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Dr. Emily Rhodes

@erhodes.bsky.social

4.7K followers 1.2K following 54 posts

Recently completed PhD in Early Modern History at Christ's College, Cambridge Petitions, mothers, gender, family, community, crime and poverty in 17th and 18th century Britain

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Dr. Emily Rhodes @erhodes.bsky.social · Nov 12

Hello to all my new followers!

I am a recently submitted History PhD student at Cambridge who uses petitions to study early modern mothers, family, community, poverty, crime and war in the British Isles.

I also have two kitties, Evie and Mr Knightley, who are the only ones who get me any likes!

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Dr. Emily Rhodes @erhodes.bsky.social · Jul 27

Love finding a petition in the wild at the Oxford Castle and Prison

Dr. Emily Rhodes @erhodes.bsky.social · Jul 25

And overall, it has been a very eventful month!

Dr. Emily Rhodes @erhodes.bsky.social · Jul 25

First thing I did was come to change my name here…

Officially Dr Rhodes!

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Reposted by Dr. Emily Rhodes

Sophie Michell @sophiemhistory.bsky.social · Jun 29

The social historians of the 70s were a grimly cynical bunch

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Reposted by Dr. Emily Rhodes

Hector Diaz @iamhectordiaz.com · May 8

A Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope

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Women's History Network @womenshistnet.bsky.social · May 7

Exciting news! 🎉 The Women's History Network is now accepting submissions for the WHN Undergraduate Dissertation Prize 2024-2025. 🏆

Learn more about the submission guidelines and apply here: womenshistorynetwork.org/whn-undergra...

#WomensHistory #UndergraduateResearch #History #ResearchPrize

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Reposted by Dr. Emily Rhodes

Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · May 1

More excellent sneaking in of the #EarlyModern: @brodiewaddell.bsky.social mentioning @erhodes.bsky.social’s brilliant article on paid childcare and asking what the change over time is: more of degree than of kind? #QMCBS

Women as child carers: Arranging and compensating mothering in early modern Lancashire

This article uses a database of fifty petitions submitted to the Lancashire Quarter Session Courts between 1660 and 1720 to locate mothers who cared for non-kin children in early modern England. Wh...

www.tandfonline.com

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Dr. Emily Rhodes @erhodes.bsky.social · May 1

Thanks for the shout out!

Dr. Emily Rhodes @erhodes.bsky.social · May 1

I can do this for you: what is your email?

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Dr. Emily Rhodes @erhodes.bsky.social · Apr 30

Love this! I collect these!

Dr. Emily Rhodes @erhodes.bsky.social · Apr 29

Totally! I love that.

I also don't like having to emphasise the parents' relationship to the child when I am writing about their relationship with each other (when talking about child support disputes). We need an academically appropriate term!

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Dr. Emily Rhodes @erhodes.bsky.social · Apr 29

'The father of her illegitimate child' is just so wordy!

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Dr. Emily Rhodes @erhodes.bsky.social · Apr 29

Life would be much easier were it academically acceptable to use the phrase 'baby daddy' when writing about unmarried parents.

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Reposted by Dr. Emily Rhodes

Brodie Waddell @brodiewaddell.bsky.social · Apr 24

How did women carrying for non-kin children seek recompense for their 'mothering' labour in #EarlyModern England?

New #OpenAccess addition to the #PowerOfPetitioning annotated bibliography from @erhodes.bsky.social:
petitioning.history.ac.uk/2019/05/13/p...

Screenshot of article: Rhodes, Emily. ‘Women as child carers: Arranging and compensating mothering in early modern Lancashire’, History of the Family, 30:1 (2005), pp. 108-124.

Abstract: This article uses a database of fifty petitions submitted to the Lancashire Quarter Session Courts between 1660 and 1720 to locate mothers who cared for non-kin children in early modern England. While boarding children with non-kin was a practice not unknown to historians, the identities and experiences of the women who provided the childcare have hitherto been largely absent from previous scholarships. These petitions were brought by women who were not receiving the appropriate or arranged financial compensation for their caring responsibilities. Through their descriptions of disorder in their arrangements, we can uncover not only the attributes of the carers and their lived experiences but also more broadly what early modern English society expected from them. In addition, these petitions allow for a deeper understanding of how the practice of boarding children operated within and without the confines of the poor laws. Given the importance of child-rearing and the belief that it was a female task, this mothering gave common women authority that would otherwise be less accessible to them. This article thus argues that women understood the wider significance of this labour and used the influence it offered them to their advantage in their petitions. More broadly, then, this article provides a re-examination of the relationship between women, the poor law and authority in early modern England.

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Dr. Emily Rhodes @erhodes.bsky.social · Apr 24

Thanks so much for posting this, Brodie! Just to point out it says published in 2005 on the annotated bibliography. I wish I had been in the field for that long!

Reposted by Dr. Emily Rhodes

Brodie Waddell @brodiewaddell.bsky.social · Mar 24

How did the narrative of a cordwainer's wife about her disabled son, 'which she wrote her own self', fit into the religious politics of #EarlyModern England?

*NEW* #OpenAccess article by Laura Seymour, the first publication from #WrittenWorlds our project! 🗃️

Read it here: doi.org/10.1080/0268...

Screenshot of the title and abstract for: 'A cordwainer’s wife in high politics: a microhistory of Mrs Caute'

Abstract: This article introduces a hitherto unstudied pair of seventeenth-century texts, by the cordwainer’s wife Sarah Caute, which exercised political influence at the highest levels. Caute relates how in 1683–4, whilst in London, she experienced a sudden desire for herself and her six-year-old son Mathew to be baptised by Thomas Ken (1637–1711), who was then the prebend of Winchester (he would soon, in January 1685, be consecrated Bishop of Bath and Wells). Since he was a year old, Caute narrates, Mathew did not speak or walk and suffered ‘violent fitt[s]’ which ‘took him of his leges and his teeth fell out of his head at the roots…till they were all out’. Caute’s story reached the ears of Charles II and James II; thereby, she participated personally and in absentia in elite negotiations of confessional identity. Caute’s texts challenge the notion that non-elite women’s writing is scarce and of limited political interest.

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Dr. Emily Rhodes @erhodes.bsky.social · Mar 17

This weekend I had the pleasure of seeing A Tryal of Witches at the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds. What a great performance that really understood how witchcraft allegations could spread and grow

Reposted by Dr. Emily Rhodes

Dr Emma Marshall @earlymodernemma.bsky.social · Feb 24

📢 My article on parents' letters to/about ill children is out in an exciting special issue, 'Mothers and Fathers in Medieval and Early Modern Europe', ed. @erhodes.bsky.social & Alice Whitehead. It's full of fantastic contributions to the history of parenting! 👇
www.tandfonline.com/toc/rhof20/3...

The History of the Family

Mothers and Fathers in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Volume 30, Issue 1 of The History of the Family

www.tandfonline.com

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