Friday few things
Goodness knows one gets some very weird people rather tangentially connected to the world of academe following one via academia.edu, but today there was somebody in W Africa, who appears to be based at a real institution, but also to be touting a SECRET OCCULT ORGANISATION FOR WEALTH AND POWER WITHOUT NO HUMAN KILLINGS. Hmmmm.
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In more srs academic circles, and more agreeably, today I came across via Twitter: Female pirate lovers whose story was ignored by male historians immortalised with statue - I did not honestly know that Read and Bonney were ignored by historians as I have known about them - and even the lovers thing was, I think, foregrounded in wymmynx comix of the 70s - for entirely yonks, but who knows. Perhaps these things go in phases. But, anyhoo, there is a BLOOPER in there about Queen V and lesbians and the law (it mushes together the 1885 Act and discussions that took place post WW1, i.e. after the big Cult of the Clitoris scandal), so I bopped off an email to the historian cited at their academic address and have had a very pleasing and civil response.
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Also in the world of memorials and commemoration: Blue plaque for anti-slavery campaigner Ottobah Cugoano: Cugoano wrote the book Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Humbly Submitted to the Inhabitants of Great Britain. It was one of the first black authored anti-slavery books to be published in Britain and is regarded as the most radical in its arguments. Cugoano took on the reasoning used by apologists for slavery, that Africans were complicit in the trade, by inviting readers to imagine slave raids on Britain by African pirates “assisted by some of your own insidious neighbours, for there may be some men even among you vile enough to do such a thing if they could get money by it.”
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A monument seldom seen: The Story of London’s Sewer System, with some glorious illustrations of Victorian temples of engineering: With his sewer network hidden deep beneath the city, Joseph Bazalgette’s enlightened public health legacy is largely unsung today. This small wall-mounted bust is Bazalgette’s only public memorial.
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Sad news: Grayshott Spa is closing as a result of pandemic and lockdowns. Sigh. I have not latterly been going as regularly as I used to, but I shall miss it.
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