šš£ Announcing the IHR Research Training Courses for October - December 2025. Visit the IHR website to register and find detailed information on each course: www.history.ac.uk/study-traini...
Death and crime historian, family researcher, teller of tales. Open Uni PhD candidate writing about inquests in the 19thC
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šš£ Announcing the IHR Research Training Courses for October - December 2025. Visit the IHR website to register and find detailed information on each course: www.history.ac.uk/study-traini...
I don't really talk much about suicide, but yesterday's talk included a man who decided to have a nap in the snow when drunk and had his eyes pecked out by crows
I tend to do an outline of inquest practice and then fill it in with local stories because people LOVE to hear about the horrors of their neighbourhood
You better come to the next one
They've rebooked me for next year! Woop!
I might be doing another London one next yearā¦
They loved it. I really enjoyed it. I used to be absolutely petrified of public speaking and although I still get nervy, it is so much nicer now I am not shaking like a leaf all the way through
I have Doc Martens. I will never countenance another boot
I have seen it, and I am trying to figure out how to combine it with my existing Wordpress hosted site and getting nowhere.
Iāll be putting that one on my substack in a couple of weeks (Yes I know itās full of nazis. Yes I am trying to figure out alternate hosting)
I hope these ladies are ready for a tale of disembowelment
I have not been enormously fruitful in finding death here. I am speaking at Werrington in November if you fancy it though
It remains a mystery to me how they ever managed to get a bloody railway line at Manea. The sea wants Manea back
Off to talk to the ladies of Folksworth about some incredibly grim death, woop
I live near Manea (Mainee), Stonea (stoney) and just to be confusing, Cardea (card-ee-a)
And my mobile can be very unreliable when it feels like it. WHY WOULD IT RING? WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT?
Only my gran and ex MIL phone us on it, but I like to have it JUST IN CASE
The last woman alive with a house phone
I've had two scam calls today ON THE HOUSE PHONE Don't make me GET UP, scammers, that's not on
They've changed it a lot recently. Level 3 is equivalent to three A-levels on completion, so one course fills your UCAS requirements.
I had to mentally reframe it as "chesterly street"
And itās his first day of college! He has gone straight into a level 3 course.
Yes I have been combing East's books of case law and I have found Lord Ellenborough GOING OFF on coroners and it WAS worth it
I am at the "spending an hour finding a bit of obscure case law and then going HA!" bit of editing
Just read an account of Thomas Wakley turning up two and a half hours late to an inquest and then demanding the jury get pissed. Scenes.
It's in the Wilfrid Wood series.
Algernon has a certain je ne sais quoi though
Early Twentieth Century Gourmand Name Of the Week Algernon Bastard
Two man-eating tigers, smuggled from Hamerton
I am grateful to have had her for so long
Oh Jess. The animals. Two by two. In your lounge. In your bathtub. In your fridge.
All Vergettes are, unsurprisingly, related!
The moet remains in the box
(The chair never fucking turned up to board meetings so the clerk was the one with the power)
Iāve got a photo of coroner Vergette. He was clerk to the Board, not chair (one of the Fitzwilliams was chair). He has no living descendants but the Vergettes were major landowners in Glinton, Peakirk and Marholm Thereās a nice watercolour of the Vergettes shop around somewhere
Oh I know about the Vergettes; his son was the coroner!
Highly recommend a granny as a hype man
I went to see my granny. She waited until I was out of the room, turned to my husband and said āYou have a very clever wifeā
There is a man in no way fit to take over
Yes and we knew exactly when the queen was actually dead because everyone on the news put on a black tie in anticipation. Not sure what the tell is for a US president
Nobody has seen him for days (including no pushback on all the stuff the French have been saying about him), his diary is empty and JD Vance says he is ready to take over if necessary
My husband is so happy, he has spoken of cracking open the Moƫt I got for my birthday
Just remember to eat in the brief periods of lucidity. While glorying in the beauty!
I unmuted āTrumpā and it was worth it
Congratulations! Do not get dressed for two weeks!
There have been advent calendars in Morrisons since Monday
Itās just so weird to NOT have a daily local bus service
For the number 5 bus... which goes nowhere near us. We can either get the 2 (which drops off at All Saints, so close but needs a walk up to Paston to catch) or the 1 (drops off at Dogsthorpe Road, two busy roads to cross)
Not as big as you might think
I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset. In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia. In 2005 I started medical transition. (1/13)
Not from here: Stagecoach
It's even more baffling when you realise the campus is also home to half the university and a secondary school. They argue there are bus routes *nearby* and there are... but that's not the same as there being a designated bus and bus stop
FIVE THOUSAND KIDS, PLUS A UNIVERSITY CAMPUS AND TWO HIGH SCHOOLS ON THAT ROAD ROB
At least there IS a bus stop at the hospital
Why is there no bus stop at the college? Answers on a postcard
In other news, I'm speaking to Folksworth Ladies Circle at the Folksworth village hall on Tuesday evening about inquests in the hundred of Norman Cross. Are you a lady? Are you a local lady? Then join us! It's Ā£2 on the door.
The Giving-A-Talk Process Agree to give talk long into future Forget about it for up to a year Panic Write the talk Write the slides Try and practice the talk (for timing/pacing) while being interrupted by a child who must tell you everything about...the history of the Teletubbies Panic Give talk
My 10yo still hasnāt had pox, probably because he spent most of foundation and year 1 in lockdown, so maybe they will extend it waaaay up?
Thetford is suffolk: that whole county line is split between Norwich and Ipswich. I BELIEVE that Peterborough is one of the biggest postal codes
It was empty, as you might expect, but it was so small, so fragile against a bloody great car ferry. "Small boat" is such a misleading term for an inflatable. Keep donating to the RNLI.
When I was coming back from France a couple of weeks ago, we noticed a French coastguard boat cutting a line close to the ferry. When we moved to the other side of the ship, we found out why: a deflated dinghy in the ferry lanes.
Oh just a nob on here upsetting all the medievalists and then high-tailing it when he realised they are much cleverer than him
Yeah Peterborough postcodes go out to West Norfolk inc Swaffham, Lynn and Hunstanton and then switch to Norwich (NR)
Debate me, debate me Waaaaah not like that
He has now posted the mother of all crybaby rants to his Facebook about how mean and woke everyone is on Blueskyā¦
You should see the rant he put on facebook about thisā¦
The overnight weirdos are coming, mute hard, mute now
Oh god, youāve done terrible numbers
People who live near Boston in Lincolnshire do not use this as a flex
This man, bless him, had visited London (obvs), Birmingham (yep), Solihull (errr) and Inverness ("il pleuvait!")
One of my colleagues @stephemmabrown.bsky.social worked on this, but that's not the only reason I'm sharing it. I adore a good map! And historical inquests are fascinating.
I haven't been to this one yet: do they still have the massive slide from the walls to the moat?
HA!
I had to explain where I lived to a man in France... I said I lived near Cambridge. Told no lies.
Oh I see today's history main character is a man I went to school with and I tell you: he was a twat then and he's a twat now.
Well coz I am a governor, I know all the school staff better than usual so I went in for a meeting about my son's EHCP and ended up having a massive CHINWAG
I've just been telling my school-work-friends all my many tasks for the next term and having a breakdown about it.
Yeah I can see the (odd) logic there
One of the reasons I got into history was my mum's stories of her own mother's utter TERROR of the workhouse. My great grandmother had her first kid in a Public Assistance Institution, her mother had her first kid in the workhouse and so on and so forth back about five gens.
But they have DONE the many hard sums so we do not have to
This one is going STRAIGHT in the lit review
"THOSE ANOMALIES"
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It was at Le Clusaz!
I don't think there's a really good all-in-one English Tour history, but this comes close without actually being a Tour history. It's translated from Dutch, the author is a sociologist and he tells much of the history of the race, but explains how competing interests shaped the race's myths.
This one covers a particular era, the 80s, and the end of Hinault's reign and the rise of English-speaking riders. It's very well written by the late Richard Moore, he interviewed people who were there and let them tell large parts of the story. It's kind of the universal in the particular.
This one takes you back to the start of the race and takes as its way in stories not from the front of the race but from the rear, the last man home. You get some of the bigger history of the Tour and you get to see the race change over time.
This one looks perfect! Thank you so much for taking the time to recommend!
Yeah
It reeks of class privilege and casual racism, but which is such a weird stance when writing about a RACE THAT IS EMBLEMATIC OF ANOTHER COUNTRY (also, he slates French beer)
I cannot promise much cycling: itās mostly Victorian death and crime!
Speed is good ONLY WHEN CONSUMED BY OUR BRAVE BOYS
I shall read yours next, hopefully you dont wax lyrical about the use of amphetamines by Bomber Command apropos of nothing
Not yours (I will dmā¦)
The MIGRAINES i get! I am sure they are a mix of hormones and autism
I have the dyscalculia/hyperlexia blend and there was not a hope in hell of getting diagnosed before I was in my 30s when my kids were getting dxād. But now I spot it with 100% accuracy, like an unnecessary superpower
I am reading a very Partridge-esque history of the Tour de France (with which I am newly obsessed) and am reading the worst bits to my husband so we can choke on how bad the writing isā¦
The person most likely to accurately identify autism is the primary school bully. The second most likely person is also autistic.
Find a neurotypical academic challenge
Big fleeces, sunburn and booze