A few links of historical interest
‘Naked and starving’: letters tell how English paupers fought for rights 200 years ago: [P]reviously unpublished letters of penniless and disabled paupers living in the early 19th century reveal the sophisticated and powerful rhetoric they used to secure regular welfare payments from parish authorities, despite being barely able to read and write.
What's also interesting - I was wondering if there was a literate person or two about the locality who was like the letter-writers I saw outside the post offices in Pakistan - is that the authors of the book based on these letters 'think almost all of these letters were written by the people who signed them'.
I find that rather more interesting and subtle than this account of courtship in C19th Lyons: Working, flirting and sex: courtship in 18th-century France, where a) the fact that there were numerous paternity suits brought suggests to me the breakdown of community pressures to ensure that courtship sex resulted in marriage when pregnancy occurred and b) I recall much later studies from, admittedly other and rural parts of France that suggested courtship and marital sex were fairly rough and brutal well into C20th: which makes me think that author is a bit glossing over that aspect? I daresay it was not universal: but -
On historical accuracy in Regency drama: How accurate is ‘Bridgerton’s’ tale of sex and scandal in Regency England? We asked a number of historians of sexual attitudes and social mores of the period.
And a couple of more contemporary matters, which may, indeed, have some impact on history:
How the pandemic revolutionised abortion access in the UK: Since patients have been allowed to take pills at home to terminate pregnancies, major medical complications have dropped by two-thirds. A consultation is under way over whether to keep these changes in place. Abortion providers argue they have revolutionised abortion provision, expanding and improving access and also allowing patients greater control and dignity in the process. They say it has also resulted in more abortions taking place earlier in the pregnancy. The same changes were made in Scotland, which is now also holding a consultation on at-home abortions, and providers have also expanded the telemedicine abortion service to Northern Ireland so that patients don’t have to travel to England to access care. The data shows that, as soon as it was possible, many patients took the option of an at-home medical abortion, with a rise in non-surgical abortions in April, which providers say may have been the result of economic uncertainty in the early days of the pandemic.
Some men who have survived Covid-19 say that the virus may have impacted their ability to get or maintain an erection.
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