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Women

A A 19th century street-seller

Hard Times: Another Victorian Girl – Harriet Bumford Darke, c1831-1895

Harriet’s Story Thomas Bumford and Amelia Evans were married on 3rd August 1828 at Abergavenny, a small Welsh market town on the river Usk about six miles from the border with England. This is...
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Sarah Matthews: A Poke from the Psychic Facebook

“Overture and Beginners Please” Miss Sarah Matthews was a surprise package. I had never heard of her before. She had a life of two halves: an actress from our Theatre Royal, Bristol who was...
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Burnt at the Stake: Jane Lumock and Mary Norwood

From the Middle Ages the penalty for the murder of a wife by a husband was to be hanged by the neck until dead, but the murder of a husband by a wife was...
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College Green, Bristol ca 1830

Mrs Frances Ruscombe and her maid, Mary Champness, otherwise Sweet: A double murder at College Green

On Thursday 27 September 1764, a spinster in late middle-age, Miss Jefferies, went to her sister Frances’s house on College Green where she had been invited to dine at 12 noon. It appears the...
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An Innocent Casualty of the Bristol Riots

The Bristol Mercury of 13 June 1846 tells of a recent event in Gloucester when on Tuesday night at nearly midnight, a girl of abandoned character nicknamed ‘Welsh Nan’ with her hair dishevelled, her...
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Anna Maria Falconbridge – a life that would make a good Netflix series

My previous subject (Mary Kennedy, as far as we know) wrote only one line about her voyage to the other side of the World and back.  By contrast Anna Maria Falconbridge is her direct...
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Mary Kennedy – Adventures on the First Fleet and Beyond

Mary Kennedy of Baptists Mills in Bristol is one of an elite group of people who made landfall at Sydney Cove in January 1788. They numbered approximately 1,373 persons, consisting of convicts, male and...
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Survivor of Ravensbruck: Stefania Ekner, nee Biegarczyk, 1921-2001

Family History research often leads to something entirely unexpected. In 2014, my first cousin Jack GREGORY was due to attain a milestone birthday. What to give a 90 year-old-man? The majority of us who...
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A Victorian Girl

The Victorian Girl is the Cinderella story in reverse. Mary Britton, previously Leighton, was a dear old soul, who was “in Service’ in Downend from leaving school until her late marriage to Samuel Britton....
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Remarkable Women: Following the Drum. Biddy Skiddy – Hannah Scuse

I became interested in the Peninsular War period through the TV series “Sharpe”. This is predominately a male tale of derring-do but when visiting the National Army Museum in London (www.nam.ac.uk) I discovered the...
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