The Bother
Piecing together a woman's short life
This week’s noticeboard is FULL! You may have seen that I am now a visiting fellow at the Open University. Fourteen years as a student, and I’m FINALLY staff.
On Tuesday, I spent rather a long time writing up a workhouse scandal in Peterborough in 1909. You can read it here… and marvel at the parallels with modern healthcare enquiries.
My beloved, talented Claire Richardson is doing an online talk about the prisoners of Norman Cross POW camp on 16th June. You can find tickets and more information here.
And in Substacky news, the wonderful Stephanie Brown, has joined substack as CRIME THROUGH TIME. And Hallie Rubenhold has been here a while, but is now thinking of writing too. Go follow them!
Hallie’s work is particularly pertinent this week. I’ve written about “dead dress” murder victims before. Women who are utterly deprived of personhood by the press after death, women who become nothing more than wounds, a dead dress covered in blood. In this case, they couldn’t even get her name or age right.
I started this substack to give victims back their identity. Clara Jane Sims needs it more than most.
If you can’t afford to subscribe, get in touch. If you don’t want to give Substack money, an abbreviated version of this story is available on my bluesky profile.
