Industrial Age
(c.1800 to 1945)
Industrialisation brought hosiery and boot and shoe factories, quarrying and coalmining, along with canals, railways, the motor car and public utilities. Significant social change accompanied it; a large expansion of the urban population, struggles for worker rights and emancipation, and the introduction of universal basic education. Two World Wars closed the period.
Sunday 1 December 2024
The March Phillipps de Lisle Family and Leicestershire over 340 years
LAHS Vice-President, Squire Gerard de Lisle, reflects on his family’s long association with the county.
Sunday 24 November 2024
A Walk Through Leicester. Susanna Watts (1768 – 1842)
Guest blogger, John Parker, retraces the footsteps of Susanna Watts. Abolitionist, author, translator, and artist.
Sunday 10 November 2024
Animal Magnetism - A Mesmerising Debate
LAHS Newsletter & Reviews Editor, Cynthia Brown, explores the unsettling practice of mesmerism in early Victorian Leicester.
Sunday 29 September 2024
A Wife’s Dilemma: Debt and The Married Women’s Property Act
LAHS Member Dave Fogg Postles presents a case study from Victorian Loughborough exploring an aspect of the impact of this Act.
Sunday 16 June 2024
‘Almost an Englishman’ – a French refugee and his family in Leicester
LAHS Newsletter Editor, Cynthia Brown presents the life of Charles Camille Caillard, a French nobleman who made his home in 19th Century Leicester
Sunday 12 May 2024
At the Going Down of the Sun
LAHS Member Denis Kenyon shares his experiences as co-founder of the Leicester City, County & Rutland At Risk War Memorials Project.
Sunday 14 April 2024
The persistence of patronage and the composition of the Anglican Clergy in the Archdeaconry of Leicester, c.1850-1903
LAHS Member Dave Fogg Postles considers the continuing influence of patronage, reviewing both who owned the rights to put forward clergy for appointment to vicarages and providing examples demonstrating what this meant in practice as to who might then be appointed.
Sunday 7 April 2024
Snakes with glass eyes and other distractions…
LAHS Newsletter and Reviews Editor, Cynthia Brown illustrates the power of sometimes allowing yourself to be driven by simple curiosity and a more random approach when considering local history research.
Sunday 25 February 2024
Luddism and Chartism and the part played by Leicestershire Women
LAHS member Steve Marquis looks at the often overlooked role played by Leicestershire women in these important 19th Century political working class movements.
Sunday 18 February 2024
A Polish homeopath in Leicester
LAHS Newsletter and Reviews Editor, Cynthia Brown tells the intriguing story of Severin Wielobycki, a 19th century Polish homeopath who lived and worked in Leicester during the 1860s.
Sunday 17 December 2023
George Hort ‘Leicester’s Forgotten Working-class Hero’ 1783 – 1858
Steve Marquis, LAHS member and author of a recent new book on the Framework Knitters of Leicestershire, discusses here the life of an early 19th Century prominent leader of the Leicester Framework Knitters Union.