tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.comments2022-10-21T14:13:40.204+01:00Lesley A Hall, archivist and historianLesley Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02302560115903080937noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-70393311832530203252022-10-21T14:13:40.204+01:002022-10-21T14:13:40.204+01:00I do enjoy this blog, thank you. I have an interes...I do enjoy this blog, thank you. I have an interest in Early Women Doctors and originally came here from an article you wrote. JoCnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-47683922521870116602022-08-28T13:10:23.202+01:002022-08-28T13:10:23.202+01:00I found that a bit odd, as when I went to USA as a...I found that a bit odd, as when I went to USA as a student in 1970 and was working in a department store in NYC which paid in cash in a pay packet, I was able to open a bank account for the duration of my stay to deposit earnings in weekly, rather than having to worry about carrying them around or finding safe place to store them. Plus the general question mark over how women historically had managed to run businesses, etc!Lesley Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02302560115903080937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-51395066826641299492022-08-28T08:05:03.532+01:002022-08-28T08:05:03.532+01:00I don't know where this idea that women in the...I don't know where this idea that women in the US were unable to open bank or credit accounts in the US prior to 1972 arose but, as in your case, it is clearly wrong and the life histories of many, many women who bought and sold property, held their own money, and just generally participated in economic transactions without any husband/father/brother present gives the lie to this. My own great-aunt, a spinster who immigrated to the US shortly after WWI, is a perfect example of a woman in full control of her own finances, as are her two lesbian friends who together owned a thriving business and multiple rental properties well before the 1970s. While married women may well have faced serious obstacles to establishing credit and owning property before reforms in the 1970s, single women certainly could do so and pretending otherwise does no one any good and obfuscates the myriad other issues faced by women of all classes and statuses.Lene Kretschznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-44237194979687570012022-02-28T09:46:15.904+00:002022-02-28T09:46:15.904+00:00On reflecting further I wonder if science fiction ...On reflecting further I wonder if science fiction also got certain passes: I think of works like Brave New World that posited vastly changed sexual and reproductive arrangements, as well as various dystopic depictions of the breakdown of civilisation.Lesley Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02302560115903080937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-49378112191034911352015-07-10T20:38:55.001+01:002015-07-10T20:38:55.001+01:00Posted on behalf of Judith Walkowitz (edited versi...Posted on behalf of Judith Walkowitz (edited version):<br /><br />I want to second Lesley’s praise for this book. It shows the great utility of exploiting linked sources to build life stories of subaltern subjects. And it definitely shows that even within a narrow range of possibilities, the life histories of prostitute women varied in notable ways. <br /><br />It certainly adds nuance, to quote Lesley, to my own story of policing under the C.D. Acts. There is no doubt that Lee is correct in assessing metropolitan policing under the C.D.Acts as an additional layer of policing secondary to the oversight and spatial management of local police.<br /><br />I both agree and disagree with her assessment of the gynecological examination. She is right to call me to task in not sufficiently highlighting the significance of prostitute women calling themselves “Queen’s Women,” evidence of their attempt to manipulate the conditions of subordination under the C.D. Acts to best advantage. But that does not mean they were insulated from broader cultural currents, including feminist repeal propaganda and long-standing popular fears of hospitals and medical anatomists as “body snatchers” and desecrators of pauper graves, nor that they were incapable of complex subjective understandings beyond survivalism. <br /><br />These views surfaced during the agitation against the Acts in Plymouth in 1870s, when feminists established a political arena that made possible the legal resistance of registered women. Plymouth was different from many of the locales studied by Lee, but that is the point: a different political situation can yield a different dynamic, even among prostitutes. Fifteen percent of registered women in Plymouth failed to comply with medical registration in 1870: courts were overflowing with cases. Now 15 percent is, of course, not the majority, but it is roughly equal to the proportion of U.S. students who protested the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. I raise this because I want to challenge Dr. Lee’s use of “statistics” as somehow self-evident, demonstrating women’s indifference to medical inspection. Mobilizing statistics in that way strikes me as simplistic and naïve. <br />Lesley Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02302560115903080937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-52617823833882572242015-07-09T20:24:26.247+01:002015-07-09T20:24:26.247+01:00This comment has been removed by the author.Lesley Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02302560115903080937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-70629616357640538002014-11-19T10:17:01.016+00:002014-11-19T10:17:01.016+00:00Many thanks - this has been added in latest update...Many thanks - this has been added in latest update this morningLesley Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02302560115903080937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-9340819916033250662014-11-16T02:47:41.008+00:002014-11-16T02:47:41.008+00:00There's Penny's abortion in Rumer Godden&#...There's Penny's abortion in Rumer Godden's <i>In This House of Brede</i> (1969), too.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-51398734486419514412014-10-14T09:08:43.347+01:002014-10-14T09:08:43.347+01:00I read that when it first came out in the 1970s, a...I read that when it first came out in the 1970s, and while it's a taster of the letters written to Stopes, I'm not altogether happy about the principles of selection, having, as an archivist, catalogued the 1000s that Stopes received, of which it represents a minute and not particularly representative percentage.Lesley Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02302560115903080937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-31676625680369199152014-10-12T07:09:21.287+01:002014-10-12T07:09:21.287+01:00http://www.amazon.com/Dear-Dr-Stopes-Sex-1920s/dp/...http://www.amazon.com/Dear-Dr-Stopes-Sex-1920s/dp/0140055363/<br />Annhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05265595595318070025noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-73025166081858570742014-10-06T21:15:26.623+01:002014-10-06T21:15:26.623+01:00Viv Groskup's Guardian episode blogs on the to...Viv Groskup's Guardian episode blogs on the topic are hilarious; I read them without watching the show.Jonquilhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00394073543168209042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-41875233948195550562014-10-06T20:22:45.318+01:002014-10-06T20:22:45.318+01:00Plotwise, last time she relied on a man for such t...Plotwise, last time she relied on a man for such things she ended up with a dead Turkish diplomat in her bed...Viviennehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15102166089045048403noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-28716389638773226442014-10-06T20:08:59.795+01:002014-10-06T20:08:59.795+01:00I wouldn't think that would mean she was neces...I wouldn't think that would mean she was necessarily au fait with the latest in contraceptive technology (given the number of women who apparently left all that sort of thing up to their husbands)Lesley Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02302560115903080937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-63316522897974020802014-10-06T14:12:15.016+01:002014-10-06T14:12:15.016+01:00The character in question is a widow with one chil...The character in question is a widow with one child (not that I've watched it either, but the Radio Times tells me far more than I need to know).Viviennehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15102166089045048403noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-73875971483919281442014-06-24T10:41:24.153+01:002014-06-24T10:41:24.153+01:00I commented upon the absolute primacy of good meta...I commented upon the absolute primacy of good metadata in a previous post: http://lesleyahall.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/interesting-thoughts-on-cataloguing.html. However, I do think that researchers are (for a long time yet, and probably always!) going to have to delve, because indexing absolutely everything that might be of interest to future scholars is not only prohibitive in terms of resources, it's pretty much impossible. There is a worrying trend to suppose that if something doesn't come up on a google-type search it's not there. <br /><br />Even if you have full-text searchability - as with the Wellcome Library's London's Pulse initiative with Medical Officer of Health Reports http://wellcomelibrary.org/moh/ - users have to be aware of the kinds of terminology the people who compiled the reports would be using.<br /><br />I have also ranted in this blog about researchers who claimed to have 'discovered' something 'hidden in the archives' which was exactly where one would expect to find it, and not uncommonly visible in the catalogue.Lesley Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02302560115903080937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-40393963924813107132014-06-24T10:12:04.756+01:002014-06-24T10:12:04.756+01:00May I suggest that at present many digitisation pr...May I suggest that at present many digitisation projects are following either grant money or paying interest groups, each provides the necessary income to help towards the running costs/profits. Therefore it is correct for both Adam's comment and your own that the majority of archival materials will never be digitised or even easily available, it would be an almost impossibility from so many directions.<br />It matters not if a collection is digitised unless the content is accurately and fully indexed. Without care and thought being put into indexing then the digital content becomes invisible to a researcher, simply an extensive range of pretty, or often poor resolution, pictures. This is also the case with traditional archive collections – how many times have you looked through a box and found the content does not reflect, in any degree of accuracy, the catalogue entry? This is probably a reflection on the constraints of funding and value placed by depositories on the materials they hold not only in document collections but also in physical ‘archaeological’ or ‘natural history’ collections, but must be weighed against the changing styles of recording methodology.<br />The challenge is to improve technology to the point where identification of content is semi-automated, this happens with increasing accuracy with OCR on typeface, can it happen to handwritten text? – Difficult I suspect, as you are dealing not only with changing letter formation but also the individual scribes styles.<br />As someone who has provided 10s of 1000s of digital images to a wide variety of collection holders I can see first-hand how these are then presented for researcher’s consumption. The best are good but at worst they are a waste of funder’s money. The reliance on basic metadata for searching is as much a hindrance as a help, one could propose that only embedded transcription of content would improve the situation which brings the circle back to the costs of funding projects to their fullest in regard for making resources findable for all interest groups.<br />I have often used a simply method to illustrate the difficulty faced; show a picture to an audience and ask them each to describe the content they would list if they were indexing the item. From each person you will get a completely different list which primarily depends on their personal interests. The archivist is faced with this decision on almost every single item. If a researcher finds the item from their search string the archivists work goes unnoticed, if the item is found by accident the archivist will face criticism. It is a no win situation in many respects.<br />Steve Hobbshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16811659577782483228noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-89351906276008246122014-06-23T21:11:06.219+01:002014-06-23T21:11:06.219+01:00They certainly do, but my note of caution here is ...They certainly do, but my note of caution here is being sounded about how relatively little is currently available online, and issues to do with the kinds of sources that have been so far been digitised, favouring certain kinds of material and certain historical areas more than others. (Though even if one is interested in the First World War, there's still masses of stuff that isn't - yet - online.)Lesley Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02302560115903080937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-65632442072212407892014-06-23T21:04:41.713+01:002014-06-23T21:04:41.713+01:00I got the impression - rightly or wrongly - from t...I got the impression - rightly or wrongly - from that article that he was very much talking about trad history, i.e. accessing digitised documents online with the rather misleading invocation of a former necessity to go to 'glamorous places' (!!) to consult archives - rather than the kind of exciting work that can be done with large digital datasets. <br /><br />I think there's a distinction here between 'digital history' as a productive methodology and a rather lazy assumption that somebody can access all the documents they need sitting at their own comfortable desk. Which, as I was trying to argue, is problematic when so little has been digitised and given the problems previously mentioned about issues of priorities, selection, decontextualisation.<br /><br />Lesley Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02302560115903080937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-39120373539461360132014-06-23T13:24:27.147+01:002014-06-23T13:24:27.147+01:00Also, access to travel funding may vary depending ...Also, access to travel funding may vary depending on where you are in the world. Online sources enable more people to become historians.tapehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06376539039989246072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-30750217774849108172014-06-23T12:36:16.761+01:002014-06-23T12:36:16.761+01:00In many ways you're right. Most material isn&#...In many ways you're right. Most material isn't online. Most of it never will be. But I do have the feeling that you're coming at this from a direction I'd not like to see perpetuated. My historical research can't be done in the archives because I'm trying to answer different types of questions than you. They aren't more or less important than what you research. They're just different.<br /><br />I analyse sets of records which need to be in digital format to get the types of results I'm after. You're (presumably) looking for evidence gleaned through close reading that provides you with a deeper understanding of a particular theme.<br /><br />I do appreciate what you're trying to say here and that it relates specifically to comments made by one person. But I do worry that this perspective comes to reflect poorly on digital history generally (whilst we were minding our business doing what we love!). Our two types of research compliment one another very well. I'm glad you do what you do. But suggesting I'm a bad historian because I don't do that too isn't productive for the profession. It marginalizes what I do without trying to understand it.<br /><br />The answer to a historical question isn't always in a box somewhere. Sometimes it's the connections between thousands of boxes that matter. And you don't always need to read the letters in the box to find out something new about the past.Adam Crymblehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16729063535227511371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-27380589885269055792014-02-24T20:17:26.914+00:002014-02-24T20:17:26.914+00:00Thanks very much! Thanks very much! Lesley Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02302560115903080937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-85288442516398762102014-02-24T10:01:02.806+00:002014-02-24T10:01:02.806+00:00In re-tweeting this when it first appeared, I wrot...In re-tweeting this when it first appeared, I wrote "Amen. And build cataloguing costs into the research bid." As an archivist who has just referred this blog post to a researcher, I thought I would comment on how useful a post it is.Craighttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03936596946094345752noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-29379900458473470782013-06-03T20:15:04.577+01:002013-06-03T20:15:04.577+01:00You may find this information via the Wellcome Lib...You may find this information via the Wellcome Library website http://wellcomelibrary.org/, though I would advise using this link to the catalogue http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/search/ rather than the searchbox on the front page, and delimiting the search by 'journal titles'.<br />(comment amended for clarity)Lesley Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02302560115903080937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-32796050381324778442013-06-03T16:20:28.427+01:002013-06-03T16:20:28.427+01:00Hi Lesley,
Are all issues of the Marriage Hygiene...Hi Lesley,<br /><br />Are all issues of the Marriage Hygiene journal available in the Wellcome Library?<br /><br />Cheers,<br />ZackZack S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15776071815612055929noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6738724373406097909.post-88850177641808671652013-05-18T23:28:48.781+01:002013-05-18T23:28:48.781+01:00I think it would have been even more fascinating i...I think it would have been even more fascinating if my German had been more up to it! - but I had a good time nonetheless. Also my interpreter turned out to be doing their PhD on 1930s British novelists, another of my interests!Lesley Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02302560115903080937noreply@blogger.com