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English schoolchildren are taught that Sir Richard Arkwright ‘invented the water-frame and was the father of the Industrial Revolution and the factory system.’ That is simply not true. The water-powered spinning frame and the ‘modern factory system’ were pioneered in Italy over 300 years before Richard Arkwright was born. This book tells the story of how the Industrial Revolution in textile manufacture really began. Not in England with Richard Arkwright and the English cotton industry, but in Italy, with Italian Renaissance engineers and the Italian silk industry. Proof lies in the achievements of medieval Italian engineering, English archives and English legal case records. Italy wa...
This dramatic social history follows the struggle for women’s rights in England from the Industrial Revolution to the Suffragist victory after WWI. The 100 years from 1819-1919 saw remarkable change for women in England. From the early nineteenth century, when women were not even considered ‘persons' under the law, they achieved full legal rights and status. The doors of education and employment were thrown open to them, and by 1919, they won universal suffrage. As workers organized in the North-West to demand better conditions in the textile industries, women formed their own groups to support the cause—and fight for their own rights. Blowback came in August of 1819, in the form of the Peterloo Massacre. The brutality of that day brought attention to the women’s cause and encouraged them to continue the fight. Women became involved in reform groups, Chartism, trade unions, politics, education, career opportunities and the right to vote. Though they faced hostility from both men and women, their perseverance paid off for generations of women to come.
Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Bolton takes the reader on a sinister journey through centuries of local crime, meeting villains of all sorts along the way. There is no shortage of harrowing incidents of evil to recount from the town's early industrial beginnings to its murderous heyday in the nineteenth century. Glynis Cooper's fascinating research has uncovered grisly events and sad or unsavoury individuals whose conduct throws a harsh light on the history of a city that was once known as the Geneva of the North. These extraordinary stories, rediscovered in the Bolton Evening News, in council archives and in police and court records, shed light on a bloody past that Bolton would prefer to forget.
Contains chapters that investigate the darker side of humanity in cases of murder, deceit and pure malice. From crimes of passion to opportunistic killings and coldly premeditated acts of murder, this work recounts the spectrum of criminality, bringing to life the sinister history of Guernsey from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century.
Few could believe that within twenty years of the war to end all wars being won the world was once again at war. Veterans of the Great War feared going through the same thing again and, even worse, many knew that this time their children would also be involved in the fighting. What had all the sacrifice been about? Cambridgeshire, the city of Cambridge and the University of Cambridge were badly hit by the Great War with many lives lost, families ripped apart and a way of life that had changed forever. Building and economic recovery had been hindered by the Great Depression. The county was not ready to face another war nor for the problems of warfare in the air. Yet somehow the county, the ci...
In a companion volume to her best-selling 'Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Guernsey', Glynis Cooper turns her attention to the dark side of the past in Jersey. And there is no shortage of shocking stories to tell - crimes of passion and despair, cases of murder, deceit and pure malice, opportunistic killings and coldly premeditated acts of wickedness.
A new book on Ashton-under-Lyne during World War I is being published as part of a series on Towns and Cities in the Great War to commemorate the centenary of the beginning of the War. It focuses on the economic and social conditions, problems and hardships of those left at home in England played out against a background of military action on the Western Front, in Turkey, Egypt and Palestine. Ashton was both a garrison town and a mill town. There were three Battalions based locally and over 1500 local men lost their lives. Sir Max Aitken, later Lord Beaverbrook, was Liberal Unionist MP for Ashton. In the summer of 1917 five tons of TNT exploded at an Ashton munitions factory destroying mills and houses, setting gasometers on fire and hurling acid drums into the river. Fifty people died and five hundred were injured. The book chronicles the difficulties, hardships, restrictions and morale of the town year by year as the War dragged on; the constant fear of Zeppelin raids; and the determined spirit of the folk of Ashton that the Kaiser would not beat them.
A new book on Glossop during World War I focuses on the economic and social conditions, problems and hardships of those left at home in England played out against a background of military action on the Western Front, in Turkey, Egypt and Palestine. It chronicles the difficulties, hardships and restrictions of daily life for civilians; the morale of the town year by year as the War dragged on; the growing lists of casualties and the stoical determination of the townsfolk to contribute as much as they could towards the defeat of the Kaiser. Part mill town, part farming community, Glossop's real strength turned out to be its rural parochialism. When the call came to 'dig for victory' the townsfolk did so with enthusiasm and the women proved themselves just as capable as the men. 1914 and 1915 saw some optimism but this changed after the Battle of the Somme in 1916, which destroyed the glorification of war. 1917 was a bad depressive year but despair finally mellowed in 1918. 1919 saw the impact of the influenza epidemic, the erection of War memorials, and, to Glossop's horror, the award of a tank in recognition of the town's War efforts.