THEME Social reform and change

History of Women and Work

The employment of women through the second half of the C19th and beyond has long been hidden in the data. As more data is digitized and becomes easier to evaluate it is apparent that women had always been employed in an incredibly wide range of occupations. Seek out the women and their hidden occupations in your family history

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William Wilberforce and the Bettering Society

William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce was the father of the Reform Movement who encouraged a ‘Better Society’, where decent morals and values created a world of positive outcomes for the poor, where science could be used to make lives better

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Urban Expansion & Slum Creation

The rapid evolution of urban societies left the poor on the extreme edge of survival. The need for social reform was never greater than during the mid C19th

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Women and Suffrage

Women’s suffrage affected generation after generation of women. It took thirty years from the formation of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society to the Representation of the People Act in 1928 for all women to have an equal right to vote in the UK

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Foundling Hospital a home for children…

The Foundling Hospital for children, in many ways, epitomises the change in thinking that came out of the period of Enlightenment. People such as John Locke, stirred the conscience of a society and resulted in a more liberal thinking where deeds and actions spoke loudest.

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Children Lost and Found Notices

Lost children of the C19th. How heartbreaking it must have been to lose a child in the seething populace of London but how did a poor family go about finding their lost child. A little piece of ephemera had us on the trail….

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