Scratching out a living by the river: The Medieval Female Proletariat

How do we know how poor women lived in the Middle Ages when historians have ignored them? Walk along the river and meet 6 medieval women.

By The Naked Anthropologist

Date and time

Starts on Thu, 2 May 2024 18:00 GMT+1

Location

Southwark Gateway Needle

1 Tooley Street Southwark London SE1 2PF United Kingdom

Refund Policy

Refunds up to 1 day before event

Eventbrite's fee is nonrefundable.

About this event

2 hours 30 minutes

Written history records only the rich and famous, because poor women do nothing interesting - right? No! Ordinary working women had interesting, varied lives in the Middle Ages and this walk sets out to show what they were like. You’ll meet 6 women who lived and worked near the Thames in Southwark in the 14th century: scullery maid, victualler, laundress, alewife, sex worker, huckster.

We’ll start at the south end of London Bridge and end on the north side of the river near the Millenium Bridge. The distance is about 3 miles taking 2.5 hours or a bit more depending on crowds. We’ll be walking on pavements, not the foreshore, so no special shoes are required, but there are numerous stairs to climb up and down and some bumpy cobbles, so this walk isn't recommended if you have mobility issues.

Laura Agustín is a medieval historian and anthropologist interested in illuminating the lives of unnamed people in history. On this walk she's joined by Rob Smith, longtime London guide and friend, in a dialogue about what makes history.

The Naked Anthropologist is Laura's longtime blog, now dedicated to historical walks that highlight issues of Gender, Sex and Class.

Organised by

The Naked Anthropologist

Laura Agustín has been a writer, researcher and critical historian all her life. She has been a Londoner since the 1960s, although she has lived in other towns and countries. Author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry, she has for many years focused on getting the stories out of women and others marginalised because of being poor, foreign, ‘different’ or doing jobs some folks think are Wrong, in the present and in the past. She spent time with illuminated manuscripts at the British Library looking for clues to how women lived 1000 years ago, and couldn’t stop reading even if she wanted to. She is known as The Naked Anthropologist. She has qualified as a tour guide in order to take this focus to the streets, where guided history walks rarely talk about the poor except as objects of charity.