This was a chance encounter really, a book that was mentioned briefly in a tutorial on a different topic. It is a 'trade' history book that gives an excellent, if deeply depressing, account of what can be pieced together of the lives of the five women who died in the autumn of 1888, murdered by 'Jack'. It filled out a lot of the A225 material around lifecycle poverty and about the position of women in society. There is a good summary of many of the points made in the book in this review in the Guardian.
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The Five
Friday 8 May 2026 at 14:43
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Edited by Steven Oliver, Tuesday 26 May 2026 at 16:31
Metropolis
Friday 10 April 2026 at 14:12
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Edited by Steven Oliver, Saturday 23 May 2026 at 15:30
A mid-March trip to London allowed me a Sunday at leisure in the Metropolis and gave me a chance to visit the London Museum Docklands. This is sited on West India Dock right in the centre of London's historic docklands. I'd been interested in this site since attending this year's OU Arts and Humanities Day School, and listening to Kate Donnington's talk on legacies of slavery.
There's an interesting video here that she made whilst working with the London Museum, one thing worth noting is that this was filmed before a key change to the memorialisation which Kate discusses.
The video was completed before 2020, at which point (the day after the Colston Statue was toppled) the statue of Robert Milligan that had been outside the Docklands Museum since 1997 was removed. There is a great blog about the Milligan statue, part of the 'Cast in Stone' project - which documents a range of statues commemorating empire in Britain and France.
On the day I visited the plinth outside the museum is all that remains, and the base is largely concealed behind wooden boarding.
Apparently 2027 should see work completed on the installation of a memorial to the victims of transatlantic slavery - named 'The Wake'.
Before entering the museum there's a chance to look back at the great successor to British exploitative trade .... global finance (just as much a legacy of empire and slavery!)
The museum is excellent with a range of galleries - including a powerful one on slavery and sugar. On the day I visited there was a tour focusing on women resisting and campaigning against slavery, including Elizabeth Heyrick, the organiser of the sugar boycott.
There were also galleries that covered the 1898 London Dock Strike - and some really interesting material on the 1980s and what will always feel like the 'Long Good Friday' period, when money started to flow into the decaying docklands.
The picture below shows the dedication memorial highlighting both George Hibbert and Robert Milligan as leaders of the West India Docks Company - this currently doesn't have any additional contextual information.
Whilst I was in London there was a chance to explore a bit of late Victorian urban technology, I took a ride on the Northern Line to Kennington Tube Station. The station is largely unaltered since it opened in 1890 as part of the first electric underground railway in the world. The original route was created by the City and South London railway and was the first to be tunnelled rather than digging a trench. It was originally going to be a cable-car, but this wasn't judged practical, so it was switched to an electric engine. The dome on the station building used to house a hydraulic lift.
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Malthusians....Assemble!
Friday 10 April 2026 at 13:59
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Edited by Steven Oliver, Thursday 7 May 2026 at 13:45
Exploring 19th and early 20th century concerns with population 'degeneration' was a fascinating aspect of unit 18 in A225. Whilst I don't have any great expertise, I've a little familiarity with the eugenics movement - but the 'Neo-Malthusians' and their 'Malthusian League' were a new group for me. So I was really interested to see that the Borthwick Archives held copies of their monthly journal...
The Malthusian - organ of the Malthusian League 😃
The fundamental concern of the Malthusian League was 'family planning'. It was initially founded during the "Knowlton trial" of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh in July 1877, when they were prosecuted by the state for publishing Charles Knowlton's 'The Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Young Married People'. This pamphlet, written by an American physician in the 1830s, explained various contemporary methods of birth control - and (radically) was aimed at a general readership.
The principles of the League are set out after the first editorial (by Charles Bradlaugh), they present over-population as the primary source of poverty and most social woes, and promote the 'prudential' or 'birth-restricting' Malthusian checks as the only sensible route out of contemporary problems.
I only skimmed the first volume, but the recurrent themes in the contents were: discussions of Malthus and his written works; essays counselling against 'celibacy' as this actually led to 'vice' but to marry early but keep 'control' of family size; social and possibly legislative incentives for small families. There was minimal discussion of any of the practicalities of contraception, but I did come across the following account of a visit by representatives of the League to the International Medical Congress of 1879 held in Amsterdam.
The excerpt above is the closest I came to a discussion of methods of family planning - the physiological 'facts' linked to French physician Adam Raciborski was a variant on the 'rhythm method' trying to identify a 'safe period' for intercourse, other approaches discussed were 'withdrawal', presumably mechanical methods were sheaths.
I was also interested in the following account of a very different, socialist, perspective on poverty. It looks like it got very short shrift at the conference!
The final A225-related excerpt I picked out was on 'The Female Franchise' an important 'Current Topic'. The League were broadly supportive, specifically as they believed this would be an indirect route to 'limited procreation'.
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