AA309... passed!

The result was due to come out on the 12th but i am not complaining about it coming out early. I passed my course of this year AA309! I am very happy about this as it was my first Level 3 course and also passing this means that i now have a Diploma in Classical Studies. In two years time lets see if i can add the BA...

Call to scrap history lessons for children

A report into primary schooling in the UK will call for lessons in history, geography and science to be removed from the curriculum and replaced by what appears to be multi-disciplinary subjects and project work for example "instead of discrete lessons in history, design and engineering skills, pupils in York might do a project about the city's architecture encompassing all those skills".

If it really does work out that way then this could be a good thing. The study of history shouldn't be in a vacuum. To gain a full understanding you may need to study maps, climate, terrain (geography). You may also need to analyse large quantities of data (statistics) and consider how ancient machinery actually worked in reality (engineering). If that is how they could change the study of "history" then that, i feel, would increase the understanding of students and increase the relevancy of history to young minds.

At my final year at primary school my teacher, a Mr Saunders, took this project based approach to learning. We were allowed to study and research topics of our choosing and write up our findings in a project book (i did about 17 actually, i've always been prolific!) thus covering history, research, interpretation, presentation and design. And this was in about 1981 so he was very far-sighted!

German national photographic archive to be posted to Wikipedia

The German government (who should be greatly applauded) has donated it's national photographic archive to the world and is in the process of putting them on Wikipedia (or rather to Wikimedia Commons) as this was judged the best way for the material to reach the public. 100,000 photographs have been made available, eventually it is hoped 11 million others will join them.

A trio of samples.


Frigate SMS Thetis


Otto Von Bismark


Berlin, Unter den Linden, Neubauten

Course materials arrive

I received my course materials today for next year's study, which is the Open Uni's AA312 Total war and social change: Europe 1914-1955. The course officially starts in February but i'll probably start it at the beginning of the year so i can get a bit of slack in case it is needed. I am already reading for the course, currently P.M.H. Bell's "The Origins of the Second World War". Its an excellent book i got from BCU's (which is where i work) library. In fact i like it so much i am thinking of buying it next year for my military book collection.

World's oldest animal discovered after analysis of 1900 photograph

Jonathan, a tortoise on St. Helena, has been named the world's oldest living animal after he was identified in a photograph taken in 1900. He came to the island in 1882 and was mature already and so already at least 50 years old. Therefore it has been calculated that he is at least 178 years old.

He was discovered when a collection of photographs taken in the Boer War came to light. Experts have confirmed that the tortoise in the photograph is Jonathan (one assumes he has some unique distinguishing marks). Despite his age he still regularly mates with 3 much younger females, and so is an inspiration to all of us.

How the Genners changed over time

An interesting website which i found earlier is National Trust Names. This uses census data from 1881 and 1998 and can show on a map the frequency of surnames being found in various areas of the UK. Unfortunately there is no option to view the 2 maps side by side... so i created my own charting the location of people who shared my ancestor's name Genner.



The darker the colour the more Genners there are! As can be seen in 1881 mid-Wales was a common place to find Genners and also the South West Midlands (where my ancestor Mary lived after leaving India). However the most common place was Southall in NW London (not that easy to see on the map). By 1998 many have moved out of mid-Wales with the Black Country being the most common area though also more to be found in the North East, and a lot now in southern Wales too. Many seem also to have left London.

So what can this tell me? Well a major question that remains unanswered is where did Richard Genner (Mary's husband) come from. The fact Mary went to live in Gloucestershire with her new husband Thomas Butler i thought was primarily because he came from Stroud (which is recorded on census returns i have) but perhaps Richard Genner also came from the area, maybe he knew Butler from before he joined the army. However there were also a lot of Genner's in the North East and his regiment was the York & Lancaster Regiment which would have recruited a lot of their men (though probably not all, it would be interesting to know if Butler was in the same regiment) locally. So basically this doesn't help much at all, however is interesting all the same!

After Rome: Holy War and Conquest

It was on at the weekend though i did not watch it until last night, part 1 of a 2 part series written and presented Boris Johnson (the Mayor of London of course and former Tory MP) on the rise of Islam after the fall of Rome and the conflicts between Christianity and Islam.

There is a lot of history on TV these days but much of it relies of gimmickry and reconstructions, often the same blurry battle scene over and over again (just in case the viewer doesn't know what men fighting with swords looks like). This programme refreshingly did not, it was presented in a simple style: Boris in various locations and talking to a number of experts, with a bit of architecture and art thrown in. Unlike many history programmes on TV i felt this one actually treated me as intelligent, which is nice. Part 2 is on next Saturday.

Roman credit crunch

Oxford historian Philip Kay has discovered what he believes was the first "credit crunch" or at least a major financial crisis in Rome in the early 1st century BCE. He says that in 66BCE Cicero gave a speech where he alluded to events in 88BCE where Mithridates VI of Pontus invaded Roman Asia. The invasion cost Rome so much money that credit was destroyed in Rome. The loss of the monies in Asia having a knock-on effect to Rome said to be similar to how the US sub-prime has had a knock-on effect to the UK economy. Yeah OK well its got Kay in the papers anyway.

Unfortunately Kay continues how Rome got itself out of the financial mess is not yet known.

Coming up blank with Genner

I have been searching on Find My Past using their search of military records to see when i could find when Richard Genner died as previous searching has indicated he probably died between 1854 and 1861. However i couldn't find any record of him (or any Genner at all apart from Sarah Genner's baptism for which i already have a copy of the certificate).

Of course he may not have died in service but left the Army and died afterwards. No marriage records came up either. I searched on Jenner too but also no joy.

Bus Museum Collectors Fair

The Aston Manor Transport Museum had another event yesterday, mostly it was a collectors fair for enthusiasts but also there was some bus running. I didn't have time to take a ride unfortunately, just missing the Bristol VR and my wife wasn't keen in standing in the cold for half an hour just to wait for a bus for some reason. I bought a book on the trams of Birmingham incidentally. They used to run past on the road i now live on. I remember when they dug up the High St in Erdington one could see the tram lines which had been tarmacked over back in the early 1950s. It is funny how now cities are bringing the trams back.

Google aim to digitize newspaper archives

Google are aiming to digitize every amount of information out there and make it searchable it seems (maybe one day even the notebooks my Mum has kept from the 1970s detailing how much food cost then). The latest step is to digitize the archives of newspapers which is truly going to be a massive task. There are already some of these archives available such as the Times Digital Archive which i find very fascinating. Though i'd really love to see some local newspapers such as the (Birmingham) Evening Mail and Sutton Coldfield News archives, i suspect these might not be in the Google search for a few years...

Fire! Murder! Revenge!

Having access to various online newspaper archives i have been trying to see if any of my ancestors have appeared in print, for example if Richard Genner loss in combat was listed. So far i haven't found anything like that but i did find a rather interesting story involving a "Richard Genner" back in 1811. I don't think he is a relation, though you never know. My Grandmother always said she was related to Dr Jenner of smallpox fame.

In the "Hull Packet and Original Weekly Commercial, Literary and General Advertiser" is a story entitled "Extraordinary Case" and it recounts the news that the sons of the respected farmer Richard Genner of Mayersfield, Sussex found a letter in the road addressed to their father. The letter was titled "Fire! Murder! and Revenge!" and threatened to destroy the parson's and churchwarden's homes and the farms of the area. The sons said they saw the letter being dropped by the Reverend Bingham after he had given a service in the parish and was on horseback to another.

We then read that Bingham's home caught fire and that he blamed the foresters for it. However investigators found his explanation of intruders suspicious and placed some men nearby to keep a watch on Bingham and in doing so they found he had a hidden room at his home where all his papers and other valuables were being kept safe. Bingham was committed to trial for fraud. A later newspaper article reports that he was also indited with writing the threatening letter to Jenner.

Sounds like an ideal plot for a BBC period piece to me.

Viewing Ancient Rome in Google Earth

You can now view Ancient Rome using Google Earth, or rather a virtual representation. 320CE was a little too early for photography, satellites and banks of servers. This, however, makes me think that it would be rather cool to be able to view an area in GE (or elsewhere) as it changed over time, maybe by adjusting a slider. Of course the amount of imagery you would require would be vast.

One could see how a site (such as the university) had changed over time. Such as from this...



To this...



...and to this.

Tracking down Richard Genner's demise

As i have already found out in my ancestry research my great-great-great-great grandfather (is that the right number of greats?!) Richard Genner was a private in the 84th Infantry regiment in the middle part of the 19th century, serving in India. This i discovered from the baptism certificate of Sarah Ann Genner dated 1854. However his wife, Mary, appears in the 1861 census living in Stroud and married to someone else. So we can assume Richard died sometime between 1854 and 1861. (Divorce was an option but was pretty unlikely for the time and the people involved.)

The 84th Foot was involved in the Bengal rebellion in India in 1857 which i have been tracking using online archived editions of the Times newspaper. A 14th July 1857 news snippet for example mentions part of the regiment going to the fort at Cawnpore. This was later the scene of a siege and massacre at the hands of Nana Sahib. Of course it doesn't mean Richard was involved in this battle as only part of the regiment was deployed there. Although some casualty lists are given in the Times so far i have been unable to find his name, the lists tend to concentrate on officers anyway and Richard was only a private! There has been a book published on the history of the regiment so perhaps that may give some more information. I am continuing the investigation anyway, i suspect this will be a long-term project.

Although i am interested in the circumstances of Richard's demise i am more interested in where he came from and Mary Genner's origins too. On the census she listed her birthplace as "Madras" so perhaps she was the daughter of Europeans in India, maybe her father was a soldier too. Finding out where Richard came from would be very interesting. His regiment (York & Lancaster) indicates he could be from the North.

Relatives i never knew

Some photos have come into my possession (along with some copies of certificates and documents) of a relative of mine (well that is not 100% certain but it is fairly safe to guess that they are as the photos were together with one of my great-grand mother). The problem is, no one knows who they are. Well no one i can ask know anyway. The photos are pre-WW2 i would have said and i suspect could be taken in the 1920s perhaps or even earlier. Of course if you can identify the people let me know.

Hitler's favourite food off the menu

A Flemish chef has been taken off the air in Belgium because on his TV programme he recreated the favourite food of a rather famous man, there being nothing wrong with that of course except that the man in question was Adolf Hitler. Descendants of Hitler's victims said the programme could humanise him. Well actually i think that is a good idea.

Hitler was born a normal person and it might be more useful to see him as a normal person than a monster to remind us that everyone has the possibility of turning into that monster. Anyway he liked pan-fried trout and squid apparently. So wasn't a vegetarian after all.

Starting my new course

I have started reading for my next Open University course, AA312 Total war and social change: Europe 1914-1955. The course doesn't start until next February but the course materials will probably arrive before Christmas and it doesn't hurt to start a little background reading now. On the Open Uni website forums some fellow students have posted a few suggested readings and the BCU library has some of the books.

Considering BCU doesn't have any history courses it has a surprisingly OK selection of history books in the library. Actually i tell a lie, they have just started a new course History and its Contemporary Application BA(Hons). So hopefully that will mean an even bigger selection of history books in the library in future. (Update : the course has been postponed for a year. Boo!)

Anyway i have just read Henig's "Versailles and after 1919-1933" (very easy to read actually, its only a short pamplet. Now i have started on Lieven's "Russia and the origins of the first world war", which wasn't a suggested read but looks relevant anyway.

The American connection

As i mentioned before my Great-Grandfather Stephen Morris was listed on someone's family tree on the Ancestry.com website. What is interesting is that Ancestry user was in the USA and looking at the full family tree it does seem i have some American relatives i never knew of before. Stephen's son Albert (hence my Nan's brother) had a daughter who married into the Read family from Staffordshire and their son is married to someone from the Hays family who hail from Alabama, USA so perhaps Mr Read (or his parents) emigrated to the USA. Unfortunately the website does not give details of living people (for identity security reasons no doubt) so i don't know the names of these fairly distant relatives.

D9 50th Anniversary

History is not just walking around museums or trawling through dusty archives, history also includes the preservation of the once commonplace and mundane. Old buses are an interest of mine though mainly from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. One of my favourite places to visit in this vein is the Aston Manor Transport Museum which held an open day today to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the BMMO D9 bus.



So the theme of the day was Midland Red, personally i grew up in WMPTE territory so my Midland Red experience is not that wide, i remember taking the X99 a few times to Sutton Coldfield. That doesn't matter, it was great to see a wide selection of Midland Red and other operators' buses including at least 3 Routemasters. I travelled on one of these and later a D9 on some trips to the city centre and back. The great thing about this kind of history is that you can interact with it, relive it. You can't really do that with a Roman sword, well not legally anyway.

The full set of pictures are here. For more information about the D9 this webpage has a brief history.

The history of Birmingham Polytechnic / UCE / BCU

An older blog i used to run was dedicated to the history and memories of Birmingham Polytechnic / UCE / BCU which was where i studied Computer Studies & Software Engineering a long time ago. That blog has now gone but i kept some of the old material so why not reuse it on this new history orientated blog? The series will focus on the various buildings and schools of the institution but first an introduction.

The City of Birmingham Polytechnic was designated in 1971, by Mrs Thatcher no less who was the then Minister of Education, but was the second polytechnic of the city of Birmingham. A polytechnic institute was first formed in 1843 and lasted for 10 years. Charles Dickens was among the guest speakers at the polytechnic which at it's height boasted 500 members however support fell away and the polytechnic closed in 1853. The polytechnic was replaced by the Birmingham and Midland Institute which still exists to this day (indeed my OU tutorials are held there).

The City of Birmingham Polytechnic was formed in 1971 from a number of different colleges and institutions including the Birmingham School of Music, the Birmingham College of Art & Design and the North & South Birmingham Technical Colleges. The North Birmingham Technical College indeed formed the core campus of the polytechnic at Perry Barr which is still the centre of the university and indeed where i am typing this now!

Over the years more colleges joined the polytechnic including the Bournville College of Art however in 1992 the polytechnic like so many (if not all) in the UK became a university following the passing of the 1992 Further & Higher Education Act which allowed polytechnics to become universities if they should choose to. So by the time of the start of the 1992 academic year the institution was known as the University of Central England in Birmingham. I had just finished my HND and was about to start my degree so can claim to be an alumnus of both the polytechnic and university.


Architect model of the new campus for North Birmingham Technical College which later became Attwood and Baker building of City North Campus of the university.

More colleges joined the university including the Birmingham and Solihull College of Nursing and Midwifery and the West Midlands School of Radiography. In 2005 the university changed it's brand name to UCE Birmingham because it was felt few people knew where UCE was and "Birmingham" needed a higher profile in the name but in 2007 the University went the whole hog and changed it's name again to Birmingham City University. I am an employee now of the institution (and have been since 2001) so have been here for all 3 major name changes.

So that is a basic introduction, in future parts of this series i will go into greater detail and also present a number of interesting photographs. In the meantime you could check out the wiki page for the polytechnic (which i wrote) and the university's own history page.

Family tree builder

As i am continuing to investigate my family tree (which very quickly became too large to write on 1 sheet of A4 - and i haven't even started with my Dad's family yet) i need to get some software to create and manage my family tree for me, i am trying out MyHeritage's Family Tree Builder which is free. There are some online tools too but i haven't tried them yet.

Getting to a dead end with the Genners for now i have started on the Morrises. Interestingly my Great-grandfather Stephen Morris is listed on Ancestry.co.uk as having died in 1920. Which is a bit odd as he looked after my Mum as a child, when my Nan was ill (and ironically enough was in a convalescing home a stones throw from where i now live) which either meant my Mum is a lot older than she claims or the site is wrong. My Mum has his burial card and he actually died in 1949, i can't quite see how the site has come up with this 1920 figure though he is in someone else's family tree they have set up on that site so maybe they just got it wrong?

AA309... done!

On Tuesday i took the exam for my current OU course (AA309 Culture, identity and power in the Roman empire) in the Great Hall at Birmingham University. A lot more grand than Baker Hall at my workplace, Birmingham City University! The exam went OK, i was able to answer all the questions i needed to. Unfortunately the gaps in my revision co-incided with the questions more than i would have liked but i was able to remember a lot of information for the questions i was able to answer.

I don't like to speculate on how i was done (i feel that is bad luck) but i should have done OK. Passing the course will earn me a Diploma in Classical Studies (Open) and put me 2/3 of the way to a BA in History. Next year i will be doing AA312 Total war and social change: Europe 1914-1955, which is slightly different.

Long Acre photographs

These two photographs were taken by my Grandfather a long time ago. Unfortunately they are undated and unlabelled but are likely to be of Long Acre, Aston in the early 1960s or late 1950s. In the second photo you can see the power station that Star City was built upon. Its a very different area now of course, few if any of the buildings seen here still exist and of course the M6, A38(M) and Gravelly Hill Interchange are yet to come.

Beginning to research my family tree

My Dad started the genealogy thing a few years ago and i have always been meaning to join in the effort and try and get going with it. Unfortunately he died before i got the chance, anyway now my current OU course is over (exam result in December) i thought i would finally get started. Luckily my Nan's sister's son-in-law back in the 1970s hired a researcher to look into this already so i got a head start with some old census results and my great-great-great-great-aunt's baptism certificate (actually not 100% sure i put all the greats in there, my papers are at home) which is interesting as she was baptised in Jackatalla in India which nowadays looks like this.

My great-great-great-great grandfather Richard Genner was a private in the 84th Infantry regiment serving in India, i'm assuming this is the 84th Foot (York & Lancaster) Regiment which was in India at the time. A few years later my great-great-great-great grandmother Mary was, according to the 1861 census, living in Kings Stanley, Gloucestershire married to a retired sargeant Thomas Butler. I'm assuming Richard died in India (divorce is a possibly but pretty unlikely i would have thought considering the time) and Mary re-married Thomas, perhaps in the same regiment. The regiment fought in the Sepoy rebellion and lost a lot of soldiers.

To go back any further i'll need to try and get Richard and Mary Genner's birth certificates though this could be problematical. Anyway a trip to the archives at the British Library must be planned for next year. Now to explore some other branches of my family tree.

Last TMA back

My last TMA for this course AA309 (unless you are an Open University student this will be a bit confusing) was marked and returned back to me today... and my best mark of the course so far! Almost an A in fact and as this was a 3000 word essay on Roman identity on a Level 3 course i am pretty chuffed. Onwards to the exam now in early October. Three hours in Birmingham University's Great Hall. At least i have something nice to look at while i am desperately trying to think what to write! BTW i am thinking of creating an OU blog.

Old Birmingham in photographs

A couple of photos from my collection of "old" Birmingham. Though not that old really, no older than the 1970s or 1980s (but of course to any teenager this means ancient history). As a fan of Brutalist architecture I prefer the old Bull Ring to the swish modern one, though i have to admit the shops in the new one are better!

Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project

The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project is a website dedicated to the preservation and history of cylinder recordings, the format of choice in the late 19th and early 20th centuries before the disc took over. Most of the earliest recordings of human voice and performance are on this format, and over 7,000 are digitized and available on this website they say. So check out some Ragtime or Vaudeville!

The recordings can be listened to online or downloaded as mp3 or wav. The oldest recording dates from 1894 and is by Foh's 23rd Regiment Band of New York.

Final TMA

I just have one more assignment to do for my course before starting revision and the exam in early October. My assignment is to write a 3000 word essay on Roman identity, i did very well last night writing 948 words (a week of research has already taken place), this evening i felt ill after i returned home from work and slept for awhile but after the second "session" i'm up to 1341 words. Whether it makes sense is another matter but i have another week to finish it.

Welcome to historical research

Welcome to my blog dedicated to the study and research of history. Let me introduce myself first, i am a history undergraduate (Open University) and also a keen reader of military history, i have also recently begun to research my family tree.

All of these topics will be covered here.