Henry Sless
Images of Finance: Harcourt’s 1894 Budget

My aim is to introduce the audience to the power of cartoons as primary historical evidence. The event chosen is one of the most important budgets of the nineteenth century, presaging as it did a move towards the redistribution of wealth through the introduction of Death Duties.

Maggie Kilbey
Accommodating singers, organs and children in the early-nineteenth century English Parish Church

The early nineteenth century was a key transitional period for music-making in the English parish church. During the eighteenth century few churches had an organ at all, but by the late nineteenth century most had an organ of some kind, often installed out of a desire to replace
or supplement select groups of singers with choirs of charity children. This paper discusses the implications for church accommodation in Hertfordshire.

Adrienne McKenna
An exploration of the meanings invested by Victorian society in women’s bonnets

This talk draws together evidence from Victorian culture to probe the meanings attached to women’s bonnets. In particular the talk looks at how the bonnet may have played a role in the artistic representation of the Victorian ‘fallen woman’.