack of political subject matter; motherhood. Given that this was a potentially overwhelming search, I was again surprised that ‘motherhood’ only attained 117 results, however my original thoughts were confirmed when searching ‘mother’ provided a rather unmanageable 17,000 hits! A large proportion of the results that I encountered were from either the John Johnson Collection or the British Museum Image Database, motherhood obviously being a very visual topic. A number of these results were similar prints and paintings of women with children, of which I added a selection ranging from 1700 until 1900 to provide a comparative element to my connection. All of which were extremely positive portrayals of women; peaceful, loving and empowering representations of a woman’s skill as a mother. A particular difficulty I encountered with the search for ‘mothers’ was that the term itself included people of the same surname, bringing to light multiple results from London Lives and family history not necessarily relevent to my connection.

To see these connections on women’s history, amongst others, take a look at the list of connections made, via the link below:

http://www.connectedhistories.org/research_connections.aspx

For my MA dissertation this year I am researching the history of liberation groups in Postcolonial Africa, namely women, homosexuals and disabled people. Taking inspiration from this I decided to create a connection on disability in Britain, however given the huge scope of this topic I realized it would be prudent to cut this down to a specific ailment. The recent government cuts in disability benefits have been proven to affect the blind disproportionately, and in light of this I decided to take a look at the treatment of blindness by the government and general public alike since the 16th century.

The search ‘blind’ yields over 52,000 results, so in order to make this more managable I decided to try different searches for the different resources. For example, the search term ‘blind law’ would be relevent to the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, but perhaps not London Lives, for example. A lot of the results I yielded from this were concerned with general poor laws and charity which, despite not being specific enough for the connection I was focussing on, was indicative of the general status given to blind people between 1500-1900.

The British Museum Image Collection, which is free without subscription to the general public, provided a wealth of interesting sources, ranging from religious depictions of Jesus healing the blind, to political satires using phrases such as ‘the blind leading the blind’ which are still used today.

By using various search terms, such as ‘blind’, ‘blindness’, ‘eyes’, ‘vision’ and ‘braille’, I was able to create a connection of 25 sources, which can be seen here: http://www.connectedhistories.org/connection.aspx?c=107 The topic of disability is extremely far reaching and interesting, and with a wealth of resources concerning it, Connected Histories is waiting for youto try your hand at creating your own connection on one of the many topics it includes.

With the introduction of £9000 fees and cuts to higher education in 2011, followed by the recent White Paper, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the history of the British education system as presented in the sources available on Connected Histories. Given that ‘education’ on its own is such a broad topic, from which I received hundreds of thousands of hits, I decided to narrow this down to the British university system. The search ‘higher education’ provided 5626 results, with ‘university’ giving a not-so manageable 456,233. The simple change to ‘university education’ cut this down to 2801, proving that making simple changes to your search criteria on Connected Histories makes a huge, and potentially invaluable, difference.

Almost all of the results for ‘higher education’, a massive 5060, were from the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers which, as mentioned previously, are only available via subscription. I decided that I would go through these in sections determined by date, not only making the number of results appear more managable, but would ensure a wide selection of sources as well. Without doing so, I may have overlooked the minority 109 sources from the period 1500-1600.

A problem which I had encountered before with House of Commons Parliamentary Papers is the frustrating amount of times each source is repeated. A vast proportion of the papers are over 1000 pages long, are recognized by the Connected Histories search seemingly each time the search term you have used occurs throughout the entire source. Out of over 100 pages and 5000 individual results I ended up using only 30 sources, which are now neatly organised in a connection for your viewing pleasure!

Overall, I finished the Higher Education connection with 47 sources, the final 17 being taken from 19th Century British Pamphlets, British History Online, British Newspapers 1600-1900 and the John Johnson Collection. Therefore, the connection is varied between higher education law, public and academic opinion, and newspaper coverage, giving a cross-sectional insight into the history of higher education.

To take a look at this connection, amongst others, follow the link below:

http://www.connectedhistories.org/connection.aspx?c=100

One of my strong areas of interest is women’s history, a topic so broad that Connected Histories is sure to have hundreds of thousands of sources concerning it. I decided I would brainstorm a number of ideas regarding women throughout British history and set out to make connections covering the following topics: prostitution; women in work; women in education; motherhood; and female suffrage. All of these have a tendency to overlap and correspond with one another and thus had the promise of being fruitful and successful connections.

In late February I set about creating my first ‘women’s connection’, concentrating on prostitution. Given the vast amount of literature available, I decided I would focus primarily upon the effect the practice had upon women, and measures that were taken towards their protection.

Using the search term ‘prostitution’, the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers supplied over 4000 results alone, however many of these were replications. For example, the parliamentary bill ‘Seducation and Prostitution: a Bill for the More Effectual Suppression 1847’, occurred multiple times given that the word ‘prostitution’ obviously occurred many times throughout. The 19th Century British Pamphlets also provided a wealth of over 1000 sources, in my opinion the most interesting ones I discovered an example being ‘An Affectionate Pleading for England’s Oppressed Female Workers, 1850’, however just as with the previous resource, none of which were free.

This connection provided me with my first in depth look at The Old Bailey Online, providing 149 search results, all of which being free to the general public. Many of these were cases of ‘sexual offences’, both convicted or not convicted, and committed by both men and women. Not wanting to overwhelm the connection with such specific examples of occurances of prostitution I selected a small sample of these for my connection (which can be seen using the link below).

I also managed to use sources from the John Johnson Collection, which provided visual evidence of how prositutes were portrayed was far back as the 17th Century; in correlation with the French word for ‘prostitute’ being ‘poulet’, sex workers were often drawn as chickens!

The connection I created contains almost 50 sources, which is quite large. It could, however, have been much bigger and so a less generalised search may have been prudent. Even so, all of the sources connected were of personal interest to myself, and hopefully others will find them interesting too! To have a look yourself, see my connection via the link below:

http://www.connectedhistories.org/connection.aspx?c=83

Although Connected Histories is an archive of British historical sources, it includes a wide range of sources that reflect British history in a global sense. Owing to Britain’s prominance on the world stage between 1500-1900, Connected Histories provides relevent information for historians, both amateur and professional, whose interests lie both within and outside of British history.

As an international historian who specialises in African history, including the Scramble for Africa, I thought I would try my hand at creating a connection based around British Imperialism 1800-1900, to tie in nicely with my other studies.

The great thing with Connected Histories is that you can use a ‘date toggle’ to set the time frame which you want to search in order to cut down your results to those which are most relevent. Searching ‘Imperialism’ within this timeframe, I encountered 89 hits from 5 resources, less than I had inticipated but it was a rather specific search after all.

The first resource that I looked through was the John Johnson Collection of Printed Emphemera, which provided me with British propaganda in the form of pictures and periodicals, giving a new perspective on Imperialism as it is something I had not thought of studying before. Interestingly, there were a number of anti-imperialist periodicals, for example ‘Nationality: the Periodical Prospectus’, from as early as 1898! Similar sources were found from the 19th Century British Pamphlets resource which surprisingly were also primarily negative, for example the ‘Empire, Trade and Armaments: An Exposure’, which promised to provide an alternative to the ‘Jingoist, militant sham-patriotic sentiment’ in British minds.

Unsurprisingly there were a number of less opinionated resources from the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, for example; correspondences with the affairs of colonial territories, financial statements on British companies abroad and alterations to colonial constitutions.

Given time constraints, I only searched the term ‘Imperialism’, and the connection I came up with contained a managable 19 sources. It would be possible to add more to this connection, if I were to search other related terms such as ‘colonialism’ or try country-specific searches to create more specialised connections.

For advice on creating your own imperial connection, check out the research guide provided on Connected Histories at the link below:

http://www.connectedhistories.org/guide.aspx?a=8

And have a look at my own Imperialism 1800-1900 connection here:

http://www.connectedhistories.org/connection.aspx?c=63

Now that I’ve given a bit of information on the workings of Connected Histories, this will be my first blog entry on the work I have been undertaking whilst at the HRI. Unfortunately this blog is coming a little late - I am writing about the work I did on 17th of January, just before I was out of the country for two weeks and I did not get a chance to document it until now, but better late than never!

Faced with over a million documents at my disposal and endless events that occurred during the four-hundred year period that Connected Histories covers, I looked first to current affairs for inspiration for my first ‘connection’. Heading the politics sections of the news pages was numerous headlines about Scotland’s proposed independence from Great Britain and potential Home Rule after the Scottish Government announced on 10th January 2012 that they intend to hold a referendum on the matter in 2014. The buzz words which jumped out from these articles, ‘independence’, ‘union’, and ‘devolution’, to name the friendliest, are no strangers to British politics and so I decided to delve a little deeper into the relationship between Scotland and England over the past five-hundred years.

So, eager to begin I went onto the Connected Histories website and entered ‘Scottish Union’ into the search bar on the home page. I set the date toggle to the largest time period and clicked ‘search’ with the result of over 100,000 hits, just a little more than I needed when I was attempting to create a connection of about twenty documents. I tried again, this time entering my search in quotation marks, and received a slightly more manageable 527 hits, with a bite-size 16 hits for the period 1700-1799, the century in which the Acts of Union took place. That is one of the great things about Connected Histories, which each enquiry there are multiple different search filters at the click of a mouse, most useful I found being those for time periods, I could make the date as specific as a four year period, or as far-reaching as the four-hundred years which the website covers.

Using multiple different searches for example,‘Scottish Union’, ‘Scottish Home Rule’ and ‘Union with Britain’, I managed to collate fifteen of the most interesting documents concerning the historical debate surrounding Scottish Independence ranging from Parliamentary records to the more unusual satirical pamphlets. Searching specific phrases in a certain way to find what you really need is a skill I will need to improve, but the Research Guides on Connected Histories, as well as the search tips certainly give a good starting point.

If you are interested in the history of unionism or you would like to see the broad range of connections, created by others at the HRI, students and non-academics alike, go to www.connectedhistories.org and register for free. Watch this space for more from me!

In the last blog entry I wrote I briefly mentioned the 15 electronic resources Connected Histories accesses via its searches, and here I will give a little more detail on each so you know what to expect when using the website.

British History Online
www.british-history.ac.uk

British History Online is a digital library which contains more than 1000 primary and secondary sources from Medieval through to Modern periods in Britain, though Connected Histories only makes use of the primary materials from the 1500-1900 period it covers. British History Online  was created by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust with the view to support users from both academic and more personal backgrounds. The good news, then, is that the vast majority of these materials are freely accessible to everybody, with only a few resources requiring subscription. British History Online is particularly rich in local history, as well as legal and diplomatic sources, however there is relatively little on social or cultural history

British Museum Images
www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database.aspx

The British Museum database houses over two-million digitized objects, of which Connected Histories accesses images of both works on paper and objects related to British history between 1500-1900. Particularly interesting are the collections’ range of maps of London as well as examples of the works of Turner, Hogarth and Blake. Full free online access has been available to the public since 2007 and is constantly growing, as the digital capture of the collection continues.

British Newspapers, 1600-1900
find.galegroup.com/bncn/start.do?prodld=BNSW

British Newspapers brings together two collections of newspapers: The 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection and British Newspapers 1800-1900, with the result of over four-million pages of newspaper articles. The earlier collection consists of mainly articles from London, however the latter contains newspapers from a wider national level as well as a small number of papers from Scotland, Ireland and elsewhere in Europe. Although there are some missing copies, British Newspapers represents the largest and most comprehensive collection of early English news media.

Cause Papers in the Diocesan Courts of the Archbishopric of York, 1300-1858
www.hrionline.ac.uk/causepapers

The Cause Papers is a searchable archive listing more than 14,000 cause papers listing disputes over matrimony, defamation, tithes, probate, breach of faith by the clergy and church rights. The material provides excellent information on not only ecclesiastical history, but also social, economic and legal history as well as a rich collection of personal and place name data. Usefully, spelling variants for place names and surnames and searchable under the standard forms for ease of use.

Charles Booth Archive
booth.lse.ac.uk

The Charles Booth Online Archive gives access to archive material from the Booth collection at the London School of Economics Archives and the Senate House Library. The Booth collection at LSE Archives contains the original records from Booth’s survey into life and labour in London, dating from 1886 to 1903. Including 450 original survey notebooks, the resource contains some 7000 individual documents, primarily concerning metropolitan London. The 450 notebooks are particularly interesting, containing interviews with individuals which were never published in the survey volumes for reasons of privacy.

Clergy of the Church of England Database 1540-1835
www.theclergydatabase.org.uk

Established in 1999 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Clergy of the Church of England Database enables the searching of principle records of clerical careers from the Reformation through to the nineteenth century, using over 50 English and Welsh archives. The CCEd is thus a comprehensive resource detailing the recorded professional lives of all clergymen during this period. Given the prominence of the Church throughout the Early Modern period, the sources available are extremely far reaching. Access is free and so it is an invaluable resource for both academic and amateur historians.

Convict Transportation Registers Database
www.slq.qld.gov.au/info/fh/convicts

A project of the State Library of Queensland, this database provides universal online access to the British Home Office records which are otherwise held on microfilm in the UK National Archives. Details of over 123,000 of the estimated 160,000 convicts deported to Australia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can be found, including their names, year of exile, details of the trial amongst other information. The Convict Transportation Registers Database is an invaluable resource for those interested in law and crime and it can be used to great effect alongside London Lives and the Old Bailey Proceedings Online.

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers
parlipapers.chadwyck.co.uk/home.do

The HCPP houses over 200,000 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 to the present, as well as supplementary material dating back to 1688, however Connected Histories has access to papers only up until 1900, to fit in with its purpose. Usefully, the full text of each paper is further searchable and documents presented in an original language which isn’t English, for example French or Italian, are accompanied with an English translation, which makes its use to Connected Histories invaluable. People learning about the British Empire will be particularly impressed by the HCPP, as it contains a vast amount of material concerning colonial administration and foreign policy.

John Foxe’s The Acts and Monuments Online
www.johnfoxe.org

Only recently finished in 2011, John Foxe’s The Acts and Monuments Online is a searchable framework for the four editions of the Acts and Monuments which were written under Foxe’s guidance during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The four editions, published in 1563, 1570, 1576 and 1583, were intended as an ecclesiastical history and martyrology, presenting a revised history of Britain and Europe through Protestant eyes. Being online, TAMO offers, for the first time, a comparison of the four editions, allowing the varied differences to be understood more clearly. Easy to navigate, TAMO can be used as both an instrument of scholarship and a tool for anybody interested in this fascinating body of work.

John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera
johnjohnson.chadwyck.co.uk/home.do
This collection of images provides access to more than 67,000 items selected from the Bodleian library of Oxford University and it is widely hailed as the post significant single collection of ephemera in the UK. The broad categories of images include; Nineteenth-Century Entertainment, the Booktrade, Popular Prints, Crimes, Murders and Executions, and Advertising.  The resulting online collection provides an invaluable resource for researchers interested in the histories of consumption, leisure, gender and popular culture, amongst other social histories. Unfortunately, due to copyrights, some items in the collection have not been digitized, and access to the collection is available via subscription only.

John Strype’s Survey of London Online
www.hrionline.ac.uk/strype/index/jsp

Produced by the Stuart London project also initiated by the Humanities Research Institute, John Strype’s Survey of London is a fully searchable, online version of the book of the same name published in 1720. This itself was based upon the two-volume survey of London produced in 1598 by John Stow, which gives copious information on the city, its customs, monuments, and institutions. Strype’s version extends this, covering new suburbs and new events such as the Great Fire, the creation and workings of the Bank of England and public health, all of which has been made available for free online.  

London Lives 1690-1800
www.londonlives.org

London Lives is a fully searchable, digitized archive of primary sources about 18th Century London, primarily focussing upon Plebarian Londoners and so it is particularly useful for researching ‘ordinary’ and non-elite people. Its access to historical records provides over three and a half million name instances, and users have the facility to link together the records of an individual, creating a bibliography or ‘a life’. London Lives provides access to the largest body of transcribed manuscripts ever created, which have an accuracy rate of well over 99% which is more than sufficient for those with an interest in history.

Nineteenth Century British Pamphlets
http://about.jstor.org/content-collections/primary-sources/19th-century-british-pamphlets

Origins.net
www.origins.net

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Online, 1674-1913
www.oldbaileyonline.org

I am currently undertaking a Work Placement at the Humanities Research Institute as part of a Masters degree at the University of Sheffield, working on the website; Connected Histories (www.connectedhistories.org). As part of my placement I am making ‘connections’ of historical documents in order to collate interesting themes for the ease and pleasure of a wider audience. To further encourage accessibility I will be adding to the websites’ Research Guides, of which there are currently nine, to encourage the simple use of a fantastic range of resources to both a non-academic and academic audience alike.

Connected Histories has access to 15 major electronic resources in British History between 1500 and 1900, ranging from Court Records and House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, to Newspapers and historical images, all in one search engine. Just by searching a key theme which you find interesting, be it technology, sport, women or crime, relevant documents can be accessed, saved and collated all in one place.

Unfortunately there is a minor backlog on blog entries, having written them but unable to post them on a working blog due to my technological incapabilities! Now it is up and running online, I will be using this blog over the next few months to track my progress, publicize Connected Histories and most importantly show how simple and fulfilling it is to use!