Emma Butcher

Lily of Liberty: Amelia Bloomer at 200

With her newspaper, The Lily, Amelia Bloomer changed how American women thought about themselves; with her popularisation of the bloomer, she changed how they dressed. Her progressive thinking remains relevant in her bicentenary year.

‘The Modern Medea – The Story of Margaret Garner’, an account of infanticide by an enslaved woman in the US periodical Harper’s Weekly, c. 1867. New York Public Library. Public Domain.

Esther Lack’s Most ‘Barbarous and Revolting Murder’

Infanticide is as shocking today as it was 200 years ago, but impressions of its perpetrators have evolved – most notably in the 1865 case of Esther Lack.