Tanya Evans

Secondary Analysis of Dennis Marsden Mothers Alone

A secondary analysis has been made of 116 interviews with unmarried mothers carried out by Dennis Marsden in the mid-1960s. These are now held at ESDS Qualidata, University of Essex. They are being used in a wider study of unmarried motherhood in Britain since 1918. There are significant differences in research practices then and now: the interviewer did not obtain the interviewees consent to use the interviews in his research; the interviews were not recorded and transcribed verbatim, but reconstructed from notes and memory after the interview; the reconstructed interviews contain personal comments by the interviewer about the interviewees which would not now be acceptable; the interviewer was much less aware of the importance of class and gender dynamics in an interview situation than would now be the case. Hence the interviews are revealing about the history of social research as well as about the history of unmarried motherhood. These methodological changes mean that, like all sources. The interviews have to read be critically and with caution. Nonetheless they are revealing about the experience of unmarried motherhood in the mid-twentieth century.

The other woman and her child: extra-marital affairs and illegitimacy in twentieth-century Britain.

This article investigates the numbers of ‘other women’ and their children up until the 1960s in Britain. It analyses ‘irregular and illicit unions’ in the records of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child (now One Parent Families/Gingerbread), and explores evidence on these unions in the debates over the passage of the Divorce Acts of 1923 and 1937 as well as the Legitimacy Acts of 1926 and 1959. It suggests that the prevalence of illicit unions throughout the twentieth century and before allows us to question contemporary concerns about our supposed ‘divorcing society’ and the decline of family life in modern Britain.

Women, marriage and the family

Introduction. Women and the Enlightenment in Britain c.1690-1800. Women and Education. Women, Marriage and the Family. Sexuality and the Body. Women and Religion. Women and Work. Women and Poverty. Women and Crime. Women, Consumption and Taste. Women and Politics. British Women and Empire

Who Do You Think You Are? Historical Television Consultancy

This article examines my work as a historical consultant on the television programme Who Do You Think You Are? It reveals my motivations for undertaking consultancy work, some of the ways in which social history is presented in the programme and the impact it can have on its audience. In response to the lack of scholarship on audience response to television history programmes it explores both the production and consumption of Who Do You Think You Are? and reveals the reactions of one group of Australian family historians to this phenomenally successful international series.

The use of memory and material culture in the history of the family in colonial Australia

Abstract This article explores the use of memory and material culture in the history of families who travelled between Britain and Australia and settled in the early colonies from 1788 until 1901. It draws on diaries, memoirs, letters, and objects belonging to a variety of cultural institutions including the Museum of Childhood in Perth, Museum Victoria, the Powerhouse Museum, and the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, as well as those within private collections, to explore some of the meanings of objects brought by families from Britain to Australia. Certain objects connected their owners with past lives back in Britain, reminded them of home, family ties and duty and were transferred to new owners to remind the next generation of their journeys round the world. It argues that a focus on material culture enriches our understanding of the economic, social and cultural history of the family in late eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain and Australia and allows us to appreciate the labour of mothers in creating family histories.

Stopping the Poor Getting Poorer: The Establishment and Professionalisation of Poverty NGOs, 1945–95

After the Second World War it was widely believed that the welfare state had eradicated poverty. Within this context, voluntary organisations that represented the needs of the poor did not fare well in terms of funding or government influence. This situation was to change however in response to a number of high profile social surveys written and published in the 1960s. These built on Titmuss’ arguments and challenged the orthodoxy that the Attlee government had abolished want in Britain.2 In the process poverty was re-defined and people were stunned to discover that certain groups within British society, particularly the elderly and large families, had fallen through the gaps in the welfare state and become poorer.3 The account of the establishment and professionalisation of poverty NGOs from 1945 to 1995 that follows is based predominately on my research of the archives and oral histories with members of the staff of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child (NCUMC) which became One Parent Families (OPF) in 1973.4

Working towards the ‘welfare of the world’: Britishimperial networks of philanthropy in the nineteenth century

Abstract This article examines philanthropic networks created and sustained by Florence and Rosamund Hill, Caroline Emily Clark, Henry Parkes, Mary Carpenter, Arthur Renwick, the Windeyer family, and others as they travelled across the British Empire, moving between England, Australia, and elsewhere, gathering research data and sharing their ideas and resources through formal organisations like the Social Science Association as well as through their informal networks. In line with recent scholarship produced by Shurlee Swain and Elizabeth Harvey, it suggests that welfare reform and philanthropists in the Antipodes have been neglected in accounts of imperial philanthropy on policy formation in different national contexts. Charity workers were not bound by national borders as they implemented reforms and they made claims to political and social power through their transnational philanthropic work. This article has been peer reviewed.

Family history, identity, and public history : writing a history of The Benevolent Society in its 200th year

Abstract Since 2011, the authors have worked together on outputs associated with the bicentenary of The Benevolent Society of New South Wales, Australias oldest charity, established in 1813. This article focuses on one of those outputs—a project making use of family histories of clients of The Benevolent Societys Asylum, in the second half of the nineteenth century, to reveal the histories of these families in colonial New South Wales. The project also involves an exploration of the many different ways in which contemporary Australians are active agents in the creation of historical knowledge when practicing family history.

Introduction to this special issue on biography and life-writing

This special issue developed from papers presented by invited speakers at a symposium, ‘Faces in the Street: Biography and Life-Writing’, organised by Tanya Evans for History Week at the State Libr...

Family History and Transnational Historical Consciousness

Many western nations seem to be living a paradox of historical consciousness, as John Tosh describes it: “a society which is immersed in the past yet detached from its history”. While historical interest is booming at a community level, there’s a powerful public anxiety that “ordinary people” don’t know enough about the past, that their national futures are being jeopardized by a grave historical ignorance that begins in school and extends into their lives as citizens. Drawing on recent research projects by the authors, the authors read this international paradox—of perceived historical disinterest amidst booming intimate histories—and explore what might be termed a transnational “vernacular moment”. In doing so, they ponder what historical approaches (national, transnational, comparative) can be used to understand this phenomenon.