‘Children of the poor’ taken on an outing of the Birmingham Cinderella Club to Sutton Park by J. Crwys Richards

Social reformers like Charles Dickens and Mary Carpenter in the 19th century, and Robert Sherard in the 20th were concerned that being out on the s...

‘Children of the poor’ taken on an outing of the Birmingham Cinderella Club to Sutton Park by J. Crwys Richards

‘Children of the poor’ taken on an outing of the Birmingham Cinderella Club to Sutton Park by J. Crwys Richards

‘In the Happy Days of Our Childhood’ by Maria Cadbury

Maria wrote this memoir much later in life at the request of her niece. Maria was born in 1838 and was the daughter of John Cadbury and his wife Ca...

‘In the Happy Days of Our Childhood’ by Maria Cadbury

In the late 18th and 19th centuries seaside holidays became popular with those families who could afford them. With improved transport links, this...

‘Inspector and Starved Child', National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Birmingham Branch Fourth Annual Report

In the late 19th century many children were seen as victims, not of the cruelty of the workplace, but of their parents and neighbours. The NSPCC en...

A Gypsy Encampment, by David Cox

Artists have often sentimentalised gypsies, using them as local colour in idealised rural settings. Here, however, it appears that David Cox has sk...

Edgbastonia Title Page, 1881

‘The contents will be of local interest, or local production, and […] they shall be of a healthy moral tone, and be altogether non-political and un...

Edgbastonia Title Page, 1900

Edgbastonia magazine greeted the new century with a re-designed title page.

Mr Wheeley's, Edgbaston, by Charles Barber

Many of Charles Barber’s drawings are simply labelled with their district rather than a specific location, but this farmhouse is helpfully titled <...

The Sitting Room, by Myra Bunce

‘Mr. Bunce is an intense lover of art and artists […] notable examples of Wainwright, of his old friend Henshaw, of H. Moore, Langley, J. Collier, ...

19th Century Black Performance

Black performance in Britain has a long history. As far back as the sixteenth century musicians had a presence in public life, playing at the court...