Blog | Lucienne Boyce

Spotlight On…Ellen W Pitman (c1857 – ?)

At midnight on Friday 8 October 1909, Nurse Ellen Pitman of Southleigh Road (also known as Leigh Road South), Clifton boarded the train from Bristol to Newcastle. She was on …

The Female Writer’s Apology; Or, Then and Now

In my eighteenth-century thriller, To The Fair Land, Ben Dearlove’s adventures start when he tries to find the anonymous author of a book about a voyage to the South Seas. …

2nd Lt John Alfred Raymond Andrews

Phyllis of the Die-Hards I recently bought on eBay a First World War postcard: Phyllis of the Die-Hards. My interest in the card is in the image, which is …

Georgians Revealed?

I recently went to the British Library’s exhibition “Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain”. By tracing similarities between our modern lifestyle and that of the era …

Eating Oranges with Robert Graves

2014 is, as everyone must be aware by now, the anniversary of the start of the First World War, and so it seemed fitting that when I was in Mallorca …

‘We will have a fire’: arson during eighteenth-century enclosures

“Inclosure came and trampled on the grave Of labours rights and left the poor a slave And memorys pride ere want to wealth did bow Is both the shadow and …

That infernal brothel: the story of Bet Carter (c1770 – ?), a convict to New South Wales

At the end of April 1794 The Surprize convict ship set sail from Portsmouth bound for Botany Bay. Her master was Patrick Campbell and the first mate was Mr McPherson. …

Mrs Pankhurst and the Double Standard

When Mrs Pankhurst sought to justify WSPU militancy, she often did so by drawing attention to a double standard that accepted men’s militancy but criticised women’s. “The smashing of windows …

Were the suffragettes insane?

On 16 March 1912 a leader in The Times explained suffragette militancy by attributing it to women’s “Insurgent Hysteria”. The article suggested that “in a large number of cases, even …

‘The Suffragettes were in the organ’

I’ve been so busy preparing The Bristol Suffragettes for publication (expected in May) that I haven’t had a chance to write a blog for ages. With publication date drawing near, …

The Stepmother, Githa Sowerby, Orange Tree

I went to see Githa Sowerby’s 1924 play, The Stepmother, at The Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond on 16 February 2013. Before this production the play had never been performed …

Suffragettes and the Old Brown Dog

When Mrs Pankhurst spoke at a suffrage meeting in Battersea Town Hall with local suffragette Charlotte Despard, she was puzzled by hecklers’ calls for “the old brown dog”. Who was …