Rounding up a few misc things

[oursin]

Readers, I boggled and shrieked: A New Chapter, Nancy Mitford at Heywood Hill Bookshop:

Diana, the sister to whom she felt closest, was branded (along with her Fascist husband Oswald Mosley) a public danger and imprisoned in Holloway for more than three years. When Diana was released at the end of 1943, the shop was bombarded with telephone calls from journalists seeking Nancy’s reaction.

To the best of my recollection, wasn't it Nancy herself who had written to their relative Churchill to brand Diana a public danger? That she 'provide[d] her with support during her incarceration' does not, I depose, mean that she thought she and Sir Ogre should be free to run around being Fascists. Voila for the story, which is not exactly obscure.

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Scotland's Missing Women Poets, and why we need them - we wonder a little how far this situation is at all particular to Scotland and a specifically macho misogynist pub culture there? (On the Uni of Glasgow Union, I virtually attended a seminar this week which certainly indicated that there was a very trad male culture in place.)

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I am hesitant to give the Express links, but this is a piece interviewing the very reputable historian Chuck Upchurch on representations of m/m relationships in Bridgerton. (And I am really somewhat concerned for him given that his present institution is Florida State U...)

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And picking up on an intersection of 'leaving stuff out' and 'gay history', this review of Alan Meades, Arcade Britannia: A Social History of the British Amusement Arcade does not mention that the 'socialization and community' included cruising for rent-boys.

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Looking in unexpected places: BIPOC Voices in the Victorian Periodical Press:

In 2021 and 2022, scholars and students from One More Voice (OMV) and COVE worked in collaboration with Special Collections, SOAS Library and Adam Matthew Digital (AMD) to identify, document, encode, publish, and critically study a series of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) voices from Victorian missionary periodicals.... Our project demonstrates that BIPOC voices appear in considerable numbers in Victorian missionary periodicals. As elaborated below, we identified and documented some 250 such voices between the two branches of our project. These voices represent an important, little-studied primary source. The voices, in the words of the One More Voice “Mission Statement,” offer glimpses of “perspectives that scholarship in majority has hitherto overlooked or silenced” and so promise “to transform our understanding of imperial and colonial history and literature.” This potential – alongside the wide array of cultures and ethnic groups involved and the many social strata within the cultures documented – makes these voices worth studying. Yet our work with these voices over the year and a half of the project has also revealed that any sort of critical or casual engagement with the voices requires extreme caution. Among other challenges, the wording of relevant pieces often suggests that missionary periodical editors and others reduced or otherwise curtailed the textual control of BIPOC creators considerably.

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Problematic anatomical collection re-opens: From foetuses to penises: anatomical museum reopens in London. Hunterian Museum collection amassed by 18th-century surgeon-anatomist John Hunter includes body parts of humans and animals:

The relaunch of an extraordinary collection of human and animal specimens gathered in the 18th century by a medical pioneer has prompted the Royal College of Surgeons in England (RCS) to commission research into complex questions about provenance and consent.

Comments

[lilysea]

Re: the Hunterian museum, I remember reading about the deceased body of Charles Byrne having been kidnapped for the museum, despite Charles Byrne having clearly stated that he wanted to be buried at sea.

"Byrne was living in London at the same time as the pre-eminent surgeon and anatomist John Hunter. Hunter had a reputation for collecting unusual specimens for his private museum, and Hunter had offered to pay Byrne for his corpse. As Byrne's health deteriorated, and knowing that Hunter wanted his body for dissection (a fate reserved at that time for executed criminals) and probable display, Byrne devised a plan. He made express arrangements with friends that when he died his body would be sealed in a lead coffin and taken to the coastal town of Margate and then to a ship for burial at sea. Byrne's wishes were thwarted and his worst fears realised when Hunter arranged for the cadaver to be snatched on its way to Margate. The coffin was made and measured 9 feet 4 inches in length, but Hunter nevertheless acquired the body.

Hunter then reduced Byrne's corpse to its skeleton and four years later put Byrne's skeleton on display in his Hunterian Museum. His 2.31 m (7 ft 7 in) skeleton was purchased in 1799 by the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London and it was then displayed for nearly two centuries.

In 2011, calls were made in the British Medical Journal by Len Doyal, Emeritus Professor of Medical Ethics at Queen Mary, University of London, and law lecturer Thomas Muinzer to put an end to the unethical display of Byrne's skeleton at the museum and for it to be buried at sea "as Byrne intended for himself". The article argued that Byrne's DNA had been taken and could be used in further research, but that it was now time to respect Byrne's burial wishes and attempt to morally rectify what happened.

A public poll conducted on the BMJ's website over December 2011—January 2012 in response to the article "Should the Skeleton of 'the Irish Giant' Be Buried at Sea?" by Doyal and Muinzer offered people the chance to vote on what they thought should happen to Byrne's remains. Doyal and Muinzer reported: "On the last count that we saw before voting ceased, 55.6% (310) voted for burial at sea; 13.17% (74) for removal from display and being kept for research; and 31.55% (176) for the status quo.

The BMJ article was widely reported and the resulting swell of public support for the campaign forced The Royal College of Surgeons to formally consider whether it should release Byrne's skeleton, the showpiece of their Hunterian Museum, in February 2012. They decided to continue the exhibit.

A further academic article was published in the International Journal of Culture and Property Law which deals with the legal issues raised by the display of Byrne's skeleton and contains new fieldwork carried out in Byrne's native townland of Drummullan, where the hamlet of Littlebridge is located. The article again calls for the release of Byrne's skeleton from his captor's museum on moral grounds and for a burial to be carried out in Byrne's homeland at, or as near as possible to, the Giant's Grave, a local site where folk tradition suggests Byrne wished to be buried. The article explains that as the legal system stands, people have no legal power to direct what will happen to their remains following death, and so rely on their loved ones to carry out their burial wishes so that they are buried with respect and dignity.

In May 2015, the then Mayor of Derry, Martin Reilly, wrote to the Museum's trustees advocating for "the importance of respecting the wishes of Mr Byrne in relation to his burial". In March 2017, Dr. Thomas Muinzer appeared in an interview on the NPR programme All Things Considered for a piece entitled "The saga of the Irish Giant's Bones dismays Medical Ethicists". On 6 June 2018, speaking on behalf of the campaign, Muinzer published an article in The Conversation entitled "Why a London museum should return the stolen bones of an Irish giant" as a result of recent developments with the case.

Following renewed pressure from campaigners, The Guardian reported in a 2018 article entitled "'Irish giant' may finally get respectful burial after 200 years on display" that the Trustees of the Hunterian Museum have confirmed that they will consider whether to release the skeleton of Charles Byrne for burial. A spokesperson for the Royal College of Surgeons said "The Hunterian Museum will be closed [from late 2016] until 2021 and Charles Byrne's skeleton is not currently on display. The board of trustees of the Hunterian collection will be discussing the matter during the period of closure of the museum"."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Byrne_(giant)

[nnozomi]

To the best of my recollection, wasn't it Nancy herself who had written to their relative Churchill to brand Diana a public danger? That she 'provide[d] her with support during her incarceration' does not, I depose, mean that she thought she and Sir Ogre should be free to run around being Fascists.
My good heavens. I'm far from a Mitford expert and I know that much, as you say it's hardly obscure. (Although I suppose the passage you quoted could be taken as a masterpiece of misdirection without actually lying, oy vey.)