Harry Smith

New paper out now with Laura Newman and David Green on poor eyesight in the UK Post Office - a pretty common cause of retirement until the end of the nineteenth century - t.co/sm6kUga1tM

7 people stand in front of two banners showing info about the Leverhulme Trust project, The Material Culture of Wills: England 1540-1790. The people are smiling.

Couple of wills talks coming up: I'm presenting to the Devonshire Association, Tavistock & West Devon branch on Friday.

Then next Friday @bhamhistory.bsky.social & I are giving a talk at a joint Devon History Society & Devon Archaeological society workshop at Devon Heritage Centre.

🗃️

We're excited to share the final version of our paper, where we demonstrate how confounding remains a thorny problem for claims about causal genetic influences on human behavioral and socioeconomic outcomes. (w/ @jedidiahcarlson.com @oliviarxiv.bsky.social Ruth Shaw @arbelharpak.bsky.social) 🧵👇

YouTube video by Will Pollard Chris Hoban - Rings On My Fingers (one )

📜WILLS ON THE RADIO!📜

The brilliant Chris Hoban was on local radio talking about the wills project and playing some songs!

This one is perhaps my favourite: based on the will of London widow Alice Walter, proved September 1665. TNA PROB 11/317/428.

#EarlyModern 🗃️

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXwB...

Really pleased to announce the launch of the all-new, all-dancing, London Lives website - www.londonlives.org It has been thoroughly re-engineered to facilitate more types of search, and redesigned for phones and tablets. The team very much hopes peope like it. 1/

It's been a busy week for the project!

1. A huge milestone: we're delighted to share that our @zooniverse.bsky.social volunteers have now checked ALL images! 🎉

Thank you to everyone who has contributed.

We're going to pause Zooniverse for now while we evaluate if more training is required.

🧵1/4

A photograph of a rosary - a loop of string threaded with brown beads, some with symbols painted on them. Rosary of 30 unglazed earthenware beads of red and black clay, British Museum 2009,8038.1.a-b https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_2009-8038-1-a-b?selectedImageId=1310905001 © The Trustees of the British Museum

📢 NEW Will of the Month Post 📢

October's will is an unusual & poignant example of a married woman who made a will

Margery Gadyng died in childbirth in 1540 - she declared her will to the midwife & women attending her, leaving them bequests of ribbons & rosaries

sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

Looking forward to speaking at this with @bhamhistory.bsky.social next week - on all things to do with Digitization & Citizen Science 📜💻

@emeccwarwick.bsky.social @uoearchhist.bsky.social @zooniverse.bsky.social @transkribus.bsky.social

#history #citizenscience #skystorians #digitalhumanities

High rates of polygyny do not lock large proportions of men out of the marriage market | PNAS There is a widespread belief, in both the scholarly literature and the popular press, that polygyny prevents large numbers of men from marrying by ...

🚨 The Economist has been telling you for years that polygamy causes civil war by locking men out of marriage. A new article with @rebeccasear.bsky.social and @anthrolog.bsky.social explains that the demography of marriage markets doesn't actually work that way. 🧵

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

I built one from the Early English Books Online TCP data and ECCO, still quite a lot of noise in it but gives a very large number of variant spellings. Happy to share if helpful.

Autumn 2025 Newsletter for the @materialwills.bsky.social project coming soon - make sure you're signed up to our mailing list to receive a copy! 👇

@greenleejw.bsky.social has written a blog about the amazing maps he created for 'Deserted Wives'! With help from @bhamhistory.bsky.social, we recreated jurisdiction boundary lines & his final maps really underpin the book's thesis.
Deserted Wives has 30% off: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/deserted-...

A group of five photographs, the first two show Laura Sangha and Chris Hoban talking to a seated audience, Chris plays guitar and accordian. One shows two workshop attendees transfering designs onto squares of lino. Another shows two attendees working on their linocuts, the final photo shows a person applying ink to the surface of their linocut.

📢NEW POST!📢

This year I had the thrill of collaborating with Chris Hoban, a brilliant composer, arranger, songwriter & performer.

In this post I explain what we got up to👇

sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

#EarlyModern 🗃️ #CreativeHistories
@uniofexeterhass.bsky.social @uoearchhist.bsky.social

We post regularly over on our blog - this includes our 'Will of the Month' series, as well as other discussions of research and project updates 📜✍️📚

We've now been writing blog posts for 18 months: you can search and filter all of them to find what you're looking for 👇
#skystorians #history

A list of the tags used on the wills project blog: 16th century 17th century 18th century Women’s wills Men’s wills Full transcriptions Animals Books Burial Charity Clothing Creative Fellow Digital Humanities Financial devices Furniture Global goods Grandchildren Jewellery India Jewellery London Making wills Maritime Project methodology Rural Silverware Slavery Tableware Teaching Urban Volunteers Work tools

📢WILLS WEBSITE UPDATE📢

I've just added some new 'tags' to the index page of our blog, making it easier for you to find posts and full transcriptions about the wills we've featured

#EarlyModern 🗃️

sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

We include a full transcription as part of every 'Will of the Month' post! 📜✍️

We've now made 20 transcribed wills available, featuring the lives of a range of men and women who lived in early modern England (and further afield)👇

@leverhulme.ac.uk @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social
🧵2/2

The August 'Will of the Month' post is now live over on the @materialwills.bsky.social blog 📜

It explores the will of a Huguenot silk weaver who left money to the French church & bequeathed the tools 'belonging to a Weavers' Trade'

@uoearchhist.bsky.social #history #earlymodern #skystorians

1/2 🧵

Congrats Emily - exciting to have the hard copies!

What a spread!

In 1908, means-tested, non-contributory Old Age Pensions were introduced in Britain, payable from the age of 70. Here, incredibly, are photographs of two of the first citizens to claim them (plus a dog).

We've done it: 60 blogs over our 60th Anniversary Year!
Check out all 60 #Campop blogs here www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/, and keep your eyes peeled for occasional blogs to follow in the same space!
@camunicampop.bsky.social
@camunigeography.bsky.social
@camhistory.bsky.social

A greyscale eighteenth -century print of a servant woman being turned out of a house and on to the streets. The woman exits a door and down some steps in the centre of the painting, two other women stand in the doorway behind her, the streets are filled with destitute looking people. Thomas Gaugain: Diligence and Dissipation: The Wanton turn’d out of Doors for Misconduct (Plate 5) (1797) Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:20235

📢 New Will of the Month post 📢

How do we write about those who left little behind, both in terms of possessions, & evidence in the historical record? 📜

This month's post explores the life of a servant woman, Mary Carlton, who had few objects to bequeath other than her 'box' 🧵1/2

#skystorians

The @transkribus.bsky.social "Egerton: English Secretary Hand" model is now public! app.transkribus.org/models/publi.... We have a website with sample transcriptions for different hands, information about our training conventions, and more: sites.northwestern.edu/egerton/

If you'd like to see what we got up to, one of our postgraduates [ @kmbarton.bsky.social ] did an absolutely amazing job of live posting on this thread 👇

#EarlyModern 🗃️ #transcribaton #crowdsourcing #DigitalHums @leverhulme.ac.uk @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social sky.social @uoearchhist.bsky.social

Looks wonderful - thanks for the link.

Campop blog #59: Some say rises in lone motherhood since c.1950 indicate breakdown of the nuclear family & call for returns to Victorian values. But 19C levels of lone parenthood & reconstituted families were similar to today's ...
@camunicampop.bsky.social
www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2025/07...

This is happening this afternoon - we'll be posting throughout the session, including details of talks being given by members of the research team 📜✍️

You can follow along with the hashtag #transcribathon

If you're planning to drop in on our hybrid historic wills transcribathon tomorrow, here's the running order of talks from the research team 📜✍️

Find this and further info on the Eventbrite page at: willstranscribathon.eventbrite.com

#skystorians #history #tudors #earlymodern #citizenscience

Campop blog #58: Malthusian ideas about the effects of population pressure on resources and the environment are still widespread. But what did Malthus actually say? And was he right? Romola Davenport explains.
@camunicampop.bsky.social
www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2025/07...

Will Johnson and Barbara Tearle have also generously shared their research notes too, so you can browse a spreadsheet summarising Edward's bequests, a biography, tally of objects and glossary too.

sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

#EarlyModern 🗃️