In The Myth of the Press Gang, J. Ross Dancy offers a quantitative approach to the subject. He developed a sampling system and entered the details as recorded in individual ships’ muster books covering the period 1793-1801. Data entry took twenty two weeks. The end result was a database including 27,174 individuals, “roughly a 10 […]
Tag Archives | social history
Mapping Cinema Culture in Portsmouth’s Sailortown in the Early Twentieth Century
The naval town of Portsmouth, located on the south coast of Britain, had a rich cinema culture in the early 20th century. At the peak of the leisure habit’s popularity in the 1930s and 1940s, the town was home to 29 cinemas. These ranged from the plush ‘picture palaces’ to the smaller, rudimentary cinemas. The […]
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard & The Boathouse 4 Project
One of the elements that attracted me to the University of Portsmouth BA (Hons) History course was the department’s links with local museums, galleries and other heritage ventures. The course also has a strong emphasis on social and cultural history. The University is ideally placed on the doorstep of Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Two months into […]
London’s Sailortown, 1600-1800
Guest writers Derek Morris and Ken Cozens tell us about how their in-depth studies of East London have led to over ten years of research and four ground-breaking books. Dr Richard Blakemore in 2014 observed that “The riverside parishes of eastern London and the lower Thames were home to the largest maritime community in Britain from […]
Portsmouth Landladies and Care for Naval Casualties in Late Stuart England
Portsmouth women played a major role in the care of sick and injured Royal Navy sailors during the seventeenth century. Women’s importance to naval health care became, paradoxically, a reason to justify an important shift: from care in private homes to care in private naval hospitals. From about 1650, naval health care in England operated […]
The Coastal History Blog 30: “Maritime Heritage and Social Justice”
In May, I participated in a conference in Bordeaux, Self, other and elsewhere: Images and imaginaries of the port cities of Atlantic and Mediterranean Europe (1700-present). [1] One particularly animated panel on the second day, “The taboo of the trade,” concerned how French ports such as Nantes and Bordeaux itself were coming to terms with […]