Linda Fleming

Drawing on a wide range of source materials from across Scotland, this sourcebook provides new insights into women’s attitudes to the society in which they lived, and how they negotiated their identities within private and public life. Organised in thematic chapters, it moves from the private and intimate experiences of sexuality, health and sickness to Scotswomen's migrations across the British empire, illustrating many facets of women's lives - domesticity and waged work, defiance of law and convention, religious faith and respectability, political action and public influence. A range of fascinating and rich source material sheds new light on the lives of women across Scotland throughout the long nineteenth century, demonstrating the pervasiveness of discourses of appropriate feminine behaviour, but also women’s subversion of this. It raises challenging questions for researchers about the identification of women’s voices, where these have been muted by class, religion, or ethnicity, while at the same time providing a methodology for uncovering these. Thought-provoking and innovative, this text will prove an invaluable resource for students, teachers and researchers. It will enable them to discover new ways of understanding the Scottish past and serve as a guide to redressing the gender imbalance of historical narratives.

This book examines the relationships forged between police officers and the diverse urban and rural communities in which they have lived and worked in Scotland across the twentieth century, demonstrating patterns that were diverse and variegated. It considers both the formal rhetoric (and sets of structures) that defined and prescribed the policing ideal as well as the experience of policing from a range of grassroots' perspectives. Drawing on a wealth of archival materials, oral history interviews, and memoirs, as well as previously unused primary sources, the author identifies and explains the factors that led to not only co-operation, consensus and the building of trust, but also points of tension and conflict across a century of social, political and technological change.

This title compiles the voices of around a hundred Scottish women, many never before heard. The editors of this volume introduce topics and debates relevant to nineteenth-century women's everyday lives, using selected primary source material to demonstrate key points. The editors' introductions to key themes provide an entry point to Scottish Women's history and the sources seeing print for the first time will attract an audience of readers lacking easy access to the archives. The volume taps into the popularity of primary source-based activities in the schools curriculum as well as making many primary sources available to a wider readership for the first time. It is first book-length approach to this topic. It offers a companion to the Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women. It includes new research that are available for the first time. It includes valuable sources and commentaries.