Interview with Lucy Glazzard

Lucy is studying a BA in History. Her main interests are Georgian history, Victorian London, and influential women of the past. Her hobbies include crocheting, houseplants and reading, as well as spoiling her tabby cat, Beau.

Lucy’s top tips:

• Get your essays started sooner rather than later.

• Attend your lectures and build a relationship with your lecturers.

• Find your niche.

MIEKE:  Today I'm joined by Lucy who is a history undergraduate, as she discusses the blog that she wrote on how Victorian Londoners treated their cats. What's your piece of writing about and what interested you in the topic?

LUCY:  I chose to write a blog on Victorian cats, because you don't really see a lot about pets in Victorian London and I feel like cats are quite a misunderstood feature of Victorian London. There’s a debate whether they're beloved pets, or if they were just street vermin.  There is that kind of divide, depending on what class of homes you're looking at, you do get pets, but then there's that misunderstanding. In my blog, I like to focus on how they are viewed in society. That's what I want to focus on. And that sort of sort of inspired me to do that. I didn't know much about it myself, really.

MIEKE: Thank you. Can you tell me, what module was this written for, and what was the task at hand?

LUCY:  So, this was for People and Things of Victorian London, run by Jane and Alex, I think they just wanted to give us a break from the big academic 3000 word essays that we're bombarded with in these massive modules, it is a thirty credit module. So, it was just a 10%, non-referenced, nice thing to do that really gave us a chance to display our own interests. There weren't any set questions, there weren't any set topics. We just could do whatever we liked. Obviously, we had discussions with our lecturers first make sure we're doing something appropriate. But they just gave us complete free will to do whatever we wanted; it was really nice.

MIEKE:  How did you go about planning, researching, drafting, and creating this piece?

LUCY:  The thing I found most useful was the Museum of London, it has a really good archive and it's from a credible source. I also used the V&A for the prints I used in my blog, they have a good, digitised collection of Victorian prints. The Museum of London focuses on the dockyards, and the V&A is obviously more focused on middle class homes, so it was good variety. And that's how I went about structuring it. I have quite a few books I wanted to read through, just to check that there was enough evidence of Victorian cats in London, it was a struggle, but that's how I went about it. And then it developed on from stuff I'd seen and was interested in.

MIEKE:  So, was it challenging to find information about Victorians and how they treated their cats?

LUCY:  Yeah, it was a challenge, because the prints I used do show a softer side to cats, but then, as cats are today, they are quite misunderstood. There are different opinions, it's hard to generalise an opinion of the cats. There was that taxidermy cat I use in my blog, and I made an assumption that it was quite a well-loved cat, but I can’t say for sure if it was a family pet or not.  I had to assume that there were some beloved cats and there were some that were purely used for rat catchers and that's what I found really challenging was that you do have to trust your gut and what you feel. I think, if I was doing academic piece on cats, I think I would try to stay away from that as it's hard to find any credible sources.

MIEKE:  Definitely. Do you think that there was a class disparity between treatment of cats? Do you think that the middle classes kept them more as pets for example?

LUCY:  There was the Crystal Palace cat show, and I think that does show a divide because obviously, lower-class families would have really struggled to provide for a cat as well as the struggle of providing for their children. But I wouldn't like to say that they didn't have the same respect for cats because obviously they might have fed a cat that came into their house, and it might not be recorded as well as the middle-class taxidermy that was an expensive process. So that's why we know that they had taxidermy cats, but we don't really know about how the lower class responded to animals.  Treatment of dogs is a bit more obvious, there’s quite a few more cases of dogs in all classes of families that had dogs but with cats you can't say for certain whether there was a class divide or not. But the Crystal Palace cat show as I mentioned, that's obviously quite a higher-class entertainment. But there was still just judging cats. It wasn't so much like, ‘Oh, this is a pet cat’, it was something for entertainment, it was quite inaccessible to everyone.

MIEKE:  Would you say the Victorian period is a turning point for when people started having cats as pets?

LUCY:  I would say so. I haven't looked at cats in any other period. But this is kind of the period in history when I have been introduced to the most because I've looked at it, but I've never really heard of anyone else before the Victorians having cats unless there's a few outstanding cases. But maybe if I look deeper into it, I could see that it was a trickle into the Victorian period. But, because they were known for keeping pets like exotic birds, and you have the up-and-coming zoos and things like that. There was an interest in keeping animals in the home. But I don't know if it bloomed from there, or if it was a later or earlier period.

MIEKE:  What challenges did you face for writing this essay? And how did you overcome them? We've already discussed it was hard to find information about cats. But did you have any other challenges that you faced?

LUCY:  I think I struggled with the format of it, because it's something I'm not quite used to.  I spent so long on the graphics, I wanted it to look like a blog, and like it was professional. But I think I spent so long on that, that I got stuck in a wormhole of looking at blogs. But what I also found challenging was the non-referencing I was quite nervous about, I thought I might get in trouble! I think I found it was just something new to me. I struggled to relax and write it.

MIEKE: What do you think you've gained from writing the essay? Was there something that you learn that you'd never known before? Or did you gain anything from writing this piece?

LUCY:  What I found is that my interests for history don't always have to be these grandiose essays; you can take a casual approach to your interest in history.  I think unis often want this high standard of work, and it was really nice to just do something more casual. I found I can look at this thing and not have the anxiety of, ‘I don't know if I'm completely correct about this’, because it was more graded on the presentation. I learned that the unis aren't always going to expect the absolute best from you. It’s more almost nurturing your personal interests; you’re not always going to have that pressure to be a high-class individual and high intelligence and whatnot. And you can have these more fun debates and talk about stuff that you're interested in that other people might not be as it’s more niche.  And I obviously learnt about Victorian cats in London. Cats are like a personal interest of mine, and it was nice to look at how our predecessors saw them.

MIEKE:  Looking back at your second year, what would be your key advice for students in the history department?

LUCY:  My key advice would be what every other uni student would say, get your essays started. I am quite guilty of leaving it to the last minute and then I feel like you are looking through these textbooks and there's so much in history that you can't learn overnight.  Attend your lectures and build up a relationship with your lecturers and then I think you'll feel more comfortable to attend. After COVID I found it difficult to get back into the swing of going to my lectures and I found that I've built a better relationship with my lecturers, and I found a bigger passion for history.  My lecturer Jane, she organised a trip and I was considering not going because I didn’t know if it was for me and I went, and I just think throw yourself at any opportunities there are, then you will find that your passion for history would just go so much further, and you'll learn so much.  I feel like I've learned more from doing those things and sitting in the classroom and there's opportunities I've missed, and I think I'd benefit so much from doing them.  And just find your own personal niche.

MIEKE:  Thank you. Thank you so much for doing this interview with me. I've really enjoyed listening to what you have to say about Victorian cats.