Northern History

The Tees (Newport) Bridge officially opened in February 1934 to much fanfare and public celebration, the event receiving extensive local, regional and national media attention. The bridge provided a crucial link across the River Tees to the emerging industrial works on the north bank of the river and beyond, and similarly provided access to the industrial, commercial and retail businesses on the Middlesbrough side of the river. However, delays in the project meant approximately fourteen years had elapsed from initial discussions of a crossing to its fruition in the form of the world’s largest vertical-lift bridge.

ABSTRACT
The Jacobean era's infamous witchcraft trials are recalled after reservoir repairs close to Pendle Hill reveal a buried cottage with bricked‐up cat. Interpretations of the building as the site of Malkin Tower, recorded in court records as the venue of a witches coven are critically evaluated in the light of archaeological and historical evidence.

KEYWORDS
WITCH, PENDLE WITCH TRIALS, PENDLE HILL, MALKIN TOWER, FOLK BELIEF, MAGIC, LANCASTER ASSIZES, WISE WOMEN, CUNNING FOLK, ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, SEVENTEENTHCENTURY, ALIZON DEVICE, SALEM WITCHES, THOMAS POTTS, LOWER BLACK MOSS, ELIZABETH SOUTHERNS, DEMDIKE, ELIZABETH DEVICE, JAMES DEVICE, ANNE WHITTLE, CHATTOX, ANNE REDFERNE, JANE BULCOCK, JOHN BULCOCK, ALICE NUTTER, KATHERINE HEWITT, ALICE GRAY, JENNET PRESTON, GUNPOWDER PLOT, CAT

... a king of Dunmeller (now Drummelzier) in Upper Tweeddale near Peebles, associated with both St Kentigern and with Merlin, who supposedly ... The editor here suggests that Alexander was probably a mistake for Alan, but Alexander son of Benedict of Pennington also appears ...

This second chapter (an updated replacement of Chapter2_ebook) of "Naskapis Emergent: Indianization in the North of Quebec Before 1956" (in progress) surveys and chronicles the influences that Naskapi ancestors dealt with while still living on the land during the first half of the 20th century.

In shaping what is known about The North and about the Naskapis of Quebec, the late Alan Cooke has influenced "Naskapis Emergent: Indianization in the North of Quebec Before 1956" (in progress).  The manuscript's author assesses Cooke's influence.

In the early twentieth century, the Canadian Lakehead was known as a breeding ground for revolution, a place where harsh conditions in dockyards, lumber mills, and railway yards drove immigrants into radical labour politics.

This intensely engaging history reasserts Northwestern Ontario’s rightful reputation as a birthplace of leftism in Canada by exposing the conditions that gave rise to an array of left-wing organizations, including the Communist Party, the One Big Union, and the Industrial Workers of the World. Yet, as Michel Beaulieu shows, the circumstances and actions of Lakehead labour, especially those related to ideology, ethnicity, and personality were complex; they simultaneously empowered and fettered workers in their struggles against the shackles of capitalism. Cultural ties helped bring left-wing ideas to Canada but, as each group developed a distinctive vocabulary of socialism, Anglo-Celtic workers defended their privileges against Finns, Ukrainians, and Italians. At the Lakehead, ethnic difference often outweighed class solidarity -- at the cost of a stronger labour movement for Canada.

... CHARITY, POLITICS AND THE ... The spirit of charity can only be continued by a reconciliation of these ridiculous feuds; and therefore, instead of contentions, [over] who shall be the only benefactors to the needy, let there be no other struggle than who shall be the first. ...

In 1925, the BC government passed an order-in-council requiring the registration of all traplines, a geographically bounded territory in which an individual or group has exclusive trapping rights. This order-in-council produced the first compulsory trapline registration system in North America.1 In the Yukon, the territorial administration chose to conserve its furbearer population through closed seasons until 1950, when it began to develop its own trapline registration system.2 These government actions not only affected contemporaneous Indigenous land use and tenure but also continue to affect claims to Aboriginal title and understandings of boundaries among different Indigenous groups. Although established under different contexts, trapline registration in these two jurisdictions represented imposing upon Indigenous peoples colonial conceptions of what was “appropriate” land use. While trapline registration protected certain tracts of land for use by Indigenous trappers, it also o...

THEREPORTSPRODUCEDby Mass-Observation provide perhaps the most important record of the impact of the Blitz on the social and cultural experience of Britain's cities during the war period. The organization's network of local voluntary workers and small core of full-...

... For their help with references or other matters I am also grateful to John Adams, Peter Barber, Sarah Bendall, Clare Hartwell, Matthew Hyde ... Note: I use the modern term 'Mancunian' in this paper as the adjectival form for Manchester, although Dee and his contemporaries would ...

Slides from the 'Utilizing business archives to explore industrialist patronage: Middlesbrough’s steel magnates and the British Steel Collection, 1880-1934' paper presented at the Economic History Society Annual Conference 2015 at the University of Wolverhampton (Telford):

In his chapter on the ‘growth of the new community’ of Middlesbrough in his landmark Victorian Cities, Briggs (1963) contended that from the later nineteenth century period onwards, the will of the town’s ironmasters to engage in the life of the town had dwindled, with the second and subsequent generations of industrialists and managers. In line with notions of a ‘decline of the industrial spirit’ stressed by Wiener (1981) and emphasis in subsequent works exploring the role of Middlesbrough’s manufacturers by Hadfield (1979) and Stubley (1979) the town’s industrialists have been presented as having withdrawn from participation from 1880 up to the outbreak of the First World War. Yet, these arguments for elite withdrawal from the urban sphere have developed based upon a reduced representation and visibility of those magnates from municipal involvement as councillors and a perceived reduced participation in business activities with the rise of the general manager.

Catalogue of publications in History and Art history.
Catálogo de publicaciones en los campos de Historia e Historia del Arte
Catalogue de publications en Histoire et Histoire de l'art

Le document a été préparé par l'équipe des Presses universitaires du Midi (Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès)

"Northwestern Ontario is a little-known region that has been central to Canada's prosperity. For many Canadians, the majestic landscape north of Lake Superior conjures up images of tourism, bears, and canoes. For others, it conjures up the phrase "hewers of wood and drawers of water." For almost everyone but its inhabitants, it represents a mythical notion of Canada that never truly existed in the past and certainly does not exist today.

In North of Superior, Michel Beaulieu and Chris Southcott explore the region's colourful history from the period before European contact through to the present. Along the way, they tell the stories of the native peoples who first lived there; the traders and adventurers who shaped the region through the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company; the politicians and workers who pushed through the CPR; the lumberjacks and miners who profited during the region's golden age; and the vibrant and diverse communities who make their home there today.

Northwestern Ontario has always symbolized wealth and adventure for Canadians. This fascinating popular history will interest anyone who wants to know more about a region that occupies an iconic place in Canada's past."

'Business Archives and Voluntary Action', Voluntary Action History Society Blog, August 2011.


In last month’s VAHS blog ‘Voluntary sector archives: A hidden casualty of the cuts?’ Georgina Brewis pointed to the threat posed to charity records by financial cuts and more practical considerations of space. While the full impact of the financial and practical difficulties affecting charity archives is yet to be felt, it appears that many records of historical interest available (at least in theory) to earlier researchers of voluntary action may not be at the disposal of future scholars.

At a time when ‘Big Society’ is at the heart of the government’s political rhetoric and stimulates new work amongst historians exploring previous incarnations of voluntary action, an issue discussed by George Campbell Gosling’s blog, researchers will require an ever more resourceful approach when carrying out research. This blog highlights the potential usefulness of locally available business archives to the researchers of voluntary action.


In my own experience, I have found Teesside Archives’ British Steel Collection a fertile resource for exploring the role Middlesbrough’s iron and steel manufacturers played in the wider community through philanthropy. The wide-ranging character of voluntary action, responses to poverty and cyclical trade depression, the role of philanthropic elite networks and the mechanisms involved in decisions to support voluntary movements can all be better understood through scrutiny of the minute books, log books, annual reports and even photographic collections of the various firms.

At a most basic level, the minute books and annual reports provide data on the causes supported by the companies and the amount of money or type of support given to various enterprises. Bodies supported ranged from churches, hospitals, schools and sports clubs to civilising institutions such as the Cleveland Literary and Philosophical Society, Constantine College and Middlesbrough Boys’ Club. The archives reveal examples of partnership between the municipal authority and voluntary associations as seen in support of the town’s Guild of Help and Juvenile Organisations Committee. Moreover, the variety of action taken in response to temporary issues can also be gauged, with war-time donations and subscriptions having included donations to the Zeppelin Raid Compensation Fund in the mining districts and contributions to ‘the fund being raised in London for the relief of the Belgian wounded and sick’.


Company minute books also provide an insight into the mechanisms involved in deciding whether to support an appeal, an area inevitably not covered in the surviving minutes of the small local charities involved (of which many of the records are incomplete or lost in their entirety). Minute books detail how individuals or groups made the decision to support a cause, recording instances where it was considered ‘unnecessary to make a grant’ and even providing examples of directors and chairman debating whether to support a voluntary venture organised by their own wives and daughters, as occurred in the case of Sir Hugh Bell and Lady Florence Bell.

Today, as increased emphasis is placed on voluntary financial support of those institutions and organisations serving the community, business records also serve as a warning against an over-reliance on such practices. Just as economic decline has threatened charitable contributions by corporations in recent years, the impact of strife on charitable support by firms in the inter-war manufacturing town can be found amidst the various steel companies’ accounts and directors meeting records. For instance, steel manufacturer Bolckow Vaughan’s decline in the mid 1920s coupled with distress in the locality, which had seen the firm’s £1000 allocated for ‘religious and charitable institutions’ having ‘almost been exhausted’, led to the directors agreeing only to ‘pay the more urgent of the annual donations’. Similarly, the post-crash depression influenced rival firm Dorman Long’s outlook on giving. As the main financial contributors to the Juvenile Organisations Committee and Boys’ Club, the firm wrote to both bodies informing them that ‘subscriptions at their present level must not be counted upon if more general support was not forthcoming’.

Business records have much to offer the researcher of voluntary action in both establishing the extent and nature of community support in previous decades and in providing an insight into the networks and mechanisms at play where ‘charity’ is concerned. Of course such records merely represent a snapshot of philanthropic engagement and are likely to have only limited relevance to those interested in voluntary action beyond the immediate locale. Thus it is vital that both business and charity archives are not sacrificed as a result of the cuts currently faced across public, private and voluntary sectors and instead can be used to complement one another by future generations of historians.


Business records have much to offer the researcher of voluntary action in both establishing the extent and nature of community support in previous decades and in providing an insight into the networks and mechanisms at play where ‘charity’ is concerned. Of course such records merely represent a snapshot of philanthropic engagement and are likely to have only limited relevance to those interested in voluntary action beyond the immediate locale. Thus it is vital that both business and charity archives are not sacrificed as a result of the cuts currently faced across public, private and voluntary sectors and instead can be used to complement one another by future generations of historians.