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Childhood Hospital Separation: ‘I Want My Mummy’
For decades, many British hospitals kept sick children apart from their parents. This article looks at childhood hospital separation, James Robertson’s films, the Platt Report, and what family historians can recover from the silences in hospital records.
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Forgotten Children Bovine TB: Hidden History Wins Award
There is a particular satisfaction in receiving recognition for work that is not really about you. ‘Yet’ recovers the story of the forgotten children of bovine tuberculosis. Hundreds of thousands of British children were hospitalised for months, sometimes years, in the era before effective treatment existed. When I learned the book had been awarded Runner-up…
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‘Improperly Married’: Coverture and the Victorian Women the Law Forgot’
Victorian England had no language for women like Mary Allott. Under the doctrine of coverture, Victorian marriage laws treated a wife as her husband’s property, with no separate legal existence of her own. Improperly married Victorian women lived inside that law, yet their particular situation had no name and no remedy. Not quite wives. Not…
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The Recipe Book That Sustained a Life: Mary Allott’s Victorian Story of Abandonment, Scandal, and Survival
In 1860, a young woman with a newborn opened a blank notebook with an A-Z index and began to write. Mary Allott, née Hopkinson, was about twenty-four years old, a mother of two. A few days before she gave birth, her husband Charles had sailed for New Zealand, leaving their two-year-old son with his mother…
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Separation and Strength
In July 1937, young Harry Drabble was hospitalised for tuberculosis, facing isolation and trauma. His experience epitomizes the emotional struggles of many children in 20th-century Britain separated from families during long treatments. Despite these challenges, Harry developed resilience, ultimately shaping his life positively and highlighting the importance of understanding and acknowledging such hidden histories.
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Celebrating Local and Community History Month, UK: Giving Voice to the Past
The inspiring story of the Drabble family of Sheffield, a working-class family whose experiences between the 1930s and 1950s illuminate the extraordinary resilience of ordinary lives.
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Forgotten history: A child’s experience of bovine tuberculosis
In 1937, two-and-a-half-year-old Harry Drabble was separated from his mother after being diagnosed with bovine tuberculosis, enduring traumatic hospital treatment for over two years. This isolation and neglect affected him emotionally and socially, mirroring the experiences of thousands of children during this dark period in British history.
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How Depression, Addiction & Trauma Echo Across Generations: Blending Family History, Psychology, and Science
Discover how depression, addiction, and trauma can echo through generations. By blending family history, psychology, and scientific insights like epigenetics, we reveal how ancestral struggles have shaped us—and how understanding our psychological inheritance empowers us to break unhealthy cycles and create a brighter legacy for future generations.
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You can leave a legacy: Sharing Your History When You Have No Direct Descendants
As a family historian, I know the deep sense of purpose that comes from uncovering the stories of our ancestors , but what happens when we have no direct descendants to pass our family history on to, or those we do have are not interested? This is a challenge faced by many, but there are…
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The possible psychological dangers of exploring our family history & how we can mitigate them
Researching our family history can be a life-changing, affirming experience and has the potential to improve our mental health, but it can also come with potential psychological risks. I am grateful to Emeritus psychology professor Susan M Moore research and her excellent articles Family History Research and Distressing Emotions and Ethical Dilemmas and Family History:…
