I suppose these days one would call this being cancelled

Have been reminded by the currently notorious case of the chemical weapons expert who was disinvited from speaking on his sphere of expertise at a government conference because of his opinions on the government expressed on social media, of a fairly trivial instance where an invitation I had received to speak at a conference was rescinded on grounds which did seem to me at the time had a flavour of 'moral panic', (I don't think the term 'woke' was much in general use at the time, but I suspect that there was a fear that I would introduce a certain, ahem, 'wokeness' into my presentation.)

(I realise this also falls rather apposite to the inception of Pride Month 2023...)

I have a minor area of expertise in the history of women in medicine in the UK, developed largely through having had to do with relevant archives over a significant period of time, leading to organising exhibitions of same, doing promotional work via lectures, etc etc. In 2013 I was approached by a rather staid heritage body preparing a major conference for 2014 - one of many celebrating the notable centenary falling in that year - to present on - actually I cannot remember after all this time whether it was just women docs or women health professionals more generally (e.g. the Almeric Paget Massage Corps) in World War I. To which I said yes, as it fell within the general remit of my duties as an archivist drawing attention to the materials in our collections.

Early in 2014 I was to give a presentation at the Florence Nightingale Museum on 'Passions Between Women in Victorian Britain' (to which I had been persuaded by the then curator). 

I think it was when this was in the process of being publicised that I received a rather nervous phone-call from the organiser of the conference indicating that concerns had been expressed and they would therefore rather I did not participate in their event. I had not in fact intended to introduce any speculations about, e.g. the relationship of Louisa Garrett Anderson and Flora Murray, as I felt I had quite enough material on, you know, the amazing and undervalued contributions women made to medical care during the Great War in the teeth of official hostility.

I hope they found someone else to speak on this important topic.

International Women's Day

Nothing really new, but I've discovered that old posts I did for the Wellcome Library blog, 2008-2015, are still available courtesy of the Wayback Machine.

This is the one I did for IWD 2013: Paying attention to what women say:

International Women’s Day seems a good time to commemorate two amazing (and long-lived!) women doctors and researchers whose major breakthroughs were the result of listening to what women told them and paying attention to the implications.

Their work reflects not only their own achievements as women scientists, but a willingness to pay attention to and to value what women were telling them about their own experiences.

Another post with a bit more detail about the amazing Alice Stewart and her papers.

 

 

My recent cataloguing activities

Recent posts at the Wellcome Library blog on collections/items I've been processing lately:

Having a ‘typewritten conversation’: one letter, but a long and important one, from Sir Robert McCarrison to George Scott Williamson and Innes Pearse of the Pioneer Health Centre, Peckham

The Blood is the Life: the Harrison-Howell Blood Transfusion Collection

‘One of the great leaders among medical women in India’  on the papers of Dr Margaret Ida Balfour, (1866-1945), CBE, MD, CM FRCOG.

Women's Histories: the Local and the Global IFRWH/WHN conference 2013

This international conference held jointly under the auspices of the International Federation for Research in Women's History and the (UK) Women's History Network took place at Sheffield Hallam University, last Thursday to last Sunday, and what a very good, if sometimes overwhelming, conference it was.

There was a plethora of panels in a wide range of parallel strands, three excellent plenary lectures from Catherine Hall, Jacqueline van Gent, and Mrinalini Sinha providing much food for thought, and a concluding roundtable discussion: 'After the transnational turn: what future for nation-based histories of women?' There were also good informal discussions over coffee, tea, and lunch (and I really must praise the catering, even if there weren't any peppermint tea bags). A very rich experience altogether.

The big take-home thoughts were the complex 'entangled histories' that bring together the local and the global, that very specifically located micro-histories can illuminate transnational issues, and that bringing new actors into the narrative produces, or should produce, a new history with an altered perspective.

With 9 strands over 9 sessions there were surely many wonderful papers and discussions that I missed. However, I did get to a very exciting panel on 'Disentangling evangelical missionaries: gender, sexual and domesticity in globalised localities', the one on 'Prostitution in comparative perspective' (despite the loss of one speaker, this worked very well), and the extremely stimulating one on 'Art and the Making of Cosmopolitan Identities' which provided me with a lot of things I need to follow up. I had hoped to attend the 'Gendered professions, gendered challenges' panel but two speakers had had to cancel, so went to 'Imperial webs and the influence of women', in which I was particularly interested in the paper on female missionary doctors.

My paper on Stella Browne as an internationalist featured in the panel on 'British women internationalists at home', and I found Ruth Davidson's paper on the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in Croydon raised some issues particularly pertinent to my own current interests. I was, however, feeling rather thwarted at being scheduled at the same time as the panel on 'Mixed-race children and their mothers' including Lucy Bland talking on GI babies after World War II, not to mention that there was also a panel I should have liked to have heard on feminist campaigns against licensed prostitution in the same slot. Always a problem with stranded conferences.

The panel 'Cultural exchange and imperial power'  continued the theme of complicating the missionary narrative. 'International political and cultural exchange among women: Australia and beyond' demonstrated yet again what very exciting work in this area is being done by Australian historians and what large questions it raises. Australia also featured in the very well-attended panel on Sunday morning that I chaired, 'Between Britain and Australia: transnational women's lives': with a very nice paper from Emma Robertson on British skilled women workers from Cadburys going out to Tasmania in the 1920s when the British chocolate firms set up a factory there, and one from Rebecca Jennings on the quite complex cultural exchanges involving Australian lesbians coming to London in the 1970s - this perhaps counter-intuitively revealed that the British women's and gay and lesbian liberation movements of the period were less important than encounters with other Australians passing through London, and with newly available publications from the US movement.

The social side of the conference included two receptions, and a conference dinner at the very impressive Cutlers' Hall.

A few blocks down the Euston Road

I was reminded about this by a post on the Women's History Network Discussion List. I was involved in the early discussions about this gallery, but I missed the formal opening in June because I was attending the Berks, so it rather slipped off my radar.

Thanks to ‘EGA for Women’, a group that campaigned to preserve the core of the former Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital, and to the generosity of UNISON, The Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Gallery is now open to the public. It is a permanent installation in the beautifully restored 1890s hospital building, part of the new UNISON Centre. Using a variety of media, the gallery tells the story of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, her hospital, and women’s struggle to achieve equality in the field of medicine, set within the wider framework of 19^th and 20^th century social history.

The Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Gallery
The UNISON Centre
130 Euston Road
London NW1 2AY
Telephone: 0845 355 084

The gallery is very close to the Wellcome Collection, the British Library – and Euston and King’s Cross stations. Numerous bus routes pass the door.

Admission is free and the gallery is open Wednesday to Friday 9.00am to 6.00pm and on the first Saturday of every month 9.00am to 6.00pm. An audio descriptive guide for the blind and partially sighted is available at the Reception Desk.

Women Health and Healing reprised

I will be presenting a Wellcome Library Insights session on Women Health and Healing at 3 pm on 22nd September. Illustrated talk and a chance to get up close and personal with some archival and manuscript materials.

Cross-posting some of my recent(ish) Wellcome Library blog posts

The annual archive popularity contest

A woman in wartime: Molly Newhouse

Roger Money-Kyrle papers

The last is particularly gratifying: this is an important collection which I am very glad to see catalogued and out there at last.