Gnawing Pains,Festering Ulcers and Nightmare Suffering: Selling Leprosy as a Humanitarian Cause in the British Empire,c. 1890–1960

When British attention was drawn to the issue of leprosy in the empire, humanitarian organisations arose to take on responsibility for the ‘fight against leprosy’. In an effort to fund raise for a distant cause at a time when hundreds of charities competed for the financial support of British citizens, fundraisers developed propaganda to set leprosy apart from all other humanitarian causes. They drew on leprosy's relationship with Christianity, its debilitating symptoms and the supposed vulnerability of leprosy sufferers in order to mobilise Britain's sense of humanitarian, Christian and patriotic duty. This article traces the emergence of leprosy as a popular imperial humanitarian cause in modern Britain and analyses the narratives of religion, suffering and disease that the charities created and employed in order to fuel their growth and sell leprosy as a British humanitarian cause.     

Monarchy and constructing identity in ‘British’ Gibraltar,c.1800 to the present

British Gibraltar began as a fortress, and royal coronations, jubilees and visits were initially celebrated in Gibraltar primarily by the British military and the colonial government. However, a substantial civilian population developed, to service the garrison and engage in trade. Sections of this civil community, not British-by-birth, increasingly demonstrated their loyalty to the crown on such royal occasions, in order to raise their status internally, protect their interests and increase their political influence inside Gibraltar. Spanish participation in royal events in Gibraltar, especially by members of the military and political elites from across the frontier, were also once commonplace and in Gibraltar uncontested. However, the relationship with Spain deteriorated, especially from the 1950s. Gibraltar's civil community then used expressions of loyalty to the British crown on royal occasions to assert its Britishness and to emphasise the duty of the British government to resist Spanish claims.     

Change and the Corporeal in Seventeenth‐ and Eighteenth‐Century Gender History: Or,Can Cultural History Be Rigorous?

This essay is a methodological evaluation of the procedures and presuppositions informing the social and cultural history of gender, as exemplified in recent scholarship about the transformations of sex and gender in Britain from the early modern period through the long eighteenth century. It suggests answers to two questions: how can we write the cultural history of gender while maintaining both rigour in the enterprise and an awareness of its limits? And where might we go when these limits suddenly appear to undermine the very foundational presuppositions on which the whole cultural‐historical project is built?     

Studies in the Politics of Environmenta Protection: The Historical Roots of the British Clean Air Act, 1956: I. The Awakening of Public Opinion over Industrial Smoke, 1843–1853

Abstract

This is the first of three articles about the campaign to abate smoke in the cities of England. It began early in the 19th centnry and culminated in the Clean Air Act, 1956. Between 1844 and 1850 no fewer than six Bills were introduced into parliament to compel furnaces to ‘consume their own smoke’. All failed to pass into law although enough was known about the science and technology of combustion to justify legislation for furnace used to raise steam-power. In 1853 Palmerston succeeded in putting on the statute book the first really elfective clean air act for the metropolis of London. It did not cover dwelling houses; the campaign to bring the e under the law—to be described in the second essay—had to await improvements in the design of domestic grates. It was during the decade 1843–1853 that the public conscience was awakened to the need for laws to protect the environment against pollution.