Published in 1901, Florence George’s ‘King Edward’s Cookery Book’ had a clear objective: to provide a “concise and methodical manual… as useful to those who have £200 per year at their disposal as to those who have a £1000.”

As we mark the centenary of the Russian revolutions of 1917 it is an opportune moment to remember two women who were in Russia throughout this momentous year. Florence Barrow and Annie R. Wells both travelled from Birmingham to Russia as part of a Quaker team to undertake relief work with refugees fleeing from conflict.

Exciting elopement from Moseley village! Youthful passion; parental horror! Well, the headlines to the event described here might have read something like that. This story comes from the James Watt papers, held in Archives and Collections, Library of Birmingham. Heathfield House, home of the Watt family (Library of Birmingham, WK/H5/0335) The following extract from a…

The image used in ‘The First Report of the Female Society for Birmingham, West-Bromwich, Wednesbury, Walsall, and their respective neighbourhoods’ shows a black woman.

On Sunday 2nd October 1859 fifteen girls and young women were interred in one vault in the church of St Mary Whittall Street in the heart of Birmingham’s Gun Quarter. One more was buried there the following day and two other females and one male were buried in other city centre churchyards. They were the…

In the rich soil of the cemetery at Key Hill in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter a far richer soil is concealed. Where else (other than in a large biographical dictionary) might you find a Colonial Secretary, a millionaire pen manufacturer, a maker of custard, a female explorer, an anti-Catholic agitator, and the godfather of municipal government…

On Monday 16th March 1914, the Birmingham Daily Post reported an incident that had occurred in Birmingham that weekend: MILITANTS BUSY NIGHT SACRILEGE AT BIRMINGHAM CATHEDRAL. INTERIOR DISFIGURED WITH WHITE PAINT.