“Let my quick fate a warning be…” Fatal Transport Accidents in the West Midlands, 1820s-1920s Speaker: Quintin Watt This illustrated presentation deals with various accidents that involved the region’s stage-coaches, canals, railways and trams. How and why did these shocking events occur, and who was to blame? What ‘Health & Safety’ lessons were learnt from […]

Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary People Speaker: Helen Lloyd An introduction to oral history, with audio extracts from the speaker's recordings of Birmingham life stories, and discussion of the pros and cons of oral history in a whistle-stop tour through the twentieth-century. Helen worked in radio for much of her life, including many years as a […]

... with Summer Refreshments Natural Daughters and Deserted Children: Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth and Eighteenth-Century Illegitimacy Speaker: Dr Kate Croft Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth were among the most popular authors of the early 1800s. Today, Austen is widely remembered for her witty, romantic novels, while Edgeworth has faded from mainstream readership. Yet both writers […]

How DNA Broke Down a Brick Wall Speaker: Jan Daniells Jan has been hunting her family for a while now; and she has successfully used DNA to break though a brick wall on one line. She is a retired school teacher, based in Shropshire, with family in Kenilworth, so maybe there are more connections to […]

A Private War: The Diaries of Frederick George Draper 1939-1945 Speaker: Carol Draper Carol's father kept a journal throughout his WW2 service, a first-hand account of a young man's experiences of war. He was conscripted as a Private in the Royal Leicestershire Regiment and travelled through Egypt, Trans Jordan, Libya, Ceylon, India and finally as […]