Social

The governors of the London Foundling Hospital recruited an external network of nurses to care for children. For many, the bonds established endured.

London used to ring with the cries of street sellers. Changes for the city brought changes to their way of life.

Theft in East Germany was so common as to be nicknamed ‘the people’s sport’. Why were citizens of the GDR so light-fingered?

Withdrawing labour is an age-old response to workplace grievances. But how old are strikes, and have they ever worked?

The sacking of a young worker on 20 August 1976 escalated into a defining industrial conflict of the late 1970s.

A century of struggle over the meaning of ‘Jerusalem’. 

Before the secret ballot, voting in Britain was a theatrical, violent and public affair. The Act that made democracy private turned 150 this year.

The ‘emigration’ of thousands of poor London children in the 19th century was seen by its organisers as an act of Christian deliverance, but the experience of the young people sent to Canada tells a different story. 

Britain has been a high inequality, high poverty nation for most of the last 200 years.