MSSU ENG272 - Fall 2025

The Somme battlefield stretches across French farmland and towns such as Péronne, now dotted with cemeteries containing soldiers who were children just months before. At the exact spot near Thiepval Wood where German machine guns had perfect sight lines, British teenagers walked forward on July 1st because generals miles behind the front insisted on "brave" traditional tactics. The…

Factories of the Victorian age where the physical embodiment of the Factory Act's regulated exploitation. Inside these buildings, children stood at machines for their legal "9-hour limit," their small fingers valued for reaching into moving gears. English cities were shaped by child labor: worker housing crammed against factory walls so children could walk to their 5 AM shifts, schools…

May Day is a gathering at the beginning of May to celebrate the new season. Many traditions of this festival are bringing items from “May” such as green branches and different types of flowers that would often be used to make wreaths. Later on, someone would be crowned with one of the created wreaths. This person would be named the May Queen. Finally, bonfires were also very popular at May Day…

May Day is a gathering at the beginning of May to celebrate the new season. Many traditions of this festival are bringing items from “May” such as green branches and different types of flowers that would often be used to make wreaths. Later on, someone would be crowned with one of the created wreaths. This person would be named the May Queen. Finally, bonfires were also very popular at May Day…

The Huskar Pit's entrance still exists in Silkstone, Yorkshire, now covered by a memorial to the 26 children who died there. This specific shaft, barely four feet wide, was where children as young as seven descended daily into absolute darkness, and where they drowned when rain flooded the poorly maintained entrance. The Yorkshire coalfields stretched for miles underground beneath peaceful…

Drug use has been a problem for much of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, especially during the mid to late 1900s. One example of a drug that was very heavily used during the 1900s was Cocaine. Cocaine was originally used for medicinal purposes and for applications such as assisting soldiers in staying awake to battle. However, this medicinal use quickly turned into addiction because…

In the village of Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire, a blue plaque marks where 11-year-old George Brewster became the last recorded child to die in chimney sweeping—86 years after Blake's "Chimney Sweeper". George suffocated in a chimney at Fulbourn Hospital's asylum wing, where society locked away the "insane" in buildings still cleaned by child slaves. This prosperous Cambridge village, just miles…

Christianity is a very well-known religion in which someone puts their faith in Jesus Christ who died on the cross for humanity. One large aspect of Christianity is the idea of being part of a church. When you’re part of a church, you have the opportunity to share your faith with other like-minded people who’re looking to grow just as you are. Over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first…

In Speenhamland near Newbury, Berkshire, local magistrates gathered at the Pelican Inn to create a system that would spread across southern England. This rural crossroads became the birthplace of a poor relief policy that calculated human survival by bread prices and child count. The quiet Berkshire countryside, which Romantics like Wordsworth celebrated for its "natural" childhood innocence,…

May Day is a gathering at the beginning of May to celebrate the new season. Many traditions of this festival are bringing items from “May” such as green branches and different types of flowers that would often be used to make wreaths. Later on, someone would be crowned with one of the created wreaths. This person would be named the May Queen. Finally, bonfires were also very popular at May Day…