Full article but not updated since 2012
These are notes on my methods of researching unidentified people in Godwin's diary, (which I guess could also be useful for all research on individuals from that era about whom information is scarce). The real art is in being familiar with all the different sources and cross-checking them until a picture starts to emerge.
…Introduction to a dataset: 70 Dictionary of National Biography articles with vital data added by Ed Pope
25 out of 65 ODNB articles where I have suggested changes have now (May 2018) been amended in line with my suggestions, though in many cases only some of my suggestions have been adopted. Most of these articles have credited my website in the sources (John Flaxman and Thomas Smith of Derby not). Many of my suggestions were very slight, but in several cases they involved substantial errors of fact (Charles Dibdin, Eliza Fenwick, Thomas Gaugain, Francis Jukes,…
Blackhall in St Giles, Oxford: now part of St John's College Kendrick Quad
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…CHAPTER FOUR 1709-1827
There are many gaps in the poor rate records, but the names of John Wellar in 1702 and Howell in 1711 appeared as tenants of the farm after John Matthew. Also next to Howell in 1711 appeared Dr Monroe, who may well have been living at Blackhall. James Monro was the son of a Scottish clergyman, went up to Balliol College in 1699 aged 18, and got his bachelor of Medicine degree in 1709 and his Doctorate in 1722. He was later the physician to Bethlem hospital and to Bridewell, and was known as a pioneer in the humane treatment of…
This article is incomplete. The wicked Colonel Luttrell's seduction of the noble Arabella Bolton and her tragic end, written as a political and moral tale probably by Cuthbert Shaw. How true are the facts?
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How girls' first names worked like surnames in the female line. This article is a family tree of Emmas 1600 to 1850.
The name Emma had a surge of popularity around 1800, which may have been partly because of the fame of Emma, Lady Hamilton, mistress of Horatio Nelson. But her given name was actually Amy, which may have been a variant of the same name, as there were Amey, Amie, Emy, Em, Emm, Emme, and Emmea all found in baptisms at Covent Garden 1660-1740. Even with these variants the name was almost extinct in London in the mid-…
This article is incomplete. A chronology of John King DNB c1753 - 1824. There's a dataset John King's Crowd, for his guests, confederates and enemies. This article isn't complete yet, but I'll try to assess the allegations contained in some accounts of his swindling activities published during his lifetime. The main sources I'm considering are 1) King of the Swindlers by Thomas Martyn, first published in ten numbers in 1798 (see True Briton 15.8.1798) and 2) Scourge, article in the first issue in 1811, and two letters published…
Completed article.
The spouses of John Raphael Smith DNB 1751-1812 and of his daughter Eliza Aders 1785-1857
1. When my great aunt died in 1985, on the back of some small crayon portraits that had long hung in her hall, a note by her great uncle was found, saying the artist was Mrs Aders. I began to research this artist, who at one time hosted a salon in London where writers Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb and Blake were among the guests and which introduced art works of the German and Flemish schools to London. After her husband…
Introduction to a dataset (formerly called Red Light District). I started out researching the names and addresses in Harris's Lists of Covent Garden Ladies and found that the addresses were concentrated in certain streets in Soho and even more in the areas to the north of Soho around the Middlesex Hospital. These were prostitutes of a middle range, neither common street walkers nor the mistresses of lords, though some may have gone up and/or down that scale. But I found myself extending the research to all the inhabitants of the areas where these sex workers lived, where…
Introduction to a dataset. Only surnames A to F so far.
Mostly because of the William Blake connection there has been a fair amount of research published recently on the Swedenborgians. I have been reading Robert Rix, William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity (2007) but have not yet seen (except some Google sample pages) Martha Keith Schuchard's Emanuel Swedenborg Secret Agent in Heaven & Earth (2011) which is still listed on the Bodleian catalogue under "Bodleian Acquisitions Services". It's about 600 pages long and costs about £150, it appears to…
Complete article.
On Monday 25th January 1796 Joseph Farington dined at the home of his fellow artist John Hoppner with the sculptor Joseph Wilton, and the artist Francis Wheatley and his wife. Among other bits of gossip Farington learned that "Mrs Revely has committed indiscretions with a Mr Jennings, an attorney. Mrs Jennings has proclaimed it. Revely has called on Banks for advice. Mrs Revely is still in his house but they do not speak".
In his book 'The Godwins and the Shelleys' pages 154-6 William St.Clair tried to glimpse, through William Godwin's…
Introduction to a dataset.
At the Middlesex election of 1802 the radical Catholic lawyer Henry Clifford DNB 1768-1813 met a local tradesman, Albion Cooper, on Kew Bridge, and learned of a scheme in Isleworth to set up a flour mill by selling shares to local people and cutting out the millers' profits. Since this would be worth forty shillings a year to the subscribers Clifford decided that they would all be entitled to vote in the election as forty shilling freeholders. Some 300 shareholders of the Good Intent Mill, Isleworth, cast their votes in the last few voting…
Introduction to a dataset
The diaries of Henry Crabb Robinson (DNB 1775-1867) are at Dr Williams Library in Gordon Square, London. Typescript of diary 1811-1867 available with a visitor's ticket (apply there). I have used the abbreviation <HCR diary> in the A-Z entries. Extracts from the diary printed in Edith J Morley "Henry Crabb Robinson on books and their writers" for which I have used the abbreviation <Morley>. Manuscripts of earlier diary, of travel diaries, of correspondence, of "Reminiscences" and of…
Introduction and Acknowledgements
My thanks to Duncan Bowie and his book "Reform and Revolt in the City of Dreaming Spires: Radical, Socialist and Communist Politics in Oxford 1830-1980" where I first learned about Bill Hines; and to my brother Hugh Pope and my friends Rob Sykes, Bill McKeith, Liz Peretz and Joanna Innes for reading and commenting on drafts of this work.
Wherever I could I have researched the incidental characters in Hines' story and tried to give a condensed version of their careers.
The abbreviation DNB before a person's life dates…
Complete short article
My dad, who died when I was 19, back in 1967, had showed me the Pope family tree, mostly researched by his father. He let me pore freely over the 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, from which I copied out lists of Egyptian pharaohs. And he sent me to St Neots' School, Eversley, Hants, where at the age of 10 I came top in a school of 8 to 13 year old boys in a history test sat by the whole school. I've always liked history and it came naturally to me, but it has come and gone in different phases of my life.
Art, poetry,…
Complete article
The starry night we see is a portion of our living brains. Waves and particles of light and sound ripple out from every source, reflect off the surfaces they encounter and create the unpredictable future. Each one of us receives and transmits the thoughts emotions and sensations that flow in and through our bodies. Telepathy means no more than being open to sensing what's coming. The shaman, the priest, the astrologer, the prophet, the poet and the scientist have all tried to scry the distance and the future, connecting their community to its…
Incomplete notes. See also my website MappingThePast
i think the first Catweazle was on Tuesday 25th October 1994, in the snug at the Victoria in Walton St, i wasn't there, but my diary for Thursday 27th says "woken by Terry Walpole telling me of Catweazle club", and Matt Sage remembers he sang Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic" to begin the night. One other person who claimed to have been there was Jonathan Kent. On Thursday 3rd November I met Dave Wood who encouraged me to the Catweazle club. On Tuesday 15th November I went with Paul McFadyen "to Catweazle-very good…
Introduction to a dataset
I'm adding in a sort of autobiography to my website. The background artcles Astrology and Overview of My History Project are also relevant to this. I decided to make one entry in A-Z of Names and Addresses for each year of my life, so they will come under Pope, Edward Christopher 1992 (for example) in the My Life dataset. I also decided to pick years at random from a hat and write them up now and then. I happened to come up with year 1 first and decided to make a single entry for the first three years of my life. I then moved on to the…