Sarah Wise
@misssarahwise
Historian, researcher, author, tutor, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society misssarahwise.co.uk Latest book: The Undesirables
From the same page, here's the Booth team on those funny little houses we couldn't see down that gated alley near me - Sun Cottages, 'five queer little double-fronted 1-storey cottages'
Ah the Phoenix. From the Booth Notebooks, 13 Dec 1898: ‘a drunken row between man and wife going on outside public house at corner with Harrow St; large crowd; violent and filthy language’
THIS TUES (11 AUG), 1PM On my 2-hour walk ‘The Black Death & the Bodysnatchers: From St Paul's Cathedral to Charterhouse Priory’ we'll stop off at locations to ponder two dark periods of history - centuries apart but on the same spot. Meet in front of St Paul’s at 1. No need to book. £20 on the day
Sunlight through foliage on to gravestones. Just now at Highgate Cemetery
TUES 21 JULY, 7.30PM On my 2-hour evening walk ‘The Black Death and the Bodysnatchers: From St Paul's Cathedral to Charterhouse Priory’ we'll stop off at locations to consider two very dark periods of history. Meet in front of St Paul’s at 7.30pm. No need to book. £20 on the day
“Many and misty are people's notions of the East End and each is but the distorted shadow of a minor feature”: novelist Arthur Morrison, 1891. Explore the shadows with me on my 2-hour ‘East End in Fact & Fiction’ talk, Monday 10am, Mary Ward Centre, Stratford www.marywardcentre.ac.uk/course-detai...
This coming Sunday I’ll be talking about Charles Booth’s Poverty Maps (1889-1903) as part of Stanfords’ ‘Mapping Lost London’ mini-festival, at the Guinness Vaults, Mercer St, Covent Garden. 3pm, £12.50. (Should be cool) Tickets: londonmonthofthedead.com/tickets.html
And on Weds 22 July I’ll lead a guided walk (2 hours) ‘Streets of Horror, Streets of Hope’. The Victorian East End can be read as a cityscape of poverty and fear. But there is another Whitechapel – where people battled deprivation to create a better life. £18 www.marywardcentre.ac.uk/course-detai...
My 2-hour talk ‘Bodysnatching and Anatomy in London, c.1780-c.1845’ is at 1pm on Monday 20 July. £18, at the Mary Ward Centre, next to Stratford High St DLR station. Book here: www.marywardcentre.ac.uk/course-detai...
Murder at Mary Ward: at the end of July, the Mary Ward Centre, one of the places where I teach, is running two weeks of talks and walks about the dark side of history, presented by a variety of fab colleagues www.marywardcentre.ac.uk/courses/huma...
The Museum, currently housed opposite Beckton DLR station, has c.3,000 items, mostly from the Victorian/Edwardian era, inc greetings cards featuring Prince Albert’s final moments; coffin snuffboxes / matchboxes; miniature model of a 1900 hearse. Visits are by appointment. nationalfuneralmuseum.com
The object I found most moving in today’s visit to the National Funeral Museum is this, made by an East London woman in 1904 for her neighbour who'd given birth to stillborn twins. In a world that did not like to discuss such things openly, this gift was her way of memorialising the woman's loss
TUES 7 JULY, 2PM On my 2hr guided walk ‘The Black Death and the Bodysnatchers: From St Paul's Cathedral to Charterhouse Priory’ we'll consider two very dark periods, separated by hundreds of years but occupying the same sites. Meet in front of St Paul’s. No need to book, just turn up, £20 on the day
And here’s the plug: you can read more about it all in my book www.stanfords.co.uk/inconvenient...
Dr W went from hero to villain and back to hero with his initiatives to help people suffering from serious psychological illnesses, and to try to de-stigmatise mental health problems. His two private asylums were Brandenburg House (for females) and Sussex House (for males)
I’ll be talking about Charles Booth’s Poverty Maps (1889-1903) on Sunday 12 July as part of Stanfords’ ‘Mapping Lost London’ mini-festival, at the Guinness Vaults, Mercer St, Covent Garden. 3pm, £12.50 (£30 for a day pass) www.designmynight.com/london/whats...
On Wednesday I'm giving my online talk for @citylit.bsky.social ‘The World of the London Bodysnatchers’, 7.30pm. We'll tour some of London’s lesser-known graveyards and meet the Resurrection Men, who made a profit from other people's tragedies To book: www.citylit.ac.uk/courses/the-...
I’m giving the first of my online @citylit.bsky.social London Lectures series (with Q&A) this coming Wednesday, 10 June, 7.30pm-9pm: ‘Policing the Late-Victorian/Edwardian West End and the “White Slave Trade” ’ £19 To book: www.citylit.ac.uk/courses/poli...
#OTD 1780 London’s worst-ever riot erupted – 300 killed by the militia by the end of the week. The Gordon Riots, initially against Catholic emancipation, developed into a general xenophobic melée, then attacks on any form of authority The Gordon Riots: A revolution in the making | London Museum
4) 2 December, 7.30pm. ‘ "A disgrace to the Christian world?": The Emigration of London’s Street Children to Canada, 1869-1904' Annie Macpherson's Spitalfields child rescue and resettlement work from the 1860s to 1900s drew admiration as well as bitter criticism. www.citylit.ac.uk/courses/lond...
3) On 4 November my talk will be ‘Strands of Radicalism in Denmark St, 1850-1880’ A tiny meeting house stood at the back of no 18 Denmark St until the end of the 19th century. Using this venue as a prism, I’ll map the currents of political thought in St Giles & Soho www.citylit.ac.uk/courses/lond...
More women than men in some parts of the metropolis. Source: Arthur Sherwell, 'Life in West London', 1897
I’m one of the speakers at the Society of Genealogists’ online mental health family history day, Mon 11 May, 1pm-9pm. I’ll be talking about people wrongly certified into asylums, c1830-1890. Open to non-SoG members. Full details: portal.sog.org.uk/Event/view/1...
I’ll be leading a guided 2-hour walk of Soho on Weds 20 May for @citylit.bluesky.social at 11am We'll explore the area as a site of radical politics, the policing of vice and the working lives of those who made the gorgeous clobber in the department store windows More info: tinyurl.com/5x4zaarw
My 6-wk course ‘Unreal City: the History of London Through Literature, c.1780 to Today’ starts Tue 22 April, 6.30pm @MaryWardCentre Stratford, E London We'll examine c.250 years of London through the eyes of authors from William Blake to Zadie Smith, Ainsworth to Zephaniah To book shorturl.at/72fIY