Margaret Spufford

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Margaret Spufford (born December 10, 1935 in Cheshire - † March 6, 2014 ) was a British historian who dealt with the 16th and 17th centuries in England . She was Professor of Social and Local History at the University of Roehampton from 1994 to 2001 .

Margaret Spufford was born to Mary (née Johnson) and Leslie Marshall Clark, who both worked as chemists and were married on February 26, 1926. She was home schooled by her mother and lived to keep her safe from air raids during World War II on the border with Wales .

Newnham College, Cambridge

In 1945 her mother suffered such a severe stroke that she could no longer work until her death in 1969. After the death of their father, the family moved to Cambridge in 1953 . There she first attended Cambridge High School for Girls , and the following year she enrolled at Newnham College, a women-only college at the University of Cambridge . Due to illness, she suffered from osteoporosis , she had to break off her studies, but continued with the local history at the University of Leicester , where she completed her Master of Arts in 1963 . In the summer of 1962 she married Peter Spufford , with whom she had a son named Francis and a daughter named Bridget (born in 1964 and 1967).

She earned her PhD in 1970 with the Thesis People, Land & Literacy in Cambridgeshire in the 16th & 17th Centuries . Spufford was first Research Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College , Cambridge, but changed after four years as a lecturer at the Keele University . In 1980 she returned to Newnham College as a history fellow and tutor . After serving as a Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of History, she became a bye-fellow in 1985 because she was already too ill to meet her full obligations. Her daughter also died in 1989. However, in 1994 she was appointed Research Professor in Social and Local History at the University of Roehampton .

In 1995 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy , and in 1996 she was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire because she was particularly committed to the education of disabled people. In 1992 she founded Bridget's Hostel on Tennis Court Road, a house that bears her daughter's name and that offers disabled students support at all times.

Spufford, who had developed cancer and heart disease and suffered a series of strokes, died of Alzheimer's disease on March 6, 2014 and was buried on March 29 at Whittlesford Parish Church.

Works

  • Rural Cambridgeshire: 1520-1680 , University of Leicester, 1962.
  • People, Land and Literacy in Cambridgeshire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries , University of Leicester, 1970.
  • Contrasting communities. English Villages in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries , Cambridge University Press, 1974, 1979, 2000.
  • Small books and pleasant histories. Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England , Cambridge University Press, 1981, Paperback 1985.
  • The great reclothing of rural England. Petty chapmen and their wares in the seventeenth century , Hambledon Press, 1984.
  • (Ed.): The world of rural dissenters, 1520-1725 , Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  • with James Went, William Lloyd: Poverty Portrayed: Gregory King and Eccleshall in Staffordshire in the 1690s , University of Keele, 1995.
  • Celebration. A Story of Suffering and Joy , Bloomsbury Publishing, 1996 (on her daughter's illness and the central struggle with her own illnesses for her life).
  • Figures in the Landscape: Rural Society in England, 1500-1750 , Ashgate, 2000.
  • with David Hey , Colum Giles, Andrew Wareham (Eds.): Yorkshire West Riding Hearth Tax Assessment, Lady Day 1672 , British Record Society, 2007.

Remarks

  1. ^ Professor Margaret Spufford - obituary , in: The Daily Telegraph, March 31, 2014.
  2. ↑ Leslie Marshall Clark (1897-1953) worked at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington
  3. ^ Adam Luke: Tributes to founder of hostel for disabled Cambridge students , in: Cambridge News, archive.org, April 7, 2014.
  4. ^ Mary Johnson (Mrs. Clark) , in: Marelene Rayner-Canham, Geoff Rayner-Canham (Eds.): Chemistry Was Their Life. Pioneering British Women Chemists, 1880-1949 , Imperial College Press, London 2008, p. 233.
personal data
SURNAME Spufford, Margaret
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British historian
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Cheshire
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 2014