'Wounded, Widows & Orphans:Civil War Petitions': a talk by Dr Ismini Pells

20-11-19 - 20-11-19,
7:30 PM - 9:30 PM

Admission: ££10 per person (£8 students or Friends of the Museum)

Location: Huntingdon Town Hall

As part of the 2019 Cromwell Lecture Series, the Cromwell Museum is delighted to welcome part of the team working on the remarkable 'Civil War Petitions' project, Dr Ismini Pells. 

The English Civil Wars were a time of terrible conflict, with a greater proportion of the population killed than in the First World War. For those who survived, thousands suffered from terrible injuries whilst wives, children and other family members faced daily struggles as a result of bereavement. During and after the Civil Wars, wounded soldiers, war widows and other family members submitted petitions to the state for financial relief. The Civil War Petitions Project has compiled online over 4,000 petitions revealing the human stories of maimed soldiers and war widows; this talk will examine some of those stories and what they reveal about this tumultuous period.

Dr Ismini Pells joined the Centre for English Local History at the University of Leicester as a postdoctoral research fellow in July 2017. She studied for her PhD at the University of Cambridge, where she completed a thesis in 2014 examining the career of Philip Skippon, commander of the infantry in the New Model Army. Since then, she has worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Exeter on a Wellcome Trust-funded project examining early modern medical practitioners, during which she researched the careers of practitioners in Civil War armies. She has also published articles and contributed chapters to collections on various military and medical topics relating to the Civil Wars. 

This is part of a four part lecture series on the Civil War period. Discounted combined tickets for all four talks can be purchased at: the Cromwell Lecture Series (click on this title for the link).

The other talks are by John Rees on 'The Levellers', Professor John Morrill on 'Cromwell and Ireland' and Allen Packwood on 'Churchill and Cromwell'. 

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