On Wednesday 10 February 2010 Elspeth Graham will be giving a paper entitled "Horses falling, horses flying: a seventeenth-century royalist's management of death and defeat" to the
Psychoanalysis and History seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, London. The seminar takes place in the Low Countries room and starts at 5.30pm.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
First World War horse photos
These are some horse related photos from my collection of First World War photos. Click on the thumbnails to see bigger versions.
Soldier and girl on horses. I think the man is probably a British or South African officer but I haven't positively identified the uniform. This was taken in Windhoek in what is now Namibia, but was then German South West Africa. I assume it was taken some time after the South African invasion in 1915. The horses are a similar size and appear to have identical tack, so I'd guess that the girl has borrowed an army horse to pose for the photo. The message on the back reads: ""With fondest love from Jane".
Mounted British Army officer. The insignia on his cuffs are too blurred to be certain but he's probably a Lieutenant. Bought from the collection of Major Disney, who served in 1/5th Lincolnshire Regiment (the battalion that my great-grandad was in). I don't know when or where it was taken. There's also draught horse and cart in the background.
Soldier leading a very frisky horse! His uniform looks like First World War period, and the seller said it was from an album marked "Mytchett", which is in Surrey and surrounded by army camps. Apart from that I know nothing about it.
A group of Royal Field Artillery men, with a draught horse casually grazing in the background on the left. During the First World War the artillery mostly relied on horse drawn transport. Only the biggest, heaviest guns used steam or diesel tractors. The Army Remount Service bought horses from all over the world. In 1918 the British Army had over 1 million animals (of various species, but mostly horses) in service.
Soldier and girl on horses. I think the man is probably a British or South African officer but I haven't positively identified the uniform. This was taken in Windhoek in what is now Namibia, but was then German South West Africa. I assume it was taken some time after the South African invasion in 1915. The horses are a similar size and appear to have identical tack, so I'd guess that the girl has borrowed an army horse to pose for the photo. The message on the back reads: ""With fondest love from Jane".
Mounted British Army officer. The insignia on his cuffs are too blurred to be certain but he's probably a Lieutenant. Bought from the collection of Major Disney, who served in 1/5th Lincolnshire Regiment (the battalion that my great-grandad was in). I don't know when or where it was taken. There's also draught horse and cart in the background.
Soldier leading a very frisky horse! His uniform looks like First World War period, and the seller said it was from an album marked "Mytchett", which is in Surrey and surrounded by army camps. Apart from that I know nothing about it.
A group of Royal Field Artillery men, with a draught horse casually grazing in the background on the left. During the First World War the artillery mostly relied on horse drawn transport. Only the biggest, heaviest guns used steam or diesel tractors. The Army Remount Service bought horses from all over the world. In 1918 the British Army had over 1 million animals (of various species, but mostly horses) in service.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Spot the mistake
From Anthony R. J. S. Adolph, “Papists' horses and the Privy Council 1689-1720,” Recusant History 24 (1998) pp. 60-1:
But presumably if a stallion worth £150 had been gelded while in custody, the owner would have demanded more than just the return of the horse!
On 28 March 1696 the Council ordered that the 'Black Stone Horse fifteen hands high valued at one hundred and fifty pounds', seized in the stable of Col. John Cashe of Tottenham, was to be sent to the King's stables in the Mews but on 24 September 1696 an order was made that the Colonel's 'Gelding' - presumably the same horse - was to be restored.
But presumably if a stallion worth £150 had been gelded while in custody, the owner would have demanded more than just the return of the horse!
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Review of The Complete Soldier
Over at my blog I've posted a review of The Complete Soldier: Military Books and Military Culture in Early Stuart England, 1603-1645 by David R. Lawrence. The book includes a chapter on cavalry drill books and horsemanship manuals, so might be of interest to some people here.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Scold's bridles and the Skimmington Ride (from Bavardess)
In a recent posting on Bavardess, Amanda McVitty gives a succinct account of the scold's bridle and the skimmington ride, both practices that connect the early modern discourse of gender with horses. I'm fairly sure most readers of this blog are aware of this nauseating cultural practice, but Amanda's account is an excellent synopsis. I've been meaning to let this blog in on it. With her permission, I'm crossposting the entire entry here:
Begin crosspost... "
I’ve been doing some research this month for an encyclopedia entry I’m writing on the ritual of the ‘skimmington’ or ‘skimmington ride’ in early modern England. The skimmington was a form of community censure that in England was primarily aimed at women who transgressed gender norms by dominating or beating their husbands, a transgression that was generally assumed to go hand-in-hand with female sexual infidelity.
Accounts of skimmington rituals tend to be embedded in broader analyses of patriarchal authority and social order during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and so the material I’ve been looking for has often appeared alongside discussion of other gendered constructions of crime and punishment, such as the use of the cucking stool to punish women accused of ‘scolding’ and whoring. In a strong strand of continuity from the medieval period, such censure persistently conflated uncontrolled or unruly female speech with female sexual disorder, with both forms of specifically female ‘sinfulness’ perceived as threats to proper patriarchal authority and social hierarchy. (Lydia Boose, in the article ‘Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds: Taming the Woman’s Unruly Member’*, introduces an intriguing reading of the unruly female tongue – represented in the ‘scold’ – as an unauthorised appropriation of phallic authority which carries with it the implicit threat of male castration and a usurpation of man’s ‘natural right’ to rule.)
Anyway, I’d been reading through all this material with my usual sense of intellectual curiosity coupled with relative emotional detachment until I ran across a detailed account on the use of the ‘scold’s bridle’ or ‘brank’, a particularly nasty piece apparatus that emerges in records of the late sixteenth century as a tool of coercion to enforce women’s silence. The bridle was a metal contraption that covered or encircled the woman’s head and incorporated an iron bar or ‘gag’ to hold her tongue down, thus preventing speech. The association of the unruly woman with a horse that needs breaking is obvious, and no doubt part of the punishment was the shame of being reduced to the status of an animal.
A woman accused of scolding – basically, any form of unsanctioned female speech that was perceived as unruly or disruptive – had this vicious device forcibly shoved into her mouth and locked around her head. She was then subjected to the ritualised public humiliation of being led or dragged through the town, tied up in the public square and pelted with rubbish and excrement, urinated on, and otherwise mocked and degraded. In parts of England, there is also some evidence to indicate that a husband could have his wife bridled and tied up to a hook embedded beside the fireplace in their home.
Scold’s bridles took various forms, but their general design is such that at the least, they would inflict a measure of pain and discomfort. Some versions, which featured spikes or rasps on the gag part that is inserted into the woman’s mouth, would clearly inflict severe pain and damage. A 1653 account from Newcastle talks of a woman being led through the town with blood pouring from her mouth; other accounts allude to teeth being broken or wrenched out, and even of jawbones and cheekbones being cracked. A perilously high price to pay for the ‘sin’ of voicing an opinion.
I found these descriptions of the scold’s bridle and its use – numerous of which have been preserved by various nineteenth century antiquarians and folklorists** – deeply unsettling to my normal scholarly sang-froid. In fact, I found them downright chilling. I felt both nauseated and enraged at the extent of physical violation and psychological degradation women may be subjected to in order to enforce a suitably meek and silent feminine demeanour in the face of male authority. When women today express what is often trivialised or dismissed as ‘unreasonable’ or ‘irrational’ anger at attempts to silence them, I think it’s against history such as this that their anger should be read.
* Lynda E. Boose, ‘Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds: Taming the Woman's Unruly Member’, Shakespeare Quarterly 42, no. 2 (1991): 179-213.
** Boose includes descriptions from an 1858 account by one T. N. Brushfield of the Chester Archaeological society, and reproduces some of the drawings he made of devices he had turned up in places including women’s work houses and mental institutions. It adds another layer of horror to the history of these devices that by the eighteenth century, although they had largely fallen out of use for the public punishment of mouthy women, they appear to have found a new home amongst the tools of coercion and control behind the walls of state-run institutions wherein were incarcerated some of society’s most marginal and vulnerable members.
The images are from 1899’s Bygone Punishments by William Andrews , which draws on Brushfield’s earlier work.
ETA: After I posted this, I remembered a podcast I listened to recently featuring Martin Rediker talking about his book The Slave Ship: A Human History (great book, by the way. I thoroughly recommend it). While I’d previously understood on an intellectual level what he meant when he was talking about how personally draining doing this sort of history is, it wasn’t until I read the material on the scold’s bridles that I really understood at a visceral, emotional level what the cost of doing this type of ‘history from below’ – the history of the poor and despised, the marginal and the silenced – can potentially be."
-- end cross post Thanks, Amanda!
Begin crosspost... "
I’ve been doing some research this month for an encyclopedia entry I’m writing on the ritual of the ‘skimmington’ or ‘skimmington ride’ in early modern England. The skimmington was a form of community censure that in England was primarily aimed at women who transgressed gender norms by dominating or beating their husbands, a transgression that was generally assumed to go hand-in-hand with female sexual infidelity.Accounts of skimmington rituals tend to be embedded in broader analyses of patriarchal authority and social order during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and so the material I’ve been looking for has often appeared alongside discussion of other gendered constructions of crime and punishment, such as the use of the cucking stool to punish women accused of ‘scolding’ and whoring. In a strong strand of continuity from the medieval period, such censure persistently conflated uncontrolled or unruly female speech with female sexual disorder, with both forms of specifically female ‘sinfulness’ perceived as threats to proper patriarchal authority and social hierarchy. (Lydia Boose, in the article ‘Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds: Taming the Woman’s Unruly Member’*, introduces an intriguing reading of the unruly female tongue – represented in the ‘scold’ – as an unauthorised appropriation of phallic authority which carries with it the implicit threat of male castration and a usurpation of man’s ‘natural right’ to rule.)
Anyway, I’d been reading through all this material with my usual sense of intellectual curiosity coupled with relative emotional detachment until I ran across a detailed account on the use of the ‘scold’s bridle’ or ‘brank’, a particularly nasty piece apparatus that emerges in records of the late sixteenth century as a tool of coercion to enforce women’s silence. The bridle was a metal contraption that covered or encircled the woman’s head and incorporated an iron bar or ‘gag’ to hold her tongue down, thus preventing speech. The association of the unruly woman with a horse that needs breaking is obvious, and no doubt part of the punishment was the shame of being reduced to the status of an animal.A woman accused of scolding – basically, any form of unsanctioned female speech that was perceived as unruly or disruptive – had this vicious device forcibly shoved into her mouth and locked around her head. She was then subjected to the ritualised public humiliation of being led or dragged through the town, tied up in the public square and pelted with rubbish and excrement, urinated on, and otherwise mocked and degraded. In parts of England, there is also some evidence to indicate that a husband could have his wife bridled and tied up to a hook embedded beside the fireplace in their home.
Scold’s bridles took various forms, but their general design is such that at the least, they would inflict a measure of pain and discomfort. Some versions, which featured spikes or rasps on the gag part that is inserted into the woman’s mouth, would clearly inflict severe pain and damage. A 1653 account from Newcastle talks of a woman being led through the town with blood pouring from her mouth; other accounts allude to teeth being broken or wrenched out, and even of jawbones and cheekbones being cracked. A perilously high price to pay for the ‘sin’ of voicing an opinion.
I found these descriptions of the scold’s bridle and its use – numerous of which have been preserved by various nineteenth century antiquarians and folklorists** – deeply unsettling to my normal scholarly sang-froid. In fact, I found them downright chilling. I felt both nauseated and enraged at the extent of physical violation and psychological degradation women may be subjected to in order to enforce a suitably meek and silent feminine demeanour in the face of male authority. When women today express what is often trivialised or dismissed as ‘unreasonable’ or ‘irrational’ anger at attempts to silence them, I think it’s against history such as this that their anger should be read.
* Lynda E. Boose, ‘Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds: Taming the Woman's Unruly Member’, Shakespeare Quarterly 42, no. 2 (1991): 179-213.
** Boose includes descriptions from an 1858 account by one T. N. Brushfield of the Chester Archaeological society, and reproduces some of the drawings he made of devices he had turned up in places including women’s work houses and mental institutions. It adds another layer of horror to the history of these devices that by the eighteenth century, although they had largely fallen out of use for the public punishment of mouthy women, they appear to have found a new home amongst the tools of coercion and control behind the walls of state-run institutions wherein were incarcerated some of society’s most marginal and vulnerable members.
The images are from 1899’s Bygone Punishments by William Andrews , which draws on Brushfield’s earlier work.
ETA: After I posted this, I remembered a podcast I listened to recently featuring Martin Rediker talking about his book The Slave Ship: A Human History (great book, by the way. I thoroughly recommend it). While I’d previously understood on an intellectual level what he meant when he was talking about how personally draining doing this sort of history is, it wasn’t until I read the material on the scold’s bridles that I really understood at a visceral, emotional level what the cost of doing this type of ‘history from below’ – the history of the poor and despised, the marginal and the silenced – can potentially be."
-- end cross post Thanks, Amanda!
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Tickets for 2010 World Equestrian Games go on sale this Friday at noon (EDT)
You can find links to tickets and the schedule here. As I mentioned in a previous post, the games will be at the Kentucky Horse Park. On the grounds of the park is the International Museum of the Horse, always worth a visit. There is also a very nice (and inexpensive) campsite at the park. In case anyone wants to join me, I'm aiming to get my family tickets for the 1-3 of October.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Help needed with horse racing accidents
[Cross posted to Investigations of a Dog.]
I’d be really grateful if anyone could help me find more details of a couple of fatal accidents in American horse racing. I’ve picked up various stuff from the web, including YouTube videos, but I really need some respectable printed sources that I can cite in a history journal. Would the stud book contain dates and circumstances of death of the horses involved? Where else could I look?
Prescott Downs, Arizona, 26 August 2000. Loose horse Pacific Wind was running the wrong way round the track and collided head-on at full speed with Lot O Love ridden by Stacy Burton. Both horses were killed and Burton was severely disabled by the accident. So far I’ve got a YouTube video and a couple of stories from Google News (here and here). The accident is mentioned in Jockey: The Rider's Life in American Thoroughbred Racing by Scott A. Gruender, but it doesn’t say what happened to the horses and doesn’t cite any sources.
Churchill Downs, April 2009. I’m not even sure about the exact date but it was at the Kentucky Derby meeting. Sources on the web can’t even agree on the names of the horses or other details. All the reports I’ve seen appear to be derived from one of two common sources. During training a loose horse (Dr or Doctor Rap) galloped into Raspberry Miss (or Kiss) who was standing/walking on the track. Both were brought down. Raspberry M/Kiss died later, but it’s not clear if she was put down or died of her injuries before she was put down. Dr/Doctor Rap apparently survived and didn’t break any bones but was possibly injured in some way. Also not clear if the jockey broke any bones. The video has been removed from YouTube for ToS violation. The only respectable source I’ve got is the New York Times, and I’m not sure if the report is accurate.
I’d be really grateful if anyone could help me find more details of a couple of fatal accidents in American horse racing. I’ve picked up various stuff from the web, including YouTube videos, but I really need some respectable printed sources that I can cite in a history journal. Would the stud book contain dates and circumstances of death of the horses involved? Where else could I look?
Prescott Downs, Arizona, 26 August 2000. Loose horse Pacific Wind was running the wrong way round the track and collided head-on at full speed with Lot O Love ridden by Stacy Burton. Both horses were killed and Burton was severely disabled by the accident. So far I’ve got a YouTube video and a couple of stories from Google News (here and here). The accident is mentioned in Jockey: The Rider's Life in American Thoroughbred Racing by Scott A. Gruender, but it doesn’t say what happened to the horses and doesn’t cite any sources.
Churchill Downs, April 2009. I’m not even sure about the exact date but it was at the Kentucky Derby meeting. Sources on the web can’t even agree on the names of the horses or other details. All the reports I’ve seen appear to be derived from one of two common sources. During training a loose horse (Dr or Doctor Rap) galloped into Raspberry Miss (or Kiss) who was standing/walking on the track. Both were brought down. Raspberry M/Kiss died later, but it’s not clear if she was put down or died of her injuries before she was put down. Dr/Doctor Rap apparently survived and didn’t break any bones but was possibly injured in some way. Also not clear if the jockey broke any bones. The video has been removed from YouTube for ToS violation. The only respectable source I’ve got is the New York Times, and I’m not sure if the report is accurate.
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