 Hello, everyone. I hope I hope you can hear me. I can still see that some people are joining so we'll wait a couple of minutes. You don't know but behind the scenes, I've been keeping Philippa waiting anyway so I need to take this opportunity to say a huge apology to Philippa but welcome everyone for joining us today. We're going to be looking at a topic that I don't think gets enough attention and it's disability history but specifically disability and the Tudors. And to look at this, I'm going to speak to Philippa about her work and her research and she's written a book called Disability and the Tudors as well. Philippa is a historian, she writes historical fiction, she's also a PhD student at Manchester Met University and a teacher as well so kind of you do everything, Philippa. So welcome, thank you for being here. But I guess, first of all, what I'd really like to know from you is how you came to the topic of the Tudors in the first place. Well, I love the Tudors myself and I've always loved the Tudors, my grandparents used to take me around every historical place within an hour's radius of my phone when I was a child. And I was just fascinated by it and the Tudors, everybody knows the drama of the Six Wives and Matt Henry the eighth and everybody gets interested in the Tudors initially because of that drama. And I've actually got cerebral palsy myself I was born at 26 weeks premature and I weighed two pounds two ounces was really small. And it got me thinking well how would disabled people have been treated in the past, not just the Tudor period but you know it because if I hadn't have been born in the 1970s I wouldn't have survived because things weren't medically advanced. So, you know, this is one of the things I thought well I could combine the two Tudors and disability because like you say it's not a subject that's covered very often. And I think that it's it's a for me personally, for me as a disabled person it's about reclaiming my history back. And the LGBT community gets lots of coverage, the BLM and Bain minority groups get lots of current coverage in history, but disability always gets forgotten about and I don't understand that because 15 to 25% of the world's population is actually classified as disabled. So, so that was that was how it all started really for me. That's so interesting and I don't know about you but quite often when I speak to people that are historians and I include myself in this number. You usually come to history through films. I mean it's not probably not fashionable to admit this but yes, for me myself it's through watching period dramas and historical drama. So I just wonder, I suppose you might be the same given that you written historical fiction, but I wonder whether that was something with with you as well. Well, funny enough I trained as a fashion designer when I first left school. And so I love anything to do with clothes fashion design art. And, you know, it's another passion of mine and like you say I just love period dramas, I love them to pieces, you know, from the Wolf Hall series to Outlander, I love Outlander, and all of those and, you know, it's just I pick the costumes to pieces while I'm watching the dramas as well as the actual film itself. So yeah, it's, that's a way that a lot of people get into history. And what, and we've got a great picture of you on the PowerPoint actually if it can come up with you in the archive and looking at historical document. I just wonder with with that in mind what pitfalls there are what difficulties or challenges there are in actually finding these lives in the archive. And could you talk about that a little bit. Well, yeah, there is a difficulty. The difficulty is that in the early modern period and before the sort of the Georgian age really disabled lives weren't even recorded because they were seen as a part an everyday part of their normal life, and not significant enough to be written about, unless you were connected to royalty or to nobility in some way, and you were part of the household. So, it's very difficult in terms of with the with the tutors. I only just begun to categorize disability in a lot of people might be expecting to pick up my book and read about different syndromes that are around now. But they didn't, they existed, but they weren't named, because what the tutors used to do was just describe what they saw. So if somebody couldn't walk properly they'd call them lame or they call them crippled, you'd just call people blind or deaf things like that it was very very basic in the way that they talked about disability. Not to demean it at all. But that was that was how that they were they just literally described what they saw. So, in terms of searching for sources for primary sources, you put those sort of keywords in the search bar of any sort of journal or or anything like that or into archive sources and you know you sometimes get some amazing things come up. But it's very very rare that specific people are talked about unless they were of some importance if that makes sense. No that makes a lot of sense and I should just take this moment to say and because I don't think I said it at the beginning if you have any questions for Phillipa will be doing a Q&A towards the end of this session. And you can put the questions in the Q&A box and I'll put them to Phillipa later on. And what you've just said I wonder if this might be some of the reason why this history hasn't been told before. I mean what are your thoughts on that. Don't get me started. I get into a bit. Please start. Get started. Because I find that talking about disability is still seen as a very taboo subject. It's something that people don't want to discuss because they don't really want to face the fact that it is something they might not necessarily understand. Because it's all about fear. You know if you're frightened of something you're going to sort of shy away from it and not necessarily look into it. Like for example with myself I've got a bit of funny water when I walk. And when I walk down the high street or when I walk down the high street in the past I've heard like parents with a child walking behind me and the child to say oh mummy why is that lady walking so funny. Do I say anything? Do I not say anything? And I have literally stopped in my tracks, turned around and I bent down to the child and I said would you like to know why? And they sort of look at me and I said look I was born really small. I was about the size of a bag of sugar and my head was as small as a tangerine. And because I was born really small my legs don't function properly. I'll walk like this and they'll look oh right. And the parents are sort of looking at me with their mouths open how dare I speak to their child about it. And I say to them look if I don't explain you know what my life experience is like then how is anybody going to understand? And this is why I'm so passionate about disability history not just the tutors but disability throughout the ages because if you don't inform people and people don't learn about it then how are they ever going to understand? How are we ever going to change attitudes towards disability? How are we going to dumb down discrimination in this country and in our society? And how are we going to get people talking about things like ableism and all of those the social side of disability and that to me is another reason why I'm really really passionate about it. I can understand why in everything you said you know I will stand by you in this fight I suppose because it is something that it matters. I mean there are physical as you say disabilities that people can see and they can ask questions about but there's also hidden ones too. And there I imagine a much harder to find in the archive. But I guess moving on from that looking at the way that we track these stories and these histories particularly in the Tudor period can you tell me something anything at all about the material culture of disability during Tudor times? Well there's paintings for a start and the reason why we know certain people were disabled in these paintings is because they're in the records, they're in the household accounts. They're in you know where money's been paid by the king's household for specific items for these people. And it will say Will Summer, Henry's the king's fool and you think well what do they mean by the word fool and everybody just assumes Will Summer was a jester. He was just there to make Henry laugh, make him happy, change his mood, but it's not about that he was a companion to the king but he wasn't a servant and he wasn't nobility. So there must be something else about him that makes him different and he had a distinct learning disability, we don't know exactly what that was. It might be down syndrome, you know something like that. But he had something distinct that made him different from everybody else at court. And that's where the records come in with him and people like Jane Fool who came to Anne Boleyn's household and we know about Jane Fool for example because she attended, she was in the procession of Anne Boleyn's coronation. And she actually shouted out to the crowd while they were going along why aren't you taking your hats off, why aren't you saying God save the queen. She reprimanded the crowd for not, you know, giving the correct responses Anne was going by in the parade. And the mayor of London said well I can't make them shout. I can't make them, you know, do that, you know there were rumors that the crowd had been paid in some aspects of that but we don't we don't know unless you were there it's all best guests. But for example with with Jane Fool, she could have had a distinct learning disability like down syndrome because my uncle and my, my aunt were house parents in a community in Ringwood where they supported adults with down syndrome. I've been around a lot of people with down syndrome in my life because of that. And they will say exactly what's on their mind without a filter. For example if I go in to see them tonight they say oh Philippa why have you got pink hair you know they would just come out and say it. And this is probably what Jane Fool was like with Anne Boleyn because she respected Anne because Anne looked after her. She was thinking well hang on a minute. The Queen's my friend why aren't you, why aren't you shouting God save the Queen now she's been crowned. So those sort of stories really bring that to life about about these specific people. And that's what I love about researching the history when you find these lovely nuggets and these lovely experiences of people. Yeah that's spot on. You can see the context of things and you can see why they behaved as they did and said what they said. That's that's really interesting you're able to see that and recognize it and it gives, and I guess with all historians, we have our unique insights and ways of looking at things but it's really interesting that you have that and we're able to think about that with that particular individual and just a quick note for people watching and the captions you can access them by clicking on the button at the bottom of the screen the live transcript and I wonder if we could bring up the image of Henry the eighth and his family because you've spoken about this before but it might be interesting for you to talk us through the the next the next image I think is this one talk us through this scene and what's going on because it kind of builds upon what you were saying just then. Yeah well this was painted in 1547 by the Holbein school 1545 sorry. And obviously you've got Henry the eighth is central to the painting as you would expect, and you've got his, his dead wife, looking very much alive there when she actually was pregnant, but it was obviously paying respect to her because she gave him his long lost male that he needed and you've got his daughters Mary and Elizabeth flanked on either side. But if you look on the far edges of the painting under the archways, you have got Jane full on the left hand side of the painting as you're looking at it and you've got will summer on the right hand side. Two disabled people or two natural falls as the Tudors called them be in a family portrait. To me that's really significant that they're included. And the reason is because like I said about will summer will summer was a companion to Henry the eighth. When Jane. died after having Edward Henry shut out all his advisors all his counselors nobody was admitted into his private apartments, apart from will summer, because will summer could, you know, confide in Henry and vice versa. And Henry felt comfortable to talk to will, when he couldn't talk to anybody else because will didn't have an agenda, he wasn't pushing for power he wasn't pushing for money. He wasn't pushing for all the other things that coaches would would push for all he wanted was Henry's companionship and friendship, and that was all that was really important to him. And so, the other thing about people with disabilities at that time, they were also considered to be close to God, conduits of the Holy Spirit so that God could actually speak through these people because they spoke the truth like I said they had no filter. And that's what Henry loved about will. And similarly with Jane for when she was brought into ambulance apartment household we don't know how she got there or what her backstory is. We don't know how old she was when she came to court or where she was born or anything about her. The only reason we know about Jane is because of examples like this with the portrait. But there's also examples and stories in the household accounts and in Henry's letters and papers that certain garments were bought for her. Silk hoods and coyce were bought for her and she was looked after in terms of having her head shaved regularly. I don't know whether this was because it was a hygiene thing and they were trying to make sure she didn't get lice, or whether it was because they felt she'd be closer to God if she didn't have hair you know like the monks in the monasteries. Look, the other funny story about Jane full is that she was passed from household to household over her time at court and Catherine power actually bought her a flock of geese so that she could herd them around the gardens of whatever palace they were in to keep her occupied and give her some responsibility which I think is absolutely fantastic. But it's delving into these little stories that really give you an insight into how cherished these people were. And also it ties in with religion where you had to be charitable you had to be giving you had to be full I can never say the word philanthropic and support people with disabilities or who were, you know, less wealthy or whatever the new work. So, so that's what's so fantastic about it. It is, it is so interesting you bringing these, these particular individuals out and you know they're literally there in one of the most famous images that we have from the period. But what people that weren't known that weren't in these circles was the was the care what were they provided for if they needed to be with a given the tools to make lives for themselves what was the situation for the average person. Well, with a disability. Yeah, I think predominantly governments and you know the laws and everything wanted families to predominantly look after their disabled relatives if they could, you know they would try to get them to do some sort of trade. For example, with my PhD, I've just come across a whole paper from Norwich census about some lame women who became spinners of wool and cloth and everything. And they were self sufficient and looked after themselves didn't marry, and the men didn't like it because the women had independence. So I'm sure I'm going to find more stories like that have ordinary tutors, and that's what I'm really excited about. There's people like John Lawrence, for example, who was a cook to Henry the eighth for 24 years, and he wrote a petition to Henry the eighth to say look you know can I retire early can I have a pension. Can you give me some money so I can stop working for you because I'm going lame with gout, you know, and it's probably an obvious thing for him to go down with because he would have been taste testing all the food and we know how much Henry loved his pets and didn't like his vegetables very much so you know it's no wonder that the cook went down with gout but he was a cook to the Privy Chamber and to the Privy Councillors. So there's stories about that milling around and it's well that's what I'm going to find the most exciting is is to go to York, go to Norwich, go to the Bodleian Library and obviously up to the British Library and Q and try and find dig out these stories and sources about different people so that I can expand on it, because initially when I first wrote my book I hadn't even, I wasn't even halfway through my MA at the time. So I wrote it in a very accessible way not in an academic way, and since even starting my PhD from October, I've come across more sources on deaf people in Tudor society and how they were treated and what happened to them and so you know it's an with history it's an ongoing thing there's always new things to talk about and discuss and write about so. So I went to hearing what you what you find, and I wonder about the role of medicine because obviously we're in the time period of the four humours and idea of my asthma and I mean my own period is the 17th century but I know during this time there were, and then in the 17th century were shops that were set up to treat inverse commerce people that were suffering from melancholy, for example, which I know I found surprising when I first found out a few years ago, and this idea of a kind of proto awareness of mental health disabilities and issues. Is there anything like that in the Tudor period that you've come across. Well, like Napier's casebooks scarring those scarring scarring those to see his sat in front of him opposite in his desk, you know wanting help for specific ailments and things like that and looking at people like john D and and that's what I want to go to the Bodleian for so I really need to brush up on my Latin. I'm reading early modern script which is going to be quite a challenge for me but and so you know looking at it from the medical side is fascinating because then you're going to come across these firsthand accounts of probably not so much ordinary people but just wealthier people would have gone to doctors like Richard Napier. So, you know, and it's, you would have wise women and what people would have considered to be witches, and obviously, looking after more ordinary people. And that's where the religion superstition and the medicine all coincides together. It's a bit of a juxtaposition because you've got Henry the eighth thinking and honoring disabled people because they're close to God. And then you've got some religious people and people who were superstitious saying well hang on a minute if they've got a deformity, there must be the spawn of Satan, the parents must have sinned in a past life. Gosh, how many times have I heard that even in modern times, said to myself oh you must be disabled because your parents have got plenty of sin in their lives. You know, it's, it's, it's shocking. But these old folk laws and wives tales and things have passed down generation to generation. And it just reminds me of something I was looking at just literally a couple of days ago. And again sorry, apologies for, for viewers it's outside of the Tudor period it's the Pendle witch trial. A huge deal is made about the appearance of one of the women accused. It's not, you know, there's no, there's no actual evidence linking her to witchcraft. And this, this, well there is actually a couple of things, but a huge deal is made about how she looks and you see that, that kind of repetition and moving through. But that brings me on to another thought as well because obviously the Tudor period is, you know, it's not static it doesn't stay the same there is movement so we have a period of, you know, well over a century 1485 to 1603 and in that period we have wars we have changes in regime we have changes in religion, we have witchcraft laws that are brought in place. And people that are coming back from battles and naval and escapades and travels with injuries that are debilitating and make them disabled. What changes and patterns do we see across this time period and are there any innovations in terms of care treatment and understanding for people with disabilities. The reformation is a huge part of the Tudor period because it brought in swept away the old and brought in so many new changes. And obviously the monasteries played a key role when families couldn't necessarily look after their disabled loved ones. So, when those communities in the monastery started to be destroyed. Where did the disabled people go, they would either return back to their families, they would become beggars of sorts. They would try to claim charitable monies from the townsfolk to so that they could carry on surviving, or they would be going into places like there were specific leper hospitals there were other hospitals like bedlam for example you were talking about people with disabilities, they would go to places like bedlam. And they also go to arms houses which were slowly being built on the edges of towns to be able to sort support people who wouldn't necessarily be able to support themselves. So they had a sort of social security sort of network, if you like, and Thomas Cromwell did begin to bring in poor laws in 1536. So the documents don't specifically say that it was him, it was likely that it could have been him but it wasn't until the Elizabethan period that we had these laws cemented in society where disabled people could get help. There was that old problem of people pretending to be disabled to get help, which we hear about all the time with people with the cars, motability cars and the benefits and all that kind of thing now. But it's a very small minority that fake being disabled and when I was a teaching assistant before even became a teacher, the only time disability and the tutors was ever taught in schools was about people faking being disabled and begging. So I'm hoping that my research will really be able to change that perception around all of that. But I think there was an infrastructure starting for people and it was slowly growing and as as the period war on the Elizabethans actually wrote it all down and and they had a scheme to help people which was great. I wonder if you could just go into the nitty gritty of say you're a person with a disability, maybe you've lost a limb during a battle and you've come back. What kind of accommodation would there be for allowing someone to live a normal and productive life within this time? Were buildings changed in any way? Did we have any of that? Adaptions do you mean for physical challenges? The only one that comes to mind for me that I know of is the Stanna Stairlifter types that was at Whitehall Palace to help Henry VIII get up and down 26 stairs. That it was a mechanism that was created by his privy chamber, a bit like a wheel and pulley system which would levitate him up and down these stairs. It's really weird to try and imagine it but obviously like a rope and pulley system, a bit like when they would put cargo from the side of on the shore onto a boat, that kind of thing. That's how I imagine it. I'd love to recreate it. I think it would be fascinating to recreate that and see how that worked. I really hope they had more than one person operating the pulley towards the end of his life. Henry was a bulky fellow and for him to manoeuvre him around in a safe way when he had all his ailments would have probably been quite a challenge. So it's quite innovative of them to come up with something like this. But I should imagine that with the arms houses, a lot of them would have been like a ground floor, only a one floor sort of situation so that people would be able to sort of get around and be able to live. And they probably would have had wardens coming in and out of those arms houses to support them and see if they needed food and provisions and all that kind of thing. So that's really, really interesting. I feel like maybe now we need to talk about Henry VIII. I mean, obviously when you look back at history, it's so easy to think about just the monarchs and ignore the everyday people that were living. But I do think it's important to reinforce what I know you've said before many times, Philippa, is that Henry VIII was a disabled man who had a disability. And that's a that's a prison through which we don't often think about him. I don't think. Can you tell me about that? Well, obviously, he, as we talked about his diet before, he was a very sporting chap and very physical and very virile and loved his Hawking in this hunting and jousting and all of those things. But his diet really made him put on weight very, very quickly. And over a period of time, he'd sort of continue with his sports, but he had a few accidents. He had a tennis accident with his foot with tennis. He had malaria. He had a jousting accident in 15, 10th of March, 1524, when Brandon went to him with a lance and it pierced his helmet and nearly went in his eye. And then there was the big jousting accident of 1536 in January, where the horse fell on top of him and he was supposedly unconscious for two hours, which opened up an ulcer and a wound on his leg. And this is some historians and medical people say that he could possibly have suffered from osteomyelitis because the wound never healed. It never completely healed. It always was opened up again through one problem or another. And it made him have to use walking sticks. It made him have to wear slippers sometimes because his feet were so swollen with edema. He was not well manned. He had lots of different things wrong with him towards the end of his life. Probably diabetes has been talked about before. We won't say syphilis because that's not quite his tale. That's more the king of France, I think, than Henry VIII. And the walking stick was quite funny because he had whistles on the end of them. And I had this mental picture while I was researching it of Henry sort of like walking along a passageway, but he'd never normally be on his own. But if he was on his own and he suddenly fell over, how on earth would he have got up? You know, so the whistle on the end of the walking stick and grab it, blow it for all his might to get his courtiers to come along and pick him up again. He also had megaphones and they were covered in fabric and braiding and all sorts. So if he fell over and he was in a situation where he couldn't get himself up again, he'd be bellowing through these megaphones for his servants to come and help him. This reminds me of my grandad. This is like an alarm system. Yeah, yeah. Like that is the Tudor equivalent of. That's so interesting. Sorry, I cut you off there, I was just too excited. So that's the sort of thing that you come across because obviously all his belongings were listed in transcripts. So he had three wheelchairs, he had several walking sticks, he had megaphones. He had all these things to support him and help him. And it's a shame really that he perhaps didn't appreciate that more and wanted to try and make out that he was still 20 something like we all do as we go older. You know, because there's so many ideas about, you know, if the king was disabled, if the king was incompetent anyway, then how could he rule a country. And that was always at the back of his mind. You know, first of all, can I produce a male heir, a healthy male heir. And then, you know, can I give this perception that I'm still the same guy I was at 20 or 25. And that's what all he was worried about. But the thing is, when he walked along a corridor, you could smell him before you could see him because of the preputedness of his the ulcer in his leg, because it never healed. So, you know, it's, it's quite fascinating to think about it and he must have been in so much pain all the time, which is probably why he had such mood swings. You know, and why he was like he was with people, you know, as he got older, makes so much sense. Well, you might disagree, but there was willow bark to kind of combat pain, but there wasn't that much in the way of remedy. I mean, it wouldn't be like being able to have a paracetamol nowadays, but yeah, wow. I'm very aware that I've kept you talking for a while and I know that there are audience questions for you. I've got a couple more questions myself. But what I'll do is I'll save them until the end of the audience questions. There's a system for doing this so you can put your questions in the Q&A if you're watching, and I should have them fed through to me remotely. Okay, so the first question is from Lynn Murray and she says, I read a lot of people in the book, which I didn't know had scoliosis and was particularly surprised to see Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk as one of whom you had discovered. Can you speak a bit more about the records of his condition and how you researched these people, some of which were very active? Charles Brandon, no, I don't think I said that Charles Brandon had scoliosis. I did talk about Richard III having scoliosis, but he was very active, of course, he was one of the last kings to actually die in battle. And so some people might argue that scoliosis isn't actually a disability, but it depends how these conditions affect you. What makes a person disabled? Is it about them not being able to live as normal a life as they did before? You know, they had a disability or is it something else or is it coping with pain like we've talked about with Henry VIII? Mary Gray was known to be short in stature and had scoliosis as well. Another one who was connected to the Tudors because Anne Boleyn was actually one of her servants was Queen Claude. She had scoliosis. She had one leg shorter than the other. She had distinct problems with her eyes, strombosis, where one would look in one direction and one would look in another. She coped amazingly well as a queen and with such dignity and still managed to have seven children. So, you know, it's all these kinds of stories that are absolutely fascinating to me and, yeah, scoliosis is quite a common ailment. And we know that from one of the Royal Family's members having scoliosis as well and had to have it recently operated on. But that doesn't stop them from living a normal life. So it just depends what you classify as a disability. I have a question here from Jenny and she says amateur historian with physical impairment here, fascinating talk. Henry VIII's warship Mary Rose includes bones from an archer and a cook both living with deformity from their lives on ship, wondering if military life took on disabled people in Tudor times. It's very hard to say unless you're actually there when they were signing their names on a form to go on a boat or to join up. You don't know whether they were physically able before they went into battle or whether it was something that they had because of their profession. It's very difficult to say. I mean, if they had long service, for example, on different warships, then yeah, there were stories about different people having different problems like the Bowman, for example, with the shoulder and all that, all that kind of things. So, but like I said, a lot of ordinary folks with ordinary professions weren't really recorded very much. So it's very difficult to find out exactly what happened to some of these people. When we were talking about medicine, sometimes the doctors would put down stories of amputating people's legs, for example, and all that kind of thing. Oh, and another, another question here is have you come across any stories about enslaved peoples who are disabled and how they were treated. Thank you for your presentation. This was a very interesting and important topic. I haven't yet. That's not to say that I won't. Who knows what my PhD is going to unearth. I am diligently digging around trying to find all sorts of information about lots of different aspects of disability. I don't just like I said don't just want to focus on a nobility and royalty. So, you know, it's, it's, it's, I don't know yet. That's my honest answer. I don't know what else I'm going to find. But obviously, you know, I'm going to record it and put it into context when I do find out more. And another question here is actually surviving birth and infancy must have been a hugely must have been hugely difficult in the past. Perhaps that's why there was a special kind of respect for disabled people who survived the kind of talisman a spiritual aura around them. And I guess that's more of a thought, but I wonder what your thoughts are on that. That's actually giving me goosebumps because I am quite a religious girl. And I, this is going to sound really weird, but I believe that I survived from being so small and being so premature because God wanted me to have a purpose. And I've shied away from my disability for most of my life because I didn't want to accept it didn't want to talk about it didn't want to sort of confront it. And so all of this research and everything that I'm doing is making me do exactly that. And that's what I feel my purpose is that's why I feel I've got the disability I've got because I can come at this from a unique perspective. I'm not making me biased or unbiased in any way, but just to give a different viewpoint. And like we were talking about I can see how and why these people did what they did because I'm looking at it through their, their eyes. Does that make sense. That does make a lot of sense. It's very moving and generous of you to share that with people. So thank you for that. And we have got lots of questions here you're I think your topic is ready and struck a chord with a lot of people. Another question here is, do you know how the various religious institutions in the Tudor era and or other areas in the UK accepted community members who are disabled. I think, like I said before, people like Thomas more who was a very religious man took Henry Pattinson into his home, who was a man who had a visibility. He educated him he treated him like a member of his household like a son took advice from him. You know they would sit around the dinner table together discussing the latest political problems and issues and religious issues as well. That to me just says so much about, you know, how Thomas more was about disability and disabled people who didn't look down on him he accepted him as an equal. And I think there was a lot of that around as well as the superstitious stuff because what people don't understand they fear. But once they embrace something and start to learn about something, then it completely changes how you feel about that so the Thomas more to have somebody really close to him like that who actually advised him to sign the flipping nose so he didn't get his head chopped off. You know, and was was really great but obviously he didn't listen to Henry Pattinson enough because we will know Thomas more spain. And the same with with Anne Boleyn taking in Jane for for example she probably thought she was doing the humanist thing. It was a new faith thing she was being charitable. You're on mute at the moment Rebecca can't hear you. Sorry. I apologize. And so I have another question for you here. And they asked about Henry VIII's mechanical help that he had and whether that was only because he was King and ordinary people would not have had this help. Besides, they did not have stairs in their homes is a final question of that point. Well, you know what, with the King. He was, you know, somebody that the community and society looked up to so I'm sure especially in London. There were stories about Henry's Stanna Stairlift I'm going to call it a Stanna Stairlift because it's the best way to describe it. And I'm sure that nobility would have passed this down these stories down about Henry Stairlift to members of their families who were physically impaired. And you know I'm sure other people would have learned about those things and maybe put them in their homes if they needed them. We just don't know it's it's best guess unless there is archival evidence or archaeology to unturfs like a few Tudor wheelchairs or whatever, we're never really going to know. We've only got descriptions, for example, of Henry's wheelchairs and the the the stairlift. We don't really have anything really detailed there's no sketches or anything. We're just assuming that it's like a wheel and pulley system but you know obviously I'm sure that people who had the money and could afford it would have put those things in for their relatives. I was muted again there. Another question I have here is about autism whether we're able to identify individuals that were and that had autism as a condition and whether there was any support there for them. So far in my research, I haven't come across autism classified because the Tudors didn't categorize disability as we do today. So that's the difficulty you never really going to know what specific disability somebody had, unless it could be described by them. So with autism that might not if they might not have even been aware of it as an issue as a disability, and they would have just been living their lives as like everybody else the best way that they could without realizing they had any problems or challenges, which I think that's the safest way to assume really with that. You're muted again. I'm so sorry. I was going to say I'm aware that we're coming close to the hour now so I want to just get through a few questions I'll put these, these ones to you maybe a few at a time. First one, what, what reactions have you faced in academia to your research and work. I find there's often a reluctance to admit that disabled people didn't spring into appearance in the 20th century. And then just building on that. And, sorry, let's get a question from Nancy actually as well. She asks was there sign language invented in the Tudor times. But then building on those questions I'd also like to, I suppose, and ask you as well, whether there's anything that we can potentially learn from the Tudor period and anything that they were doing better than us in terms of understanding and compassion, perhaps. In terms of academia and disability studies. I think we need departments on the subject solely in its own right. I think we need historians who aren't tagging it on as an afterthought to the social sciences and things like that, just to be fashionable because at the moment, the minority histories are fashionable and it shouldn't be like that. It should just be a part of history, you know, disabled people had as much right to live their lives in those communities as anybody else. And our stories have got as much right to be told as Henry the eighth story or anybody else's story. And I think we need to not completely differentiate it way out from anything else. It just needs to be included and inclusive history needs to talk about every experience because that's what it's about. And I'm really passionate about that and I think that it should be a subject that is discussed and not taboo and not made to be inferior to any other thing that we look at in history. And in terms of what can we learn from the Tudors, we can always learn from the Tudors. I think that considering what they were trying to bring in in terms of social security and welfare, the arms houses, the poor laws, all that kind of thing and charity and bringing disabled people into homes to be supported and also to be not revered, but welcomed with open arms for their difference. That's what we can learn from the Tudors, because I personally think since the Victorians and all their, let's put the disabled out of sight, let's institutionalize everybody, then we don't have to think about them. Because even me from three years old up until nine years old I was institutionalized in a boarding school, and I didn't see my parents from one week to the next because I was expected to be out of sight out of mind and that was in the 70s. So, you know, attitudes really have got to change. It started to get better in the mid 1990s, but we are slowly regressing back. Disabled people are having to fight for every single opportunity, every single thing that they can possibly that is, is for them. For example, for myself, I'm a qualified teacher, haven't been able to get a permanent job since I qualified in 2014, because I'm seen as a problem. I'm seen as somebody they've got to change things for. Imagine, you know, me as a disabled teacher standing in front of students, you know, 13 to 16 year olds, they asked me about my disability, but I'm just a much as part of society is everybody else. And if I'm there representing the disabled community in a school, then that gets the topic talked about not just in history, but in how we deal with it in society, I've led diverse diversity assemblies. I've talked about it a lot. And then those students who've got particular challenges and needs within school feel they can come to me because I think, oh, she's going to understand me better than another teacher with my issues with my learning difficulties and have physical problems or autism or whatever it might be. And that's why it's so important that we, we talk about this and we change things and we change attitudes. Sorry, I got my soapbox a bit there, but I'm really happy about it. This is, it's so moving to listen to you speak about these things and it's so, it's certainly making me think about the things that I can do myself and I'm sure there's a lot of people watching this now that are thinking and taking in what you've said and taking in the research you've done the motivation behind that research. It's just, you're a very, what you said is very moving as I've said already but you're a very important person I think in the field of history doing these things. Thank you. So, thank you for that. And I know that you've got lots of things going on. You've got your PhD to do, you've got your historical fiction, are you writing any more historical fiction or are you leaving that to one side for now while you're doing research? No, I absolutely love my Thomas Falcon series. I've written all four books. The first two have been edited. The second two need to be professionally edited, but I have got a mainstream publisher interested in all four books. And I'm really excited about that, but I can't give anything away yet because I haven't signed a contract. And what I would love because it's a time travel fantasy book or series, I would love to have it made into a TV or film series, I would just love it because I'd get interested in the costume side and the production side as well as the story and do you know what, historical fiction helps you to switch off from the really stressful factual stuff. But you can feed all that through, feed all the factual stuff through it like a silk and thread, but you can also play around with the story because my main character in that book is a 21st century history student. And what would you do if you managed to time travel back to the Tudor period? You know, who would you talk to? What would you do? Would you try and change the outcomes of history? What would be the consequences if you did that? And I just love, I love the whole imaginary thing of fiction and I'm really loving writing the series and so many people have absolutely loved the first book even though it's self published. So yeah, I'm really proud of it actually. Oh, Philip, just a huge thank you for everything this evening. It's been wonderful to talk to you to actually speak to you in person. We've spoken online a few times but we've not spoken in person before so it's been really lovely to chat. Thank you to everyone for joining us and do check out Philippa's books. Also, keep following Philippa's research as well because it sounds like you've got exciting things coming ahead. We've got the British Library has got some events coming up soon. So do check them out. Their Tudor season with Elizabeth and Mary is going on for a little bit longer. So there's an event about the Tudor worlds, Tudors and Island that's coming up soon. So have a look out for that as well. But until then, Philippa, thank you ever so much. Thank you so much. I've enjoyed being with you. Thank you.