David Turner

Thanks to her cow, she was able to support herself”

were themselves property, it is significant that she was the legal owner of anything at all. Her relative independence as a woman is also significant. Not only was she free, as in not enslaved, but she seems to have been free from service or any family obligation.

Her ordinary existence is what makes her a fascinating story. Kaufmann writes:
“Cattelena was not a wealthy woman, yet neither was she a pauper. Her goods were valuable enough in total to be listed and reckoned by the authorities. At a time when Africans elsewhere in the world

3 earthen dishes, 2 dozen of trenchers, 1 table cloth, all her wearing apparel, 1 coffer & 2 little boxes”

Kaufmann lists her items: “The inventory of May 1625 listed Cattelena’s possessions as: 1 cow, 1 bed, 1 bolster, 1 pillow, 1 pair of blankets, 1 sheet, 1 quilt 4 little pots, 1 pewter candlestick, 1 tin bottle, 12 spoons…

3) Cattelena of Almondsbury

The story of Cattelena comes entirely from a single inventory of goods made after her death in 1625, revealing her existence as a free, independent single woman in rural Gloucestershire.

politicians, merchants, men in town to pursue a case at the law courts, as well as the apprentices and servants who found the money from God-knows-where. She had bedded them all. There, she was ready.’

They would give a gold coin for the chance to touch her. Not that she got to keep it all. Mrs Bankes took her share, but it was from her house that Anne did her most profitable business. Westminster offered richer pickings than Clerkenwell or Southwark. Crowded with courtiers…

Some more storytelling by Kaufmann: ‘Anne slathered the unguent over her arms, her shoulders, her breasts, her belly, her legs and her back. It was her daily ritual. Her soft skin was what the punters remembered, what they were willing to pay above the odds for.

2) Anne Cobbie

Anne worked as a prostitute in London and was highly sought after because of her skin. Kaufmann notes that men “had rather give her a piece to lie with her than another 5 shillings because of her soft skin…Cobbie was worth almost 5x more than other woman”

That was why he was here, why the King had hired his master: to salvage the expensive weapons. The Venetian could not dive this deep himself and so he’d found Jacques, and the other divers in his team, and brought them to this cold island to perform a miracle for the English King

including King Henry himself, had watched, helpless, as the ship went down. The Mary Rose; that was what they called her. And now that splendid ship lay lifeless before him in the water. Her side was studded with guns of iron and bronze, the latter marked with the royal crest.

caused her to sink, but they well recalled the spectacle of her quick, cruel disappearance beneath the waves. The screams of the drowning men were loud enough to reach the shore. Their skeletons would be waiting for him among the sunken timbers. Hundreds of onlookers…

precious oxygen into his blood, and dived beneath the waves. As he reached the depths, he began to make out the shape of the wreck through the murky water. He had heard the tale of how this proud warship had met her doom. The men of the town didn’t agree on exactly what had…

Wonderful bit of storytelling here from Kaufmann: “Jacques plunged into the sea, and the cold engulfed him. It was so different to the warm waters where he’d learnt to swim and dive as a child. He took a series of deep breaths, allowing his lungs to inflate with air and take…

1) Jacques Francis

Francis was a diver from West Africa who was employed to salvage weaponry from the sunken Mary Rose ship. He was chosen because most Europeans couldn’t swim whereas West Africans swam from early childhood.

A collection of 3 interesting stories for History teachers from Black Tudors by Miranda Kaufmann. A thread. #History

The important thing was to explore the narrative first which we did using quotes from Max Hasting’s book The Korean War

It also allowed us to play around with different counterfactuals. Rather than just saying “what if X didn’t happen?”, questions could be more structured and meaningful e.g. “if the USA were constantly at 8-9/10 on the scale of alertness, would war have been more or less likely?”

Inspired by @apf102.bsky.social article on causation I’ve enjoyed using living graphs to show A Level students the causes of the Korean War. It allowed pupils to be able to visualise the decision by the US to exclude Korea from the Defensive Perimeter and reactions from Stalin and Kim Il Sung.

Brilliant! I’d love to see how this worked in practice as I’m planning my enquiry on Germany, USA, and Britain in the 1930s soon!

Mayor Ludwig Fink
A committed Nazi, Fink also protected several Jewish residents during the war, including Emil Schnell and the half-Jewish opera singer Stolzenberg. Fink warned Schnell of his impending deportation to the Thereseienstdadt ghetto. Schnell committed suicide.

The Silver Bell
Father Rupp and the churchwardens thwarted an order to requisition the main church bells for scrap metal by adding silver coins to the bell, ensuring it passed the material testing facility’s inspection and was declared exempt

The Foil Smugglers
To raise funds for Julius Lowin’s escape to America, Hetty Laman and Elisabeth Dabelstein stole sheets of platinum foil (used for porcelain teeth) from his dental kiln, folding them to look like bookmarks, and selling them to a goldsmith in the Netherlands

'Euthanasia'
Theodor Weissenberger, a musical, blind 19 year old grandson of a former mayor, was murdered by the Nazis as part of the Action T-4 programme as he was deemed to be living a ‘life unworthy of life’. His parents received a letter stating he had died of meningitis.

and that I would have to stop being an altar boy. Rupp comforted me and I promised him that even as a Hitler Youth leader, I would remain a good Christian”

“After several sleepless nights I went to the priest to explain my predicament. He told me that only I could decide. He could not do it for me. When I visited him again a few days later, I tearfully explained that I did not want to give up the Hitler Youth red and white badge...

Choosing between God and Hitler
Franz Noichl, a keen altar boy and Hitler Youth member, was tearfully forced to choose between God and Hitler by his youth leader. Franz recalled:

Bullying and Suicide over Race
Sybille von Arminsted recalled that anti-semitism was present at her school noting that she tormented two Jewish sisters. More tragically, a half-Jewish girl, Liselotte Puhlishneider, committed suicide when the truth of her ancestry was revealed.

Flouting the Uniform Ban
After a prominent SA man died, his Nazi supporters flouted a government ban on wearing uniforms by marching through the village bared to the waist, shouting Nazi slogans, and waving swastikas under the disapproving eyes of the villagers.