May Update - The Cogs Are Turning Slowly

 May Update: The Cogs Are Turning Slowly 

Well hello friends, comrades, fellow historians/genealogists/random people who I force to read my blog.  I thought I'd do a quick update on the progress I have been making over the past few weeks. 

March Progress 

I'm afraid to say I still haven't started my political chapter, I do, however, have a plan to write it and hope to start it in the next couple of weeks.  I did start my regular blog posts and you can read about Lady Margaret Manfield and Elizabeth Arnold on this blog. I also wrote a blog post for History Bites on Catherine Lewis.  I'm hoping to get a few more blog posts written in the next few months including one about women's contributions to hospital fundraising and a book review for the Women's History Network. 

April 

April saw me being able to get to the archives a bit more as well as doing a short walk around Northampton to literally look for ladies.  I found a few foundations stones including one of Catherine Lewis at Park Avenue Methodist Church that I wasn't expecting. I've got some follow up work to do on this but it was good to actually start getting some evidence.  I have also been collating a database of records from the Northampton General Hospital archives of donors and subscribers to the General Hospital as well as the Margaret Spencer Convalescent Home in Dallington and the Hospital Week Committees. The archivists at the hospital archives are really helpful and even sent me some bits to look at this week whilst I was unable to come in. 

What's to come..... 

I have a few things coming up.  

Images of Research -
A Welcome Return

I entered the Images of Research Competition as part of the University's update day.... You can vote for
my entry (and everyone else's) here. My image was to celebrate a welcome return to the archives after two years of barely any access.  

I have also entered the Poster Competition.  You can see my entry here

Myself and my fellow PGR buddy, Kerry Love, are also organising a conference next year at the University.  I'll be able to give more details soon but in the mean time you can follow us on Twitter at @gpg1650_1950.  We'll be releasing a CFP soon and I will again keep you updated. 

I have also recently been to the Doddridge Centre in St James to photograph the foundation stones around the building.  Although only a few link to my research, the people named all have an interesting story and I plan to write some short biographies on those so keep an eye out for them. 

I also plan to spend the summer writing my first article. I have an idea of the topic and will give updates of how it's going. I'm  hoping this will also be a chapter of my thesis and will help chip at that word count!