Published in Windlesora 34 (2018)
©2018, WLHG
In June 2018 at the annual awards ceremony in York, for the British Association for Local History, Dr Brigitte Mitchell was presented with a Local History Aware for Research and Publication. The article was entitled “Windsor and Contagious Diseases Acts” and was published in Berkshire Old and New No. 33, the journal of the Berkshire Local History Group.
Dr Mitchell is Chairperson of the Windsor Local History Group, as well as a published research historian. She specialises in British military history as well as the history of Windsor. Indeed, her thesis was “Problems of a Garrison Town; Windsor 1815 – 1855” part of which discussed prostitution in Windsor, on which the winning article is based.
To the amusement of the audience, the part of the article that BALH Chairman Dr Tim Lomas chose to read aloud was that of the ‘willy parade‘, where soldiers were inspected for signs of venereal disease. This parade caused outrage at the time, as this was a period of physical modesty, but the men were subject to inspection in front of one another.
Windsor Local History Group 