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The early history of the parish of St George, to the east of Bristol, has been characterised as one of marginality and neglect and its inhabitants as 'a set of ungovernable people'. This paper examines conflict and conciliation in the parish over the hundred years following its formal establishment in 1751, drawing on correspondence during a period of unrest in 1795 to illustrate the complex social relations within the parish, and using census, property, and vestry records to develop a more rounded view of social relations in the parish than that offered by the broad analysis of previous historians. Detailed examination of the sources gives the impression that, far from being 'ungovernable', various groups of parishioners adopted a range of strategies for conflict and conciliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Victoria County History (VCH) was founded in 1899 but struggled to survive during the inter-war years. After 1945 it was revived in a number of counties, including Leicestershire, and this raised questions about its subject matter. This article argues that W. G. Hoskins' interests in the 1930s and 1940s were far distant from the VCH approach to local history, but that with the founding of the Department of English Local History at University College, Leicester, in 1948 he needed all the 'academic friends' he could find. The VCH had been taken over by the University of London in 1933, and work had resumed in Oxfordshire. These credentials were helpful to Hoskins, but he soon ran into difficulties with the VCH over the nature and content of traditional VCH parish histories. This led to a debate between 1950, when he drafted an entry for Great Stretton, Leicestershire, and 1952 when he left Leicester University College for a post at Oxford. The VCH moved its position on the subject matter of its parish histories in the 1950s and in doing so reflected Hoskins' argument for greater emphasis on the community of farmers, labourers and their farms in addition to its traditional strength in manorial and church history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how the dominant imagery of the (un)dress of the mad poor in England, from literary, medical and other sources, matches the real conditions of the poor insane as found in institutional and documentary sources between 1650-1850. Researchers examined documentary sources such as clothing procurement for the poor insane as chronicled in parochial records. The accuracy of existing cultural representations is assessed through a case study of the records of Bethlehem Hospital.