Browse Topics
- Arts
- Buildings, Architecture & Monuments
- Business, Trade, Industry & Commerce
- Advertising
- Agriculture & Countryside
- Banks, Finance and Legal Services
- Domestic Service
- Innovation & Inventions
- International Contact & Trade
- Legal Services
- Printing and Publishing
- Shops & Retail
- Tourism and Hospitality
- Trades, Industries & Manufacturing
- Brass Trade
- Button Trade
- Carpet Making
- Ceramics and Pottery Industry
- Charcoal
- Chemical Industry
- Coins and Minting
- Engineering
- Glass Trade
- Gun, Sword and Weapons Trade
- Iron and Metal Trades
- Jewellery, Decorative and Toy Trades
- Mining
- Needle and Fish Hook Trades
- Pewter Industry
- Rope Industry
- Textile Industry
- Tools, Machinery and Equipment
- Unemployment
- Work, Pay & Conditions
- Culture & Diversity
- Events, Celebrations & Disasters
- Health & Medicine
- Religion, Ideas & Beliefs
- Science, Nature and Environment
- Society
- Sport & Leisure
- Transport
Schools & Education

1900s Summer School group, including Rendle Harris
1900s Summer School group, including Rendle Harris Image from: Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre.

A Portrait of Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworth: Author and Educationalist Text: Kate Iles Image: Birmingham City Archives Maria Edgeworth was born in Oxford in… read more »




A Portrait of Richard Lovell Edgeworth
Richard Lovell Edgeworth: Inventor, Educator and Reformer In 1744, Edgeworth was born in Bath into a landowning… read more »



A Portrait of Thomas Day
Thomas Day: Humanitarian and Reformer Thomas Day was born in 1748. His father was a landowner and… read more »


A “Modern” Education
Image: Print of Hazelwood School. Image from: Local Studies and History, Birmingham Central Library Unlike the Edgeworths, the Hills… read more »




Anna Seward, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Thomas Day and Brooke Boothby
Image: Engraving of Richard Lovell Edgeworth Birmingham Central Library 4. Anna Seward, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Thomas Lichfield and… read more »


Liberalism and an Educative Society
Image: Tablet dedicated to Joseph Priestley in the Church of the Messiah Broad Street, Birmingham. The dedication… read more »



The Lunar Society and Education
Image: Lunar Society member, Thomas Day, humanitarian poet and writer, who tried to introduce Rousseau’s educational ideas into… read more »




The Lunar Society and Education
Image: Richard Lovell Edgeworth, member of the Lunar Society, inventor and writer. The educational publication, Practical Education was… read more »


The other side of the Coin: Women and the Lunar Men
Image: Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797), An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump(Exhibited 1768). Oil on Canvas.… read more »


The Spon Lane School, 1845
Image: The Spon Lane Schools, Smethwick built by Chance Brothers, Glassmakers (1845) from an original design in watercolour.… read more »



Women’s Education and Emancipation
Image: Maria Edgeworth, the daughter of Priestley’s friend, R L Edgeworth and an important writer on educational… read more »