OK, my talks entitled parishes,
pandemics and pasta take post COVID
historical options and it's obviously.
Coming out your reflections really.
Over the last year here at the quarter that.
Excuse me, we're all experienced.
Historians are the guardians
and producers of precedent.
They contextualize current issues and
provide a sense of lineage and perspective.
They analyze scenarios and
compare options from the past.
What should now preoccupy those
of us concerned with local and
parish history as cultural,
administrative and political historians in
relation to the events of 2000 and 2021?
I shall suggest that Parish focused
research says like sheds light on
many of our current predicaments,
and also that the experience of
COVID and its lockdowns may open
our eyes to new aspects of the past.
Clearly, COVID-19 has raised
a host of general historical,
medical and economic issues,
and many international ones.
The scale of which exceeds parochial
or local historical questions.
One thinks of rights.
A voluntary association human movement,
civil liberties.
The situation of the low paid
racial and class questions.
A vulnerability and questions about
priority priorities and medical treatment.
Then again,
the scale of government intervention,
government debt,
the furlough scheme,
aid to businesses,
or Universal Credit raised enormous
questions about the role of the
state and historical precedent.
These take us back to wartime measures and
slumping economic recovery in the past.
Such issues necessitate analysis beyond
the scale of parish and locality.
Yet many COVID related questions
are local parochial in the
frameworks of the past or today.
Or what was local and parochial
has become national or global now?
The issues of past pandemics such as plague,
cholera,
smallpox or the influenza of 1918 to 19.
Still involved local comparisons for
these were usually handled at that level.
So do animal diseases rinderpest TB,
rabies foot and mouth or BSE?
Implementation of policies remains local.
And when things have medical care,
school attendance, home care or care homes.
The history of retail and hospitality
constraints upon movement,
rural urban disability disabilities.
Questions of community.
The meaning of neighborliness cross
household contacts of privacy,
solitude and loneliness.
Or there are the functions
of kinship and of gossip.
There are also the earlier anti vaccination
movements issues evacuation an education.
Let alone of local xenophobia,
the place of religion and
many further questions.
These all trigger parish
based historical questions,
analogies and issues of precedent.
We need to set historical priorities,
sometimes in new ways.
This talk is a personal look.
And to start a word about terminology,
I normally use the word Parish
precisely and administratively.
But here I will often use it
interchangeably with locality.
Except,
well,
I obviously refer to its
historical religious boundaries
and administrative meanings.
The current pandemic raises
questions about medical history.
The slogan Protect the NHS does not
inspire confidence in the health
service nor in the politicians
whose job that should be.
What can we learn from the past about
dealing with vulnerable people?
How should the state protect
its citizens health?
The struggles of the NHS.
The bypassing of other medical
needs and emergencies.
The grotesque waiting times
all point to problems with
British with British healthcare.
UK health record during COVID
is among the worst in Europe.
I have friends with cancer who waited
throughout 2020 to be treated.
Gentle and optimal pharmacare
ceased for many in 2020.
The mental health system is
highly problematical.
One in six children in the Bradford
survey of 14,000 children now
have mental health problems.
Alarge COVID period increase.
A fresh historical look at medical
services is needed despite the
commitment of hospital staff.
The British two tier public and private
health system speaks for itself.
The past was offered no better,
but we need comparisons.
In relation to what historical
societies could afford in their
respective levels of medical knowledge,
how does the local past compare with today?
The current situation should
prompt new medical history and
beyond the few generations that
usually involves parish history.
How did parishes deal with surgeons,
nurses and midwives?
Within what administrative
frames were they operating?
And by what criteria of equity will cost?
What access did parishes have to hospitals,
and how were those run?
Home remedies medical surrogates
and folk healers were widely
used with unclear results.
There have been local studies of medical
provision's by Steve King on the filed.
Or recourse to foot folkier
healers as bio in Davis?
Or accounts of local doctors in a later era.
The history of medicine
is a well funded field.
It research is less focused
upon Parrish Medicine.
Studies of medical care under
the new pool or also scanty,
usually comprising particularly
unions or more generalized history.
Houma cholera plague smallpox 1918
to 19 flu and the like handled.
Samantha Williams, I see,
will broach an aspect of this shortly.
Parish burial registers point to many
such episodes about which we are ignorant.
Entries of micro malignant fever.
Contagious fever, black fever,
and so on are unclear.
Mortality peaks prompt
explanations such as I quote,
probably influenza.
At parish level, how are diseases
guarded against or transmitted?
What quarantines applied as it I am in
Derbyshire against Plague in 1665 to 6?
How is disease managed under the
settlement and master and servant laws?
We know more about the transmission
of Luddism or Captain Swing
than we do about the spread of
many illnesses historically.
What were the immediate
associations of mortality crises,
their effects on social inchin
relationships on endogamy and exogamy
parish surname densities on illegitimacy?
The marriage rate of marital fertility.
How did such mortality
affect apprenticeships?
Tenancies, recorded business fluctuations,
crime, clerical turnover,
or escape from towns.
What influence did high mortality
have on travel restrictions,
settlement policies and the closed
door open nature of communities on
Paul or policy across parish movement
of corpses and memorialization.
How was such mortality reflected in farm
and estate accounts in vestry and guardians,
minutes or in newspapers?
What rural and other comparisons emerge for
COVID-19 is highlighted urban disabilities.
The three vital event historic interactions
are well known from Colliton Homewards.
The plunge of marriages and baptisms during
high burials and their subsequent surge.
But we need a broader agenda
beyond the pioneering Wrigley and
Schofield historical demography.
Imortality microhistory that is wide
incorporation of sources and effects.
COVID-19 has raised questions about the
adequacy of care homes and home care.
In some counties like Cornwall,
the companies and local authorities hand
handling home care were overwhelmed.
This was true in many rural areas.
The tendency for loan living and
widowhood to be concentrated in
the West and north of Britain.
Away from the expanding commuter arcs of
London is HSHS 2 has aggravated the problems.
And Universal Credit is widely criticised,
let alone the pension systems.
Units of Welfare administration have
markedly extended over past centuries.
From the Elizabethan parish to the
polar union in 1834 to the County
Council from 1888 and by 1945 to 8
in many regards to the welfare state.
There are technical,
administrative, ideological,
and other reasons for this.
If any historian of the Welsh and
English Old Pool or seeing the personal
detail in overseers books aware of
the cultures of parish belonging,
noticing the extraordinary accounts
and paintings of the local pour
in David Diamonds Book Parish
and people in a Suffolk village.
Allowing for the limitations of knowledge
and resources of the earlier periods
must surely ask how this procure
system compared with what we now experience.
If we are heading towards
constrained globalization.
Intensified local belonging managed
in a precautionary way by the state.
Local environmentalism a long term
struggle with mutating viruses,
spread rapidly by large scale movement.
Then should we be looking for some
reformation of localized welfare,
belonging and community?
Computers left us in a difficult
Janus face flux between extreme,
even housebound,
localism and globalization.
The judgments and options are further
complicated by Brexit in the UK by
environmentalism and international politics.
What is or should be normal?
What structures of belonging and
and administration are preferable?
Resulting in decisions are
now palpable with a personal,
subjective or commercial.
These are huge uncertainties of
historical important direction.
And the issues and lessons of scale
in particular need to be discussed
as priorities by historians.
If we turn to the politics of parish
religion. For many Christians
and people of other faiths.
The closure of churches and changes in forms
of worship have been received adversely.
The Anglican Church and non conformist
denominations will take the opportunity post
COVID clothes and sell off many buildings.
Further, many elderly people have died.
The Church of England has reorganized
so many times into ministrie areas.
Combined benefices or group teams.
But there is no longer much connection
to a historic or ancient parish.
How did the parish church
link to the community?
This is a question of growing
historical importance.
Historical commentary is already
occurring on when in the past,
such COVID constraints
upon religion occurred.
In Poland, for example,
comparisons are being made
with the Nazi period.
A Polish academic wrote to me and I quote.
Never in the history of Poland have
churches been closed or access to
them being so restrictively limited.
Even during the war,
the Nazis or during communism the
communist more or less respected
respected the religious life
of the conquered population.
The Germans had more respect.
They considered it a kind of
holiness that should be respected.
But with COVID in Poland,
the churches were closed
completely during Easter.
The state authorities ordered that each
church can be attended by only five people,
regardless of the size of the church.
End of quote.
This is accentuated declines
in church attendance.
Sacraments are suspended to
the sick and dying.
Parish groups were not allowed to
meet and parish life has changed.
This Polish academic continues I quote.
There was also no traditional
annual Christmas gathering.
Loneliness swept the world.
For many people, especially older people,
the church and church related meetings
were the only places where you
could feel in community feel needed,
have the motivation to leave the house.
End Quote. She mentions much
increased sale of antidepressants.
She continues, I quote what the Germans are.
The Communists did not do COVID,
or rather the reaction to it did.
And I do not use these
ubiquitous disinfectants,
even horror of horrors placed in churches
in stupes instead of holy water.
And a quote.
Now such issues are aged in every race
in every country and across religions.
It largely Christian societies.
The religious role of the parish was so
fundamental in political and cultural life.
This prompts comparisons to
periods of church and religious
prohibition and persecution.
Clerical evictions policy
during pandemics and plagues,
and the role of the state in
religious denial or enforced change.
Parish life and politics is losing
or has lost this church centrality
or the appropriate placement
within non conformist organization.
When loss occurs and on this scale,
historian should step in.
And incidentally,
they must also preserve many church records,
which otherwise may go the way
of the church even now.
Many redundant churches are also
redundant in record survival.
Loneliness, loneliness and its
history and closely related subjects.
We're attracting attention for
many disciplines prior to Kobe.
Projects were underway
on Solitude and privacy.
Notice me by Barbara Taylor.
And indeed, and indeed
David Vincent had already
published his book on privacy.
And his book on Solitude
was about to appear.
Above all, British historians David
Vincent seems to me too had to have had
his finger on the pulse of our time.
Few historians have been as adept,
sensitive and relevant,
and their responses to these
current topics are great important.
Loneliness I would define as suffering,
self recognition of separateness.
It was already diagnosed as an
epidemic as a time bomb as a major
modern problem across all age groups.
The campaign to end Loneliness
was well up and running. Doctor,
can you give me a cure for loneliness?
The Lancet was reporting and
admitting its failure to reply.
Those of us who have worked for
the Samaritans were wondering if
we could face returning to it.
Those of us who've recorded
history among the elderly.
We used to breaking into tears,
the harden statements of regret.
I turned to the history of
loneliness some years ago.
After a chance Riverside
conversation for an hour.
With an unknown man important
on the water in the Cotswolds.
When he was over, he said, I quote.
Thank you for talking to me.
That's the first conversation I've
had with anyone for over a month.
Then came the enforced lockdowns of COVID.
The isolation of families and neighbors.
The publicity given to Breakers
of unclear lockdown rules.
The constraints of shielding.
The nasty dialectic between fear of
loneliness and fear of coronavirus.
Deteriorations in mental health.
Increasing use of antidepressants.
Rising self harm growing domestic abuse
have all been reported during 2000 and 2421.
It is not yet clear what the
effects on suicide have been,
though I'm slightly reassured that early
British report suggests no appreciable rise.
International trends are not yet discernible.
If loneliness was an urgent
matter for historians pre COVID
it is all the more so now.
My own attempts back in 2013 to 15 to launch
research and write a history of loneliness,
floundered on the disinterest of
the SLC and the Welcome Trust.
Oh my God, what an awful topic.
A famous FB, a historian.
A literary critic claimed at me.
Almost derisively,
though I suspect it came close to his phone.
Soon after in disparate
British funding organisations,
I took early retirement to
concentrate on other creative things.
COVID shows that as historians,
we must research the issues relevant
to community and loneliness.
To the predicament of the
isolated individual.
To the politics of loneliness,
to the structures of
support that are in place.
Often not in place to deal
with chronic isolation.
Why the politics of London loneliness?
I mean how people are removed
from the presence of others.
These problems are widely international,
yet they are local as well,
historically and in Britain
they involve the parish.
Loneliness is manifest political dimensions.
Structures are put in place,
politically or not put in place.
Personal frameworks are local
administrative realities.
Loneliness relates intensely to areas or
cultural zones of subjective belonging.
We operate an ideology of self reliance
and individualism as in ideas of selfhood.
End of Community substitution
for human and of commodity
substitution for human relations.
Capitalism praise upon isolation.
Increasingly,
permeable permeable divisions have been
formed between public and private.
Loneliness and its allied concepts
alienation, anomie solitude.
In turn have huge effects for
the state and its sub entities.
As so many political and
philosophical thinkers indicate.
Such matters of political linked
to the exercise of power sustained
as such an sillery upon cultural
and administrative expectations.
The social science associations of
loneliness that is living alone.
Bereavement, widowhood hill health,
low income, cultural marginalization,
probably in that order.
Many analysts suggest.
A factors that are handled politically.
They relate to housing, the legal system,
health services, the labor market,
racial and sexual discrimination.
Earlier historians Toulmin
Smith steer main Seebohm,
the Web's gone home And's gonna Tate
and so and presented the parish as the
devolved administration administrative,
legal and usually agricultural entity.
We have in recent decades also seen it in its
subjective guises as pertaining to sell food.
As a personal legal identity
under settlement law.
As an emotional unit of belonging,
as Steve King will be discussing shortly.
As having distinctive seasonal
and folkloric ritual years.
As prone to defensive xenophobia.
It was an area to which people friend
felt intense personal affiliation.
It has also generated an extraordinary
rich outflow of reminiscence.
Literature and art.
Herbert Claire crabbe.
John Galt,
Constable Palmer George Eliot hard
Easter Tierce Elliott Adrian Bell Rs
Thomas George Mackay Brown Ronald Blythe.
Such a list would be enormous.
Our county record offices rightly used
the parish as their ordering principle.
The parish is central to any historical
conceptualization of community.
As such, it is also historically
intrinsic to assessing loneliness
and personal isolation overtime.
It's important and it's important in
historical placement of COVID is axiomatic.
The loneliness, fear,
and even bewilderment that the
recent pandemic has produced.
Necessitate research into the parish.
To put the present or recent
past into perspective.
To suggest comparisons,
remedies and precedents.
That research needs to consider
into alias the following.
How how are people being absorbed
in local communities in the past?
How important is family and kinship being
within local or further flung areas?
What have been the rolls of sushi
rolls of associations linked to
the parish and women's institutes?
The religious bodies?
The Friendly Society is the village schools,
the trade union branches,
the shared organization of local work,
and so on.
How far has loneliness affected
earlier parish based lives?
There is every reason to suspect
that loneliness is a long term and
international human condition.
As some philosophers,
such as Ben Modjeska, Vitchev argued.
Thomas de Quincey Russo,
Dostoyevsky Edvard Monk,
Carson Mccullers Jhanvi's,
Edward Hopper, Sam Selvon,
and others like them had many precursors.
In for so called returned to the local.
That is supposedly occur during COVID.
And with doubts about globalization.
Water the century long lessons,
centuries long essence of parish
history as community history.
How does one define and qualify
any such return to the local?
How we really scenery in
figuration of the local.
The parochial in something
like its earlier guises.
Or for countless people.
Have we witnessed a distress the
aberration of face to face social contacts?
A fear and avoidance of others.
A reluctance to talk.
The pavement sidestepping the face
mask hidden mouth the angry glare into
supposedly socially distance accused cues.
A change towards personality introspection.
In fact, COVID,
to my knowledge has broken
many relationships.
This surely is the ultimate in not
fitting in not being part of Community.
And for medical reasons it has been
politically and socially engineered.
Well into the first UK lockdown,
an autistic student Enthusia Stickley
said to me, I quote it's really great.
At last everyone is behaving
just like me and the crowd.
That's my quotation.
In 2000 for 2020.
This is tantamount in many cases to
a societal failure of personality.
The much social media has done
little to prevent and which many
critics believe has aggravated.
To my mind,
this is not a return to the personality
and face to face address of Paris SoC.
As we read it in many 19th century
and 18th century sources and novels.
This realization of the individual thrown
entirely onto her or his own resource is.
In one song, taking a lead role in a cage.
Unable to tell a smile from avail.
Treating a laptop or smartphone
as a person surrogate.
Zooming off to some distant friend,
parent or Child once a week is remote
from the kinds of parochial community
and sociability found in earlier
historical and literary sources.
There is little here that approximates
to under the Greenwood tree.
Or even to the angry but still
sociable tone of the parish's satire.
If I refer to Harding Claire.
Let alone the wider genre of Austins Dikens,
Mrs Gaskell, George Eliot,
Facory Sirtis, and such,
and other such writers or
their picaresque predecessors.
In fact, what we have seen in 2020.
Is terribly impoverished
socially by comparison.
It is more akin to the eventual
isolation of Judy Obskure or Michael
Henchard in the mayor of Casterbridge.
The historical agenda here is obvious.
How does one assess the sociability,
interactions, terms of discourse,
personality of our texts
and historical evidence?
How does the individual emerge from them?
A socially embedded and enhanced
in social contacts or is distant,
distanced, lonely and remote.
We can all think of parochial evidence
right for the asking of these questions,
whether we're looking at correspondence,
minute books, autobiographies,
Diaries, novels, or poetry.
Whether it be passive,
Woodforde or and Lister.
Historians of the emotions
considering local history.
Will find much in recent
events to stimulate research.
There is the issue of fear, for example.
Of how it developed in the past.
It's religious, medical,
xenophobic, war related,
racial or superstitious aspects.
My father, born in 1918.
Growing up with the imminence
of another World War,
once complained to me,
I quote the trouble with your generation is
that you don't know what fear is and quote.
Send it,
there are the issues of fear is managed,
how it affects or or comment state policy,
its effect,
effects on personal or family interrelations.
It results on psychological well being.
We have widely seen grandparents in
2020 adjusting their fear of dying
to their wish to see grandchildren.
There is no doubt that many issues in the
local past have been affected by fear.
Fear of famine,
fever inducing anti Irish
sentiment to the 1840s.
Favorite color affecting local antagonisms.
Fear of traversing parish boundaries.
Consider some of the fearful
parish writing of John Clare.
Anti Protestant or anti Catholic fears.
How many of these fears were parish
based locally defensive in nature?
Fear can make people cruel.
What I have called the local culture was
xenophobia has been alive and kicking.
Some Rutland villages, for example,
have been snooping on each other in
parishes like Lyddington and calling
the police if they notice strange cars.
The police cooperate with £250 fines.
Scratch car retaliation follows.
There has been evading of people
from certain inner city areas.
Selective vaccination avoidance
aggravates these problems.
Conducing producing two inner city,
no go areas to take that
take one back historically.
Indeed, the whole nature and geography
of local capitalism and retail has been
radically transformed by COVID fear.
Further afield in Japan.
My car number plates indicate their origin.
Cars from Tokyo have been
smashed in northern villages.
Guiding desk that's a foreigner has come
to have super added fearful association.
A bank in Nagano had its windows stoned
because some of its one of its staff
from outside the area developed COVID.
Japanese friends tell me of isolation.
Lack of neighborly contact,
prevailing secrecy,
about health for fear of recrimination.
Resistance to coppit testing.
Bullying of medical staff and their children.
Refusal of children to return home
during the Aug Obona New Year's seasons.
The elevation of privacy
protection as well as xenophobia.
Some of this certainly has echoes in the UK.
One could escalate examples.
These all illuminate aspects of our past too.
Revealing emotions and motives
which affected people deeply.
One can go beyond fear to
other relevant emotions.
Boredom, for example,
or envy and anger.
Those three emotions all have
written histories or anthropologies
to be developed further.
Parish history and history of emotions.
We always intertwined and they seem to
me all the more kindred subjects now.
David Davis, referring to COVID
related restrictions on movement.
Commented that quote, we have never
before had this in British history.
My first thought was sceptical.
Medieval serfdom the
settlement and vagrancy laws.
All the controls upon movement
in World War One and two caused
by travel permits and food,
and clothes rationing came to mind.
WH Davis of Supertramp fame,
commented on how I quote the
rationing of certain commodities,
made it difficult for us to change our
surroundings during the First World War.
I was now getting tired of
meeting people day after day,
but there was no escape.
For the Great War had now fastened
every individual down to one place.
Well, he was rationed for
the necessities of life.
Under these conditions,
there was nothing to do but to make
the best of life in London and wait
until the end of the war gave me the
freedom to go where I liked and crowd.
Under COVID lockdown,
many people would have liked to
meet certain others day after day,
but spun out. That spun out their
time in loneliness and boredom.
In fact, the consensus is that war rationing
did not commit people to local fixity.
The many people migrated and many
evacuated children returned to
urban families and their rationing.
Registration was indeed read.
It readily shifted.
One could think of other lockdowns,
for example of hell at
Great Yarmouth during 9318.
Thirty two cholera,
but these were very localized,
not national ones.
The earlier English and Welsh
settlement laws could block some
people's mobility to certain places.
For example, if individuals did not
provide a settlement certificate.
Yeah, if required.
Those imminent or actual need are poorly for
off and remove the parishes of settlement.
The demands for certificates were
not that common were parochially
distinctive in public policy,
application and slight
relative to total mobility.
Where the settlement certificates
can be seen as precursors of future
identity cards or COVID vaccination
certificates remains to be judged.
Vagrants as under the 1744 Vagrancy Act but
it's wide categories of koprit or under.
Elizabethan legislation found their
migration hindered or punished.
This was selective and did
not hinder other movement.
As a statement of quasi
legal line legal intent.
Describing national regulation.
David Davis his statement may be
fundamentally correct over recent
centuries of British history.
That remains for historians to ascertain.
It also remains to see how
historians will judge vaccine,
passports, vaccination certificates,
and the like in historical perspective.
They provoke libertarian discussion.
Yet in my African youth,
I carried a host of yellow vaccination
certificates relating to cholera,
smallpox, yellow fever, polio, tetanus.
Typhoid Paratyphoid A&B vaccine
diphtheria Pachew sits in the like.
Whatever the dissension against the
such certificates of war interventions,
there is nothing historically new in them,
or in the way they affect movement.
In some African airports of my childhood,
failure to comply simply had
one to a medical tent nearby.
I also found myself Quaranteed on ships
stranded in places like Mombasa or Byra.
Yet, as with a long history of
quaranti or of medical isolation.
The history of these interventions and
barriers remains to be written in a way
that places Cobin 19 into perspective.
Leprosy even came to characterize
certain medieval place names.
Such as Burton Lizars,
near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire.
Isolation villages was not an
alien concept in the past.
Think of I am in Derbyshire.
Consider to any older map of an
English county like Leicestershire.
I have one dated 1918.
Look at lesser populated areas and
notice the isolation hospitals.
These sites now resemble abandoned
small military depot's or aerodromes.
Was raised earthen platforms
where buildings once stood,
like deserted medieval villages.
One could add many more forms
of post COVID parish history.
I was home educated in Africa for many years.
History of parish education does
not encompass home education.
Perhaps it should now do so.
Further,
if unemployment continues to
rise as a result of COVID.
Historians should be drawn to that issue.
Pre historian of My Generation the
wheel will then have come full circle.
Parochial unemployment was a dominant issue
for my book Annals of the Labouring Poor,
written during the early
Thatcher recession of years.
We have also seen a revival
of itinerant retail.
Familiar to parish historians.
Then again, COVID lockdowns
have familiarized many people.
With the natural surroundings that
have their locality in new ways.
I need hardly mentioned the
relevant history of people in the
natural world that this involves.
Indeed I did.
I did much research to into 2020 into
symbols of the natural world in burial sites.
A melancholy looking isolated
individual with a notebook walking
around burial memorials did
not attract police attention.
And if it had,
I had self justification up my sleeve
that would have melted the heart of
any Leicestershire Police Sergeant.
Well, historians are resourceful people.
Research for our times.
Thank you.
Many thanks, Many thanks. Address address.
We have some issues with an echo.
I will unmute you if you need too many.
Many thanks for that keynote address.
I can imagine that there will be
a lot of questions or remarks or
post to be made from the audience,
so if you would want to contribute something,
you could raise your hand by
get the participant screen or
post something in the chat.
And we'll see what comes up.
I was thank you very much for
that very personal taking away on.
On on what we have lived through
through the past year, on what we
could do is historians with all this.
New experiences, I think you've
given us a lot of food for thought,
but also a guide on which kind of
steps we as historians could take.
And also.
It reminded me also of with regards
to your book on unbelonging on,
for example, the differences
that we see within the parish.
So there were these.
Tags and graphic Tees in Brussels.
I'm living in an urban environment on
romanticization of lockdown and the
romanticization of staying at home and
how that is a form of class privilege.
Or,
for example,
the issues of undocumented migrants
and access to welfare or the
homeless people who were out on
the streets and didn't have a place
to go and their civil society had
to step in actually to to host
them and take care of them.
So that also reminds me of this
notion of local politics or welfare,
and who actually has access
to it and who doesn't.
Thank you,
thank you for agreeing to give
the keynote and thank you for
this specific keynote.
I see that we don't.
We're starting to get some questions.
Not go ahead.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you very much. Indeed.
An one thing that intrigued me
immediately was the sort of link between
parishes in history of emotions.
And I wondered whether you could give
a little bit further guidance about
where we could start and what you
know sources we could use and how
we would do comparative histories.
Maybe of the history of emotion.
So I was wondering whether there
are a few immediate leads that
you can think of there.
And as I muted the microphone of versus now,
now we will have to unmute it,
which is a microphone shaped icon
on the screen, thank you. OK.
So many, I was saying it goes too many
clerical autobiographies, for example.
Talk about isolation.
Talk about loneliness.
Talk about boredom.
Talk about being as they see it in
geographically less preferential areas.
Talk about their cultural isolation
from their communities.
That's a standard.
I mean, just look at someone like
John Skinner's autobiography.
It's quite remarkable that degree
of alienation going on there.
I think he's based in Somerset.
In the late 18th century,
from from his parishioners and and the.
Alienation and dislike.
He feels for his purchase,
which is clearly a mutually felt sentiment.
I think you can address this in
so many historical sources that do
relate to the parish the question is,
I think that one ought to come
at those sources with.
Is fresh eyes after after COVID
one ought to be looking at.
These issues,
in the light of what COVID has shown us,
said the sort of questions that have
come to the fore because of COVID.
Every generation,
every group of historians looks,
sources of fresh and so they ought to.
And should be asking original
questions that contextual to those
to that historiographical phase and.
We all know it, you know.
Still in COVID phase and it's going to
take a long time for this to go away.
These are very important questions,
so I think they simply necessitate
a re addressing historical sources.
People need to go back to historical
sources and say how do people
handle these issues.
In the past,
these issues of boredom and fear.
Of of loneliness with regard to difficulties,
to the emotions and maybe many
other emotions come to mind as well.
But much of the history of emotions
that I've read is very general.
Is very non specific geographically
is not placed very intimately in
relation to community and community history.
And the differences of individuals
within those communities.
So I'm really looking there for.
For historians like the people
attending today to to go to those
sources and and and to see what.
In relation to the parish in
relation to local communities.
How how do we redefine the history
of emotions to to deal with some
of the issues that are?
That have become so salient
over the last year and a half.
I do think that the present day
availability or the massive visual
material that sort of is videos that
we now have with this COVID crisis.
Do you think that that has any mileage
in terms of helping us to understand?
Such situations in the past or is
that methodologically entire live on?
Not quite sure which modern visual
material you're thinking of, but.
Just about the present, you know,
actually today is sort of parishioners
who have all these sort of
visual means You Tube, Instagram.
All these kinds of things you
know to express some of the
issues that you're interested in.
And obviously we don't have that for most
of the periods we are working on ourselves,
but is there a mythological way
to maybe combine these two?
Or is that just methodologically unsound?
Why is it difficult question?
Obviously we're in a totally different
technological world compared to the past.
Are you, are you suggesting there
may be visual forms of solace in
the past that relate to emotions?
And it couldn't be used comparatively.
Suggest to address the
visual world's foremost.
The visual fields of people in
it saying the 18th century.
If that is the case and if
you are suggesting that that
I think that that is true.
Graveyard memorials, for example,
the iconography of graveyard memorials.
Church paintings. Church and Chapel.
Visual performances.
Street theater.
A range of things like this come to mind.
Chapbook evidance woodcuts in
the lake of the pictorial kind
that one would find in chapbooks.
These these forms of visual
experience of the past,
I think can be compared to the modern area.
I have no particular methodological problem
in making the making the comparisons.
Then again,
if one addresses more in relation
to the history of art,
I think again looking locally
at the history of art.
There are range of issues to do with
isolation to do with loneliness,
and I've been putting together
a range of painters who seemed
to me to address questions,
questions or isolation of loneliness.
And often I'm quite surprised
the painters that come to light
because painters like George Morlan,
for example,
for whom loneliness I think is a very
striking feature of a lot of his paintings.
That particular emotion,
and that way of looking at a
painter like George Moreland,
I don't think it's been addressed
by any of the art.
Autistic historians like John Powell
and others looking at Moreland,
but I think COVID does Readdressed.
I think the way you think about
some of these paintings.
Edvard Monk, for example, most obviously,
but Hopper many others like this,
and I think there are,
you know,
equivalents in the English procure seen
most notably somebody like Moreland.
But I think you could extend
the same ideas to Constable and
quite a few other painters,
and I think it does open
up ways of rethinking,
looking at art history in a local context,
and we're certainly.
We have another question by
John Craig and then afterwards.
Also Haley Winslade,
but John Craig, you are first.
Can you can you hear me? Yes yes yes.
OK Keith thank you so much for the paper.
I found that enormously rich and an
enormous personal pleasure of mine,
just to hear you having read your work
and enjoy it and learn so much from it.
I I was quite struck by the fact
that you began. Am I still OK?
Everyone seems to have
disappeared or something,
but I was quite struck by the fact that
you began to live on honestly persuaded
by your more general point of the.
In the way we have to of course take
stock of our own age in which we live,
and let that direct our historical questions.
What what's rightly so particularly is
the way in which you began your paper
thinking more broadly about the health,
service and the role of
medical practitioners,
as well as many other things.
And I was quite struck living here
in North Devon for the time being
away from my Canadian university.
Kind of stuck because of COVID I.
Recently there was a story of an
intelligent GP dealing with a widower.
Who was deeply lonely and but
loved walking and,
you know,
was able to simply give some very
good advice and connect this elderly
widower up with a local walking group.
I'm not quite sure how this worked
in terms of social distancing,
but it actually turned out very,
very successfully,
and that's one story to place alongside.
I mean,
the kind of failure on the part
of the established church,
or maybe non conformist churches
in terms of tackling the.
Challenge of Community for people
who you know for whom the parish
church was a very important
dimension and as an early model.
Of course I I've long actually been
very critical of many parish clergy,
even though there's certain evidence
that even a Herbert could actually
get along side of parishioners
and Richard Green and Dry Drayton
had enormous difficulties,
I would think, but I am struck I,
alongside my early modern studies.
I'll get to the point alongside
my early modern studies I've.
Actually being quite interested in
working with the mass observation
archive and the work of James Hinton
particular who was at work for many
years and enormously sensitive study,
is looking at questions of
identity through this archive
and two things strike me there.
One is the response on the part of
hundreds of people who are willing
to participate in some ways as
a form of overcoming in one of
the most famous of course never
lasts up in Barrow in Furness,
deeply lonely.
In her marriage and yet was kind
of saved in some way.
I don't mean theologically,
but through the intervention of and once
again an intelligent medical doctor.
You know,
encouraging her to actually
take certain decisions,
but I think that actually just
speaking with her helped shape
help help to make certain sessions
out of a deeply unhappy marriage.
Not she left her husband and I
I'm struck by you didn't take us
right back to 1208, and I know very
little about the interdict and how.
That was experienced,
and maybe we can't say much about
that of 1208 when no one was largely
buried in consecrated ground, but.
The there's mixing question here
about maybe the way in which medical
practitioners sensitive intelligent medical
practitioners have an opportunity now,
maybe to give help that perhaps they
weren't equipped to give 50 years ago.
Or how did you know me?
I'm generalizing enormously.
I'd be just interested in what what you,
how you might respond to that in terms
of a professional group in society,
some of whom were stinkers,
many of whom are probably
trying to do the best.
To to help more generally,
folk like us or like other people tackle
this question of intense loneliness.
Anyway,
that's that's enough from me and look
forward to the rest of the sessions.
It's an interesting question.
Hey, my own, my own hunts and my own
feeling in my own experience has been.
Recently that the medical profession
feel rather beleaguered that
the times they can spend with
patients are more more constrained.
That they have to deal with patients
wearing face masks so they can't relate
to the whole face of the patient.
He can't catch some of the sentiment.
Some of the impressions they would
have been alive together too.
They keep more to distance from the
patients within their consulting rooms.
They are less inclined to touch patients.
They are much more favorably
inclined to discuss on the phone
rather than see you personally. And.
When they actually in discussion with you,
they're quite eager to end the discussion
and get on to the next person.
And that's been my frank experience
over the past two months.
I've actually been rather ill
over the past two months.
And it struck me quite forcibly that
this is actually is the case in Britain.
And I'm not blaming medical
practitioners GP's for this circumstance.
I think it's.
You know they're incredibly overworked.
They've been forced to go into
the vaccination programs they've
had spent a lot of time involved
in mass vaccination programs,
rather the kind of work one to one patient.
You know, referrals, appointments,
so more used to.
You know they've obviously overworked.
Pretty horrifically in some cases.
But if you go back to books like
a fortunate man by John Buerger,
looking at that Forest of Dean,
Doctor and look at the kind of
knowledge that's being displayed there,
the time that's being taken.
Knowledge of patients that I'm
taking with patients.
The multi varied kinds of engagement
with the patients that's being
discussed in those earlier text,
like that work very fine book I think,
but I'm I'm aware of other books dealing
with the medical life of of GPS and earlier.
It much earlier period.
It seems to me they knew the families better.
They spent longer with the patients.
They were more helpful in consultation terms
in psychological terms in emotional support.
That is the case today.
Uhm?
So I frame my answer to your
question is largely negative really.
Without wishing to be in any
way critical of GP's.
As as I've covered the experience then.
I have literally been told to get
off the phone on three occasions
now with the GP phoning me talking,
talking to me for about 3 minutes,
and then she simply has to say I've
gotta move on to another patient.
I can't answer your questions.
And you know,
I think to myself when I go on
the web and get the answer myself,
you know?
So that's been my personal experience without
wishing to be too negative about him know,
thank you.
Thank you for that.
And you know,
if I just go back to never lost,
that was also her experience.
That is what you spoke of earlier.
That is that the medical Doctor
Who was able to help her actually
spend significant time with her.
No, I mean historically,
it seems to me that you're you're
raising very important evidence.
But as you say,
in actually a well funded field,
this is something that historians need to be.
Mindful often pertinent,
I know we're not touching so much
on the parish dimension there,
but thank you very much.
Thanks John, nice to see you at last.
Thank you both.
We have another question and then
there's some discussion going on
in the chat which I will read out
as well so you can answer to them.
But first the second the next
question is by Haley Winslade.
If I have pronounce the name correctly.
Hello, yes, it's Haley wines lad.
I just wanted to make a point.
My parish like many others throughout
the country during the pandemic
which is the parish of All Saints
Castleton in Hampshire, has been
doing an awful lot of worship online,
particularly in the first lockdown.
We had a large number of people
joining the worship Online,
which was good, but the problem is.
It's the elderly members of the
congregation there so very much excluded.
If they don't have the technical know how
to use a computer or laptop or a tablet,
I think parishes are very much going
down this Ave Now we're going to see
an awful lot more online activity
and secondly during Lent or Lent.
Course was completely. Online.
We actually had members from
other local power.
She's joined,
so I think the knock on effect
of moving online for parishes is
that we're actually going to see
this sort of geographical parish,
perhaps almost disintegrate,
because because being online you can.
You can join from another parish,
and in fact,
this Sunday Rogation Sunday are Ricker,
who's just been here a year.
He's actually walking the bounds
of the parish.
He enjoys walking,
so it's something he does do become
although he has his very sort
of traditional things he does.
He's very much a technological
motivated person and a lot of what he
is doing is online and I think it's
gonna have a big impact long term
on the way that parishes are one.
I think it's fascinating in many ways.
I mean obviously.
Good or bad things stemming from what
you said, depending on how you see it.
I mean, my first thought is that.
Are you going to get
people attending services?
To communicate to communities they
have no real connection with.
So the nature of the Anglican community,
or the non conformist community,
inverted commas that.
Is revealing itself in these kinds of
forms of worship may become more desperate,
may become more vague.
And may not have much face to face
meaning beyond any virtual environment.
Secondly, the implication could well be,
and I suspect this is happening already,
and some clergy,
men and women have told me this that.
The readiness of the Church of
England to part with its buildings
to sell off its buildings.
As with the non conformist churches,
is certainly has been aggravated by Coburn.
And the logic of what you're saying is to
make those buildings even more redundant.
So if one does push into the kind of
direction of virtual worship and virtual
meetings of the kind you're mentioning.
My first thought really is surely this
is going to be a further by passing of
the physical fabric of the Church of
England and there's someone concerned
with heritage and social history of the like.
I find I find that rather disturbing for it,
and it certainly is going to
accentuate a trend,
which is very,
very much underway already.
One could think of other comments
to add to what you said,
but those are my 2 main thoughts
in relation to what you said.
Thank you, thank you bro.
We have another person who raised their hand
but we also have quite lengthy discussion in
the chat which is becoming quite interesting.
And we will go to the next session
in seven minutes you will come.
Read out some of the discussion which I
think might be relevant for now and now.
The floor to the last question
and then we will conclude.
So we have several comments,
but there's two things which have
gotten quite some discussion.
One is, I wondered,
my body without who asks.
I wonder how we get it.
The history of emotions in Parrish
administration before the video
evidence of the Handforth Council Zoom
official records such as vestrit minutes
intentionally lied these emotional elements.
Stephen King replied,
perhaps not later.
Vestrit minutes put new striking
in these terms with their others.
And Sylvia Pinches also said about minutes.
Study day a society minutes early
years reported all the arguments
but got more respectable and failed.
And we also have a question on.
From Jeremy Bolton who says
hi Keith, great keynote.
Should historians attempt to
count the incidents of loneliness?
So how? Maybe count the
number of anonymous burials.
And there's quite a lot,
but I won't take the time
to read them all out loud.
What I'll do instead is I'll give the floor
to Sylvia Pinches for the last question,
and then I'll pass the word box Yuki.
Hi Keith, thanks that was great and
what I just wanted to say was that
whilst obviously the the physical
interaction of localities seeing people
face to face is vastly important,
but there have always been communities
of interest that are not immediately
face to face rarified and small.
But I'm thinking of communities of scholars,
networks of correspondence,
thinking about William Dugdale and some
of the 17th century local historians.
Writing to other people linious
in the 18th century,
corresponding with people all
over the world about botany.
So they had connections.
They would have loved the Internet,
but it was all done by correspondence.
More of a comment really about
that than a question directly,
but that there are.
I feel there always have been other ways,
possibly of having more distant
community and connection than
just the immediate face to face.
Yes, and obviously that continues and
continues and is enhanced in very
many ways by the digital revolution.
I think you would agree that
over the last year and a half,
forms of communication have
shifted fairly heavily towards.
That kind of digital substitute
for face to face relations.
I would I was arguing in what I said
that the idea of a return to the local.
And a return to face to face communication
and conviviality, so called.
During the COVID period.
It's quite a few commentators
seem to think as a curd.
I mean, I fail to see it to be
honest in my in my locality.
In fact,
in my locality I see neighbors
falling out with each other and
refusing to talk thereafter.
Because some of them being such a trial to
other people in their immediate vicinity.
So I don't really see a return to a
face to face community of anything
I recognize in historical record.
If anything I'm seeing as they quoted
from that autistic student people
becoming more and more distant,
even if it close proximity to each other,
perhaps especially when in close
proximity to each other.
So I think people yes in the
past have corresponded Gilbert,
White and all the rest of them come to mind.
And that form of correspondence and
that form of relatedness continues
and just been enhanced by COVID.
You know, I'm surprised really.
The extent to which I found myself
zooming to people you know,
in Canada, in Japan,
in Australia and New Zealand, and the like.
In a way,
enhancing friendships which are
most distinctively not procure.
But then again,
that raises issues about the nature of.
Sociability and neighborliness and
friendships in the past by comparison
with what we're now experiencing and
where we're finding our friends today,
compared to the past.
Lucky I still find quite a few
friends in what historically I would
regard as an immediate neighborhood.
Many people, it seems to me.
Castle S too,
so I don't think COVID has has
brought them back into a neighbor
neighborly kind of fraternity.
Not not where I am.
Uhm?
The issue of how does one detect
or find emotional?
Sources or sources that bear on the
history of emotions in parish records see
there are kinds of parish records which.
It's hard to find much emotional connection
in a removal order or whatever you know,
let alone a settlement certificate.
I think you would agree in
Diaries and letters in Texas.
I can listers diary and Parson
Woodforde did Skinner in Holland
at these clerical autobiographies.
I think in many minutes if you
look at the Leicestershire minutes
of the Allied hosiery workers,
if you look in Leicestershire
minutes of the Methodist Church.
You find quite intense emotions
being displayed in minute books,
and some say even in many books.
Always remember one Methodist.
Many book I was looking at a Leicestershire
record office with week after week
after week raged about the playing of
a certain violin at at the services.
There's no question about the emotions
that were on the show in that minute book,
so even a source like
that I think you can find.
You can find emotions if you go
to church visitation records.
I'm astonished.
I mean you're speaking to me from Anglesey,
sorry near Anglesey.
Looking at some of the Welsh
visitation returns,
the agitated and highly emotional nature
of some of the Anglican Church in Wales,
visitation returns against
the Nonconformists are.
Well, I'm quite extraordinary.
You know that there's certainly
replete with emotion and highly
emotional and slanderous language.
Again,
I don't I myself find too much
difficulty in finding emotional
sources in parish records.
I could go on with many other examples,
but I think the emotions are certainly
there and on very much you know,
on display in a lot of the records.
Even if they're not,
perhaps in the census or some of
the more bureaucratic or most
bureaucratic kinds of records.
I think I've answered some
of those questions by Fred.
I can't keep up with all the chat room.
Common trees have been lying on
my alene to to summarize anything
that I need to address there.
Many thanks indeed.
I would invite everyone to
continue this discussion in the
chat during the next panel,
because I think that you have.
With this discussion and with this address,
set the tone for our symposium
in in a very interesting and.
I can't even find the words
because it's also late evening,
but in a very interesting way.
And it is a lot to continue discussing about,
so I want to thank you Professor
snow for your keynote address.
Normally I would ask everyone
to give a big applause.
I guess that now we could express
emojis and emoticons and other
forms of smileys through the chat,
which you might be able to see later.
We will see.
But thank you very much for your
fascinating to kind of bigger photos.