Live talk at Sutton House in London, Friday March 8th 7pm 2024 for International Women’s Day: ‘A Quiet Roar — Untold stories of the Women of Sutton House’

*** Buy tickets here!!! ***

Ticket price includes lecture entry, pop-up exhibition, and wine reception.

This International Women’s Day, join us for an evening lecture with resident research fellow Dr Romany Reagan where she’ll share her discoveries of how the women of Sutton House fit into the nation’s history! Times: 6.30pm entry, Talk 7-8pm

History is most often recorded as a long list of men and their deeds, with only passing mention of their wives. However, within the history of Sutton House, we have the opportunity to uncover a different story. The house has been a residence for over 500 years; tallying up the records, we find that women held a controlling interest in the property for more than half of its history. This means that the main narrative of Sutton House is actually not the story of men and their wives — it’s the story of women and their goals.

Ursula Machell snuck in the backdoor of her own house to hold it against her husband’s creditors in 1598. Sarah Freedman founded a girls school in 1657, which she ran on her own for 43 years. Eliza Temple founded her girls school in 1837, and later stood up to be counted for women’s suffrage — 62 years before women would finally win the vote. Mehetabel Ball sold and developed the land around Sutton House in 1865 to create the footprint of Hackney that we know today, naming both Mehetabel Road and Isabella Road after her daughters. Poring through the archives and research notes currently held in the collection, it became clear that there have been many strong women who have called the oldest building in Hackney home, they just haven’t had their time in the spotlight. Until now.

Live talk at the Museum of the Home in London Sat 30th Sept: Herbal Remedies, Folk Medicine & Kitchen Physick: The Secrets of Mediaeval Women Healers

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Do you have mint tea in your cupboard? Grow rosemary in your garden? Or perhaps eat ginger when you have an upset stomach?

Then your home is a living museum, continuing the traditions that women have practised for hundreds of years for health and healing. This wisdom comes from the time when food was medicine, the kitchen was the apothecary, and healing was women’s domain.

Marking the close of the audio installation Women’s Weeds by Dr. Romany Reagan, you are invited to join us for a talk exploring the role of women in healing during the late mediaeval and early modern eras (15th to 17th centuries).

Herbal Remedies, Folk Medicine & Kitchen Physick: The Secrets of Mediaeval Women Healers will uncover how women shared healing practices in a sisterhood of secret knowledge that was handed down through generations.

This event marks the closure of Women’s Weeds. You can listen now to the audio installation in our gardens, or on Bloomberg Connects.

A Visit to St Pancras Churchyard & Giving a Dead (Bad) Man a Stern Talking To

Telling a dead man he’s a dick! 😃⚰️☠️ The 4th Earl Ferrers was a very bad man. 🔪 But unlike the fates of murderers who were poor, he was allowed a proper burial because he was an aristocrat. ⛪️ What’s up with that?!? 🧐 A couple hundred years later an American woman gives him a stern talking to. 🤨

@msromany

Telling a dead man he’s a dick! 😃⚰️☠️ The 4th Earl Ferrers was a very bad man. 🔪 But unlike the fates of murderers who were poor, he was allowed a proper burial because he was an aristocrat. ⛪️ What’s up with that?!? 🧐 A couple hundred years later an American woman gives him a stern talking to. 🤨 #stpancrasoldchurch #stpancraschurchyard #stpancras #executions #museumoflondon #executionsexhibition #london #cemetery #graveyard #londoncemetery #londongraveyard #historytok #muderer #truecrime #murderhistory #burial @Museum of London

♬ original sound – Dr Romany Reagan

Hidden history of women healers in the eradication of smallpox

When we think of the eradication of the smallpox disease today, we think of the groundbreaking vaccine developed by Dr Jenner — but where did the original knowledge of smallpox inoculation (the knowledge on which the eventual vaccine was based) come from? We actually owe our thanks to the ancient practices kept alive by women healers in Greece, Turkey, China, India, and Africa. Basically, everywhere in the world *except* Western Europe…

What does the English Civil War have to do with feminist medicine?

In this video, I explain how the chaos of the English Civil War led to relaxed print censorship, increased literacy, and a boom time for female-focused medical books — the origin of the printed family herbal book. 

Why is the stereotypical image we have of a witch always a woman?

In this short history, I pinpoint the exact year in mediaeval Europe when the idea of the inherent character of the Satanic witch as female began — and also explain how the blame for this misogynist bull really comes down to just a few travelling preachers. 

Hidden Histories of Jewish & Muslim Medical Women in Mediaeval Europe

In testimony at her trial in 1410, the surgeon Perretta Petone claimed that ‘many women’ like her were practising all over Paris. While she may have been exaggerating for rhetorical effect, Perretta was certainly right that she was not alone as a female in medical practice. From the famous Surgeon Hersende, who accompanies St Louis on Crusade in 1250 and who would later marry a Parisian apothecary, to various Jewish eye doctors in 15th-century Frankfurt, to phlebotomists at the French Dominican nunnery of Longchamp, to Muslim midwives at the royal court of Navarre—whether they were surgeons or optometrists, barbers or herbalists or simply ‘healers’ (metgessa, medica, miresse, or arztzatin), women were almost always among the range of practitioners who offered their services in the western European medical marketplace from the 12th through 15th centuries. (Green 2008 [b] 120)

A great diversity of women practised some form of medicine throughout Europe in the Middle Ages (500-1500). Medical historians have identified a wide variety of female practitioners—from various regions, faiths, and social classes—engaged in general healing as well as specialised branches of medicine, including surgery, barber-surgery, and apothecary. Moreover, these female practitioners had the freedom and legal right to practise their healing arts. These rights were not taken away in systematic broad measures until the 14th century.  

The open existence of officially sanctioned women healers came sputtering to a halt with the widespread establishment of European universities and the accompanying degrees and licences necessary to practise medicine. A licence to practise medicine as a physician could only be obtained after completing a university education—and women were banned from attending university so… that should have been that.

Spirit Photography in the Museum

Last October 2021, we gathered some friends, historians, a museum curator, and fellow spectrophiles to run an experiment at the Museum of the Home in London. We wanted to see if we could recreate spirit photographs using historically accurate Victorian methods.

This post contains three parts. First, a short history of spirit photography. Second, an interview with our photographer Selina Mayer. And finally, our Spirit Photography Album with the outcomes of the experiment.

***If you want to skip straight to our Spirit Photography Album first, scroll to the bottom of this post.***

‘Women’s Weeds’ Research Journal — VIDEO: Exploitation of 17th & 18th Century Folk Healers by the Professionalised Medical Community

A potted history of the exploitation of folk healers in Europe, as well as in conquered lands (the Americas, West Indies), in the 17th & 18th century by the professionalised medical community—with a special focus on how this impacted female folk healers.

Haunted Bloomsbury Audio Walk: Spiritualism & Ghost Stories in WC1

Happy 1st of September! You know what this means?? Officially only one month until !OCTOBER! London Month of the Dead have a fabulous calendar of spooky delights for you!

Check out my #spiritualism audio walk through #HauntedBloomsbury — it even comes with a glossy guidebook!

Click here for more info:

Haunted Bloomsbury Audio Walk: Spiritualism & Ghost Stories in WC1

HAUNTED BLOOMSBURY – Spiritualism and Ghost Stories in WC1
An Audio Guided Tour and Map Book with Dr Romany Reagan

ABOUT
Take a journey through darker Bloomsbury as your tour guide Dr Romany Reagan leads you through the occult pathways and hidden histories of this birthplace of British Spiritualism.

The Victorians were fascinated by a wide range of phenomena that might loosely be termed the ‘occult’. In their search for meaning in their mortality during an increasingly secularised age, interest in Spirituality and connections ‘beyond the veil’ touched almost every aspect of Victorian life, from scientific study to literature. Tracing Spiritualism’s lines of origin, we’re driven through these occult pathways into the heart of Bloomsbury. Join your tour guide, Dr Romany Reagan, for an evening stalk of gothic intrigues and Victorian ghosts.

WHAT YOU GET
– An A5 full colour map and guide book
– Each book comes with a download or streaming code so that you can take your tour at any time alone or with a friend