The Early Modern Commons

eighteenth-century social history

Recent Posts

Slander and ‘double sex’: an LGBT history month post

28 February 2018

N.B.: This post mentions clitoridectomy. I use the word ‘lesbian’ here as a catch-all category for desire and intimacy between women, rather than an identity label....

Telling stories in eighteenth-century slander cases

30 June 2017

A few themes kept coming up at the Litigating Women conference which I’ve just returned from. One of the discussions which I found most interesting was about narrativity and agency:...

Early modern borders

2 February 2017

A 1686 petition from the ‘inhabitants’ of Boothstown, a hamlet in the township of Worsley (now in the city of Salford), complained about an ‘idle loose fellow...

Law & esteem in mid-eighteenth century Newcastle

13 December 2016

On the 22nd of September 1750, the Reverend Edmund Tew gave a sermon as part of the Carlisle assizes (a regional court which tried the most serious cases referred by county sessions)....