Lesley A Hall, archivist and historian

Monday, 8 December 2025

Not much change here....

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In his 1930 work on  Male Disorders of Sex , Kenneth Walker blithely claimed that in cases of marital infertility, the doctor 'no longer...
Monday, 1 September 2025

Update on my affiliations

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Due to changes in the system relating to honorary appointments at UCL, my existing Honorary Associate Professorship will not be renewed this...
Tuesday, 19 August 2025

Invisibilising archives?

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I'm not sure this is exactly a new problem caused by the electronification of catalogues and the merging of what were once discrete arch...
Monday, 14 July 2025

Muddying already murky waters

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 It has recently been disclosed that the five letters allegedly written from James Campbell Reddie to Henry Spencer Ashbee , transcriptions ...
Wednesday, 4 June 2025

Illustrated condom revisited

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Some while ago I made a blog post about an illustrated animal-gut condom which was sold at Christies in 1992, allegedly to a Swedish collec...
Saturday, 26 October 2024

Brief PSA

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Just a note to let anyone who still has my contact details down as the Wellcome email, that this will shortly be ceasing to operate, as my t...
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Tuesday, 19 March 2024

Was this ground for divorce ever invoked, 1923-1970?

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I have long considered the intricacies of English divorce law one of my topics of niche pedantry, and will happily, though perhaps not for m...
Friday, 8 March 2024

IWD: A Centenary to Celebrate in 2024, and an anniversary

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There have been various mentions that this year is the centenary of the first - if short-lived - Labour Government in the UK. Its coming to ...
Monday, 22 January 2024

A welcome return to Victorian values

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I.e. those Victorian values embodied in Alfred Swaine Taylor's 1879 Manual of Medical Jurisprudence in his discussion of the question o...
Wednesday, 27 December 2023

Archivists are voices in the wilderness?

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 Like (I think) every archivist, historian, and genealogist who encountered this proposition, I was horrified by the weaselly-entitled press...
Monday, 18 September 2023

Transnational abortion in times of illegality

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I was delighted to see that Mexico recently decriminalised abortion, but I also went, wait, haven't I read novels, and maybe memoirs, fr...
Friday, 1 September 2023

Colin Spencer (1933-2023): bisexual novelist of the 60s

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Today I saw the Guardian obituary for Colin Spencer , treating him primarily as a food writer, which he became in the later part of his care...
Monday, 28 August 2023

Forgotten vs somewhat neglected novelists

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I was recently brought up short during a re-read of Dorothy Sayers' The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club , when Wimsey scans Ann Dorla...
Thursday, 1 June 2023

I suppose these days one would call this being cancelled

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Have been reminded by the currently notorious case of the chemical weapons expert who was disinvited from speaking on his sphere of expertis...
Tuesday, 16 May 2023

Pretending medical conditions for journalistic clout

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I have lately been seeing a lot of understandable pushback concerning the BBC Panorama documentary involving a journalist going undercover t...
Saturday, 29 April 2023

Some minor updating as to what I've been up to

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  My chapter, ' The Afterlives of Victorian Scandals: The Memorable, the Neglected, the Factitious', appeared in Brenda Ayres, Sarah...
Wednesday, 8 March 2023

International Women's Day 1923: will this centenary be celebrated?

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The Matrimonial Causes Act 1923 I am not sure whether this is generally considered a major leap forward in the advancement of women in Engla...
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About Me

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Lesley Hall
London, United Kingdom
Archivist at the Wellcome Library (1979-2015); Wellcome Library Research Fellow (2015-2024). Honorary Associate Professor, Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London (to 2025). Fellow, Institute of Historical Research (2025- )Historian who has published several books and numerous articles and chapters on issues to do with sexuality and gender in the UK in the 19th and 20th centuries. Subsidiary interests in the history of women in science and medicine, interwar middlebrow women novelists, and science fiction and fantasy. She considers herself a feminist.@erinacean.bsky.social‬ This blog went, not particularly intentionally, on hiatus in 2017 for various life-related reasons. I am now intermittently posting again, if only to do something about recording various weird research rabbit-holes I've been down that don't feel like part of any larger projects.
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