It's Always More Complicated

I suppose people will never not be interested in the Mary Toft rabbit-birth case: this however is a somewhat different take born of going into a particular archive, Mary Toft and the Radical Birth Control Movement (an archive of which I have knowledge), though I am perhaps more interested that Griffith was asking Helena Wright to ask her side-piece, Kenneth Bruce MacFarlane, a distinguished historian, for reading recommendations. But that is because the ladies running that clinic, who were trying to make birth control a respectable cause were all into all sorts of what would now be considered polyamorous configurations.

(I will not advance my critiques from my personal knowledge of the birth control movement of the 20s and 30s....)

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Baptism record at Manchester Cathedral offers insight into Black Mancunian life in Georgian-era England:

When the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson gave a sermon in 1787 at Manchester Cathedral – during the city’s first mass meeting against the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans – he saw a “great crowd of black people standing round the pulpit”.
However, little is known about Black Mancunians in the Georgian era, which makes one recently rediscovered entry in parish records at Manchester Cathedral particularly significant.

The 6‑7 craze offered a brief window into the hidden world of children:

But as media scholars who study children’s culture, we didn’t view the meme with bewilderment or exasperation. Instead, we thought back to our own childhoods on three different continents – and all the secret languages we spoke.
....
With or without access to the internet, children will continue to transform language and games to suit their needs – which, yes, includes getting under the skin of adults.

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Not precisely 'history from below' - this was still the monarch's court, after all - but looking beyond the obvious players and how much there is to discover about them beyond the immediately apparent: Dwarfism, Institutionalisation and Marginalisation at the Court in Early Bourbon France:

I aim to demonstrate through my new Transactions article that a meticulous examination of archival sources can reveal far more about the lives and activities of people with dwarfism – and marginalised people in general – than the archive’s apparent silence initially suggests.
At the same time, I hope this study can serve as another example, alongside my book on Louis XIII’s court, of the rich potential in an approach to court studies that de-centres the monarch, his ministers and absolutism to better understand the court – its institutions and its culture – in its own right.

The man who invented the Tube: or rather, had the idea and campaigned for it, died shortly before the opening of the Metropolitan line, which may have something to do with his absence from the annals.

This is possibly a rather jaundiced view of current US polyamory: Once the province of utopian free-love communities, consensual non-monogamy is now the stuff of Park Slope marriages and prestige television.

However, this picture of privileged frolicing in the hay resonated somewhat with this: A new generation of sexually adventurous middle-aged women are exploring kink and fantasies without shame, according to the founder of one of the UK’s largest sex-positive communities.

Admittedly these occasions sound not unlike the parties described to me by 70s Swinger:

Women are consciously in the driving seat at Killing Kittens events – men, known as Toms, are not allowed to attend without a woman, and when the fun gets started, only women can make the first approach.

It also makes me think back to some of the 'free-love' types in the 1920s, who seemed to me to be coming possibly less from a utopian sex-reform tradition than trying to democratise a kind of Edwardian (and longer) house-party trad of partner-swapping.

Whereas at another level entirely, unfortunate couples find themselves stuck together because they cannot afford to divorce: Financial pressures have led to postponement of 19% of divorces, involving 270,000 couples, Legal & General claims.

Spotted lately on Twitter, but did not engage, somebody (who was I think getting their head handed to them, yay) claiming that polyamory had zero to do with Romance, unlike monogamy, that epitome of Teh Romantickal.

*Larft hysterically in historian*

Thinking of all those looong centuries in Western Europe (in order to confine this discussion to a society in which heterosexual monogamy was technically the hegemonic norm) in which marriage had very little to do with luhrve.

In fact so little to do with amorous passion that the medieval Courts of Love decreed that l'amour courtois could not possibly be A Thing betwixt spouses, 'twas flyin' in the face of nature.

And even in these days here, we feel that over the longer term, monogamy involves certain trade-offs of high romantic passion for the kind of bureaucratic organisation and scheduling that person was deploring as characteristic of polyamorists, because living a life together, if romance segues into marriage or at least cohabitation, and maybe offspring, and having of individual lives beyond coupledom, is going to involve a certain amount of administration. (And that's not getting into the territory of those couples still in the earlier stages in which one writes into advice givers that t'other expects them to do All The Arranging, or Taking Care of Financial Matters, and how this is somewhat taking the shiny glow off...)

Somehow I feel this here is somewhat related to this idea of The Romantic: this week's 'You Be The Judge' in The Guardian: should my fellow bridesmaid dial down the hen-do plans?, and given that fellow bridesmaid expresses her side of things thusly:

My philosophy is that a girl’s wedding is the most important day of her life. We need to be there as much as possible for Alisee because she will only do this once. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been through it myself, but I don’t think Alisee’s demands are crazy. It’s just what you do when you get married; you distribute responsibilities among your bridesmaids, and ask them to plan your hen.... I’m supporting Alisee and suggesting additions that will make the hen do extra special, like professional catering and a lovely villa with a pool.

Okay, diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks, but really: in this century, 'a girl’s wedding is the most important day of her life'? - (not to mention 'only do this once' /cynicism) - one would hope that there would be opportunities for other important days? In particular something that is becoming less of a significant rite de passage for the celebrants, who have probably been living together for yonks and may even have children, and more of a conspicuous ritual display?