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Sir Thomas Lipton

Sir Thomas Lipton

Sir Thomas Lipton, the very embodiment of the cliche, ‘Poor boy makes good’, was born in 1850 of working class Northern Irish parents in Glasgow. Lipton started work as n errand boy and became a millionaire through the vast chain of grocers shops that he had created and by 1908 he was one of the…

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Stale Bread Act 1801

This entry is part [part not set] of 15 in the series Reformers and Radicals

What did the act say? This was an Act imposed at a time of panicked desperation by a British Government trying to keep the lid on an explosive and fed up population. The bread shortage of the previous five years had not abated and so the Government, in its wisdom decided that the population would…

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Octavia Hill

Octavia Hill

Octavia Hill, social reformer and one of the founders of the National Trust. Octavia Hill was born in 1838 into a family of social reformers, her grandfather was Thomas Southwood Smith a public health reformer and her father was a friend of Jeremy Bentham so from an early age she was exposed to the need…

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Anne Boleyn’s Execution Speech

When in 1532 Anne Boleyn finally gave in and slept with King Henry VIII and then in 1533 secretly married him, she as good as sealed her own death warrant. She was the first English Queen to be executed and her execution speech is a paradox of the journey which brought her to the block.…

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The Chronicles of Edward Hall

The Chronicles of Edward Hall are not something that many with an interest in the Tudor period may be aware of but Edward Hall was an astute observer of the period. He was born about 1496 in London and was educated at Eton and at King’s College Cambridge He entered Grays Inn and became a…

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The Framework Knitters 1821

Almost ten years on from the 1812 ‘Declaration of the Framework knitters’, conditions for the framework knitters of the counties of Nottingham, Derby and Leicester has not seen any sign of improving. The pay for these workers, of whom there were estimated to be about 15,000 in these three counties, was insufficient to keep them…

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Chimney Sweeps Act 1834

The Chimney Sweeps Act 1834 was enacted in an attempt to protect the children employed by the ‘sweeping’ masters from cruel exploitation. The act forbade the apprenticing of any boy under the age of 10 years and the employment of children under 14 in chimney sweeping unless they were apprenticed or on trial. There seemed…

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The Vinegar Bible

The Vinegar Bible is widely accepted to be one of the best Bibles printed in the United Kingdom in the C18th but how did it get its name and what of John Baskett the man behind it?

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London Picture Map

Map of London

The London Picture Map is a new website hosted by the London Metropolitan Archives to provide a digital resource of 250,000 images of London. Search by location and see what you can find out about where you work or live.

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Tariff Reform League

Tariff reform league

The Tariff Reform League was the 1903 dream of Joseph Chamberlain, he rejected free trade, what can we learn from this in the build up to Brexit? Was he misguided in his political view or did he have a point of view worth re-examining in light of the upcoming trade negotiations?

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