History and Today

My new article is out in the next issue of History journal: 'A reformer's wife ought to be an heroine: Gender, Family and English Radicals Imprisoned under the Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act of 1817'. It's about the correspondence between state prisoners arrested for high treason under the suspension of habeas corpus act of 1817 and their wives back home, trying to sustain the radical movement in their absence. The letters are in the HO 42 series at the National Archives.  Link to the publisher's website here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-229X.12227/abstract Link to the pre-proof PDF copy here: http://researchprofiles.herts.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/a-reformers-wife-ought-to-be-an-heroine-gender-family-and-english-radicals-imprisoned-under-the-suspension-of-habeas-corpus-act-of-1817%28f69e7141-d532-4296-9409-73ee34a6c241%29.html

You can now access both seminar papers I did in the same week at the IHR. 1. Digital History seminar on my British Library Labs project: https://ihrdighist.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2015/12/14/tuesday-2-february-katrina-navickas-political-meetings-mapper-with-british-library-labs-mapping-the-origins-of-british-democratic-movements-with-text-mining-nlp-geo-parsing-and-crowd-sourcing/ 2. Socialist History seminar on my new book. I think it's the better of the presentations that I've done about the main arguments about protest and the politics of space and place. http://www.history.ac.uk/podcasts/socialist-history/politics-public-space-nineteenth-century-england the politics of public space in 19th century England by Katrina Navickas from Katrina Navickas

I'm currently writing up an article on radical prisoners and penal reform, 1794-1820. Here's an extract from the secret correspondence of the Home Office to the keeper of Winchester Gaol, 23 July 1817. It concerns the conditions afflicting William Wolstenholme and his sons, imprisoned on suspicion of high treason, under the suspension of habeas corpus act. TNA, HO 41/3, p.289, Hobhouse to gaoler of Winchester, 23 July 1817 It having been represented to Lord Sidmouth that the workmen of that part of the Country from whence the Wolstenholmes come [Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire] are accustomed to have fires all the year round and to work by, and that they feel the privation when removed to the South where fires are not so constant... i.e. the Yorkshiremen were used to being warm, and felt the cold down south! [or rather that they were Sheffield metalworkers used to working by a forge, but this still meant they felt the cold...]