WPA’s ‘slave narratives’

As a part of the Second New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the establishment of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which employed some five million Americans between 1934 and 1943. The Federal Writers’ Project was established in 1935 as part of this to provide employment for teachers, writers, librarians and other unemployed white-collar workers. … Read more

Celebrity and endorsements

Betham’s sporting prowess meant that she attained something akin to celebrity status. Not only was she fêted in the press but she also had a dance dedicated in her honour. There was even a faint echo of the modern sporting celebrity’s endorsement of sports goods and other commodities, when Betham wrote approvingly in the Archer’s … Read more

Background

Cecilia Maria Eleanor Betham was born in January 1843 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, the second child and only daughter of Molyneux Cecil John Betham and his wife Elizabeth, the only daughter of Sir Richard Ford, chief magistrate at Bow Street, London. In 1846 the Betham family was recorded as residing at 123 Park Street, Grosvenor … Read more

Waterford, Henry II and Thomas à Becket

Waterford estuary was the arrival and departure point on many significant occasions in Irish history. It was here at Crooke, near Passage East, on St Bartholomew’s Eve, 23 August 1170, that Richard FitzGilbert de Clare, better known to us as Strongbow, arrived to initiate the Norman invasion. Later that same year something happened in the … Read more