To mark the upcoming Heritage Open Day Week (6-15 September 2024), Library and Digital Assistant Becky Bavill brings us some fantastic detective work in our Central Library archives to (re)discover the site of a long-forgotten mansion in the centre of Leeds… Join us on Saturday September 7 in the Central Library’s Local and Family History…
Author: Leeds Libraries
Women’s history month stock display
During February and March we delved deep into the Central Library collections to curate a display highlighting the contributions of women to the fields of science, medicine, health and wellbeing. That display is now reproduced below. Most of the content was created by Library and Digital Assistant Heather Edwards and further information can be found…
Housing the city: Leeds City Council papers
This week on the Secret Library we are delighted to hear once again from Andy Armstrong, one of our heritage volunteers, on a significant piece of cataloguing work we’ve asked them to help us with. You can find more articles about housing in Leeds elsewhere on the blog… Hi. My name’s Andy Armstrong and I…
Poor Laws, Workhouses to ‘Food Bank Britain’: a brief overview of how poverty has been understood and addressed from Pre-Modern to contemporary Britain
This week we welcome University of Leeds student Emily O’Riley. Having completed a yearlong research project alongside the Thackray Museum of Medicine, who provided 360 biographies of Workhouse inmates based on 1881 census data, Emily reflects on the Victorian Workhouse and what it can tell us about British society. The first thing we learnt about…
Watergate: Even Richard Nixon has got soul
This week on the Secret Library Leeds Librarian Antony Ramm offers a break from our usual programming to mark a significant anniversary in modern American politics… “Our secret’s safe and still well kept |Where even Richard Nixon has got soul.” – Neil Young On this day, 50-years ago, President Richard Nixon of the United States…
190 Years Celebrating Emancipation
We welcome back researcher Danny Friar this week, to mark a very important anniversary: 190 years since the emancipation of enslaved people in the British Caribbean colonies. After reading Danny’s article, be sure to catch the Beyond the Bassline: 500 years of Black British Music exhibition currently on display at the Reginald Centre. On the…
Great War Territorial Volunteer – Frederick Luff
The third and final post in Library and Digital Assistant Becky Bavill’s series exploring the lives and careers of some Leeds soldiers during World War I. You can see all the articles in this series by clicking here, or read the original article that sparked this research here. Fred Luff is mentioned in the diary…
Under the Microscope: Part 3
Library and Digital Assistant Heather Edwards returns for the final part of her trilogy on LGBT+ pioneers in the medical field. You can see all three parts of this series elsewhere on the blog. Dr James Barry Now, Dr James Barry is a bit of a contentious figure to include here, as over the years…
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