Queer Places:
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
Oatfield, Piccotts End, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire
Lucy
Barbara Hammond (née Bradby, July 25, 1873 - November 14, 1961) was an
English social historian who researched and wrote many influential books with
her husband, John Lawrence Hammond, including the Labourer trilogy about the
impact of enclosure and the Industrial Revolution upon the lives of workers.[3]
Eleanor Rathbone chose to go to Oxford for her university education and at
the age of twenty-one at Somerville College met significant friends,
Hilda Oakley and
Barbara Bradby,
who were to last a lifetime. Other women in Eleanor’s circle of friends
included Agnes Catherine
Maitland, the Principal of Somerville,
Alice Bruce, the Vice-Principal,
Miss
Pope, the modern language tutor and Sara Melhuish the history tutor.
Born on 25 July 1873, Lucy Barbara Bradby was the seventh child of Edward
Bradby, who was a master at Harrow and
headmaster of Haileybury
College.[2] In
1885, her father retired from Haileybury and moved to the new charitable
settlement of Toynbee
Hall in London's East End,
with the family residing at St
Katharine Docks – a significant change from Barbara's rural upbringing but
which she took in her stride.[4] She
was then sent to the progressive new boarding school of St
Leonards in Scotland, which was pioneering academic education for girls.[2]
In 1892, she won a scholarship to Lady
Margaret Hall, Oxford, following her sister Dorothy. She was the first
woman student at Oxford to use a bicycle and was also head of the college's boat
club, captain of the hockey team
and a tennis champion.[1][5] She
further distinguished herself by being the first woman to take a double-first in Classical
Moderations and Greats –
a set of examinations renowned for their difficulty.[2]
At Oxford, she became a fellow of Lady Margaret Hall.[7] There,
she had met John
Lawrence Hammond and they married in 1901 after he had established a
career in political journalism, becoming the editor of the Liberal weekly
review, The
Speaker, in 1899. They lived in Battersea and
were both active in campaigning against the Boer
War. She was also active in the Women's
Industrial Council until ovarian
tuberculosis forced her to retire and also prevented her from having
children.[2]
The couple moved to Hampstead
Heath in 1905 for the sake of her health, which was now delicate.[2] In
1907, John became secretary of the Civil
Service Commission and this position gave him sufficient time to write
books too.[2] They
worked together on these with Barbara focussing on the research while John
concentrated on the writing. While she had done better academically at Oxford,
she told her husband John that "she hated using her brains".[8] He
wrote that her strength was "putting great masses of fact & detail in order,
seizing their significance & seeing how they should be set out."[8] Their
first work together was a study of the effects of enclosure and
the Industrial
Revolution upon the working
classes. When taken to the publishers, Longmans,
this was found to be too long and so Barbara restructured the work into
separate volumes.[9] The
first of these was The Village Labourer which was published in 1911.[2] This
was well-received and had an immediate political impact, informing Liberal
policy produced by the Land
Enquiry Committee of David
Lloyd George – a driver of the Liberal
welfare reforms.[10]
In 1912, they moved again to a farmhouse called Oatfield in the rustic village
of Piccotts End which
was to be their home for most of their lives. Barbara would work here while
tending the large garden and collection of animals. Their friend, the
historian Arnold J.
Toynbee, recounted her spartan, therapeutic
lifestyle which emphasised fresh air – open windows, long walks, riding
and outdoor sleeping.[11] She
would make occasional trips to the Public
Record Office for research while John spent more time in London for his
job. During the Second World War, he worked at the Manchester
Guardian and so they moved to Manchester for
the duration but then returned to Piccotts End in 1945. John died there in
1949 and Barbara died later in 1961.[2]
My published books:
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