The History Society Podcast Oxford Brookes University History Society

The last execution carried out in the Isle of Man, that of John Kewish, embarrassed Queen Victoria so much that the Manx Criminal Code of 1872, decades in the making, was amended in the same year. The last death sentence, passed on Tony Teare in 1992, was the final example of a mandatory death sentence being passed when all concerned knew that the UK government would never allow it to be carried out. The disjunction between law and reality was so sharp that the Manx legislature abolished the death penalty before Teare was retried, and sentenced to mandatory life imprisonment. Why was Queen Victoria embarrassed? Why did the Isle of Man retain the death penalty for so long after effective abolition in the UK? The answer to both questions lies in the status of the Isle of Man as a Crown dependency, neither independent nor part of the UK.

In this talk, Bill Gibson examines the way in which the history of sex in the eighteenth century has tended to exclude religion from discussions. In fact, attitudes to sex were strongly influenced by religion - and not always in the ways that might be expected. Some aspects of sex were disapproved of by the clergy, but in many cases religion was responsible for the liberalising attitudes towards sex and sexual behaviour. The talk considers some surprising aspects of sex in the period and makes a case that we cannot secularise sex.

In this episode, Dr Watson explores the pheneomenon of vitriol (strong sulphuric acid) throwing in Britain across two centuries, touching upon themes of gender, class, and location along the way. Apologies for the abrupt start - recording began a minute or two into the presentation

In part two of this episode, Dr Melanie Bashor continues her discussion about presentations of race and tolerance in British media during the twentieth century

In this episode, Dr Jamie Goodall talks about the maritime communities of the Chesapeake Bay region in the United States during the nineteenth century. Aplogies for the abrupt start to the episode; the recording begins a minute or two into Dr Goodall's talk.

In this episode, Dr Crook and Professor O'Hara compare the COVID-19 pandemic to other public health crises in British history and offer their predictions of how coronavirus will shape politics in Britain in the years to come