Dr Angela Smith will be speaking to
Houghton-le-Spring Women's Institute on
Thursday 6th June at 2.30pm in the Kepier Hall. The talk, entitled 'A disgrace to the name of woman: the surveillance of British widows of the First World War' focuses on the ways in which social welfare relating to widows developed in Britain in the early 20th century. Looking in particular at the war widows’ pension scheme, the paper shows how its implementation involved the development of State-sanctioned surveillance and parsimony that continues to this day. Angela is the author of the recently published
Discourses Surrounding British Widows of the First World War (Bloomsbury, 2012).
