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Ingrid Birchell Hughes


Shortlisted for the International Women's Podcast Awards 2024, 2023 + 2022, and the Independent Podcast Awards 2023.  "Ingrid Birchell Hughes presents a charming take on family history via the love letters of her great-great-grandparents Fred and Jane, who exchanged 200 of them between their meeting and their marriage in Victorian Yorkshire. It’s a terrific insight into the lives of two witty working-class people and the times they lived in." — The Times.  This is a true story, a love story, a family drama, all contained within Victorian social history. Ingrid has both sides (extremely rare) of a correspondence spanning 1878 to 1882 that her great great grandparents sent one another. They were ordinary folk, trying to make their way in the world, first in the city of Sheffield and later in the town of Middlesbrough. There is a whole 'cast' of characters too from Fred's industrial innovator of a boss who advanced the steel making process - and took Fred with him, to Jane's sister Emma, who had her life splashed across the newspapers through no fault of her own. Against the background of the dramas going around them, Fred and Jane overcame family objection to their match and through their own will and determination, made a new life together.


My Love Letter Time Machine - Victorian History

Season 1, Episode 1: In which Ingrid first introduces the 200 love letters she inherited spanning 1878 to 1882, and we discover how Fred and Jane met in Bowden Houstead Woods in Sheffield, and got off to a rather rocky start to their courtship.
Instagram:
@mylovelettertimemachine
Twitter:
@1ngi
Email: 
mylovelettertimemachine@gmail.com
Producer: 
Ingrid Birchell Hughes

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Summer 1878, in which we meet Fred, and Jane gets into trouble

Season 1, episode 2: October 4th - December 22nd 1878. Ingrid talks about how we can read someone's emotional state from the tiniest clues, Fred loses a family member, how Sheffield hosted a world's first, and how Fred and Jane resort to seeing each other in secret.
Instagram:
@mylovelettertimemachine
Twitter:
@1ngi
Email: 
mylovelettertimemachine@gmail.com
Producer: 
Ingrid Birchell Hughes

Support the show

1878 A bereavement, and the World's first electrically lit football match

Season 1, episode 3: This week we take a look at what Fred was up to during the Christmas of 1878 and the New Year 1879, which he helpfully recorded for us in the dairy he kept when he was 19. We get to take a deep dive into how Fred saw himself and look at one of the most ambitious sets of new year’s resolutions Ingrid has ever read.
Instagram:
@mylovelettertimemachine
Twitter:
@1ngi
Email: 
mylovelettertimemachine@gmail.com
Producer: 
Ingrid Birchell Hughes

Support the show

Christmas 1878, and Fred rings in 1879 with some scarily optimistic resolutions

Season 1, episode 4: January 19th - March 30th 1879. Reflecting on Jane's background in Handsworth Sheffield, where Ingrid discovers how two sisters ran two pubs with a small army of female relatives, and then working out the mystery of how someone nearly succeeded in breaking Fred and Jane up by sending a malicious valentine.

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Two sisters, and The Vinegar Valentine

Season 1, episode 5: Taking place during the Spring and Summer of 1879, we catch up with Fred's chums putting on their Amateur Dramatics. Fred reports back from Bridlington while on his Summer holiday and gamely takes on the role of fashion correspondent to entertain Janie in his letters.

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Dramatic Entertainments, and Fred takes us on Holiday

Season 1, episode 6: August 17th - 30th 1879. Content warning: the second part of this episode contains descriptions of domestic violence. Fred is still in Bridlington, and Jane makes a sudden decision. Then we discover how Emma, Jane’s older sister, woke one morning to find that her private affairs, or rather the affairs of the husband who had abandoned her, were splashed across the newspapers. 

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A Seaside Rendezvous, and a Family Scandal

Season 1, episode 7: Autumn 1879, first we take a deeper dive into impact the steel mills had on Sheffield, and then we’ll be finding out about how Fred and Jane swapped selfies, Victorian style, and what that might mean for a courting couple.

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City of Steel, and Victorian Selfies

Episode 8: In which we get some of our preconceptions about Victorian courtship rewritten, and Fred gets some of his preconceptions about what women really want, rewritten too. Unlocking the 140 year old secrets concealed in Fred's diary, and finding about his football exploits in the Sheffield Challenge Cup of 1880, and the time he and his team beat Aston Villa. 

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Autumn 1879 Secrets, and when Fred beat Aston Villa

Episode 9: Spring 1880, Fred and Janie make plans for the future, get caught up in the General Election, and Fred gets news fom Oxford. Taking closer look at some of the people and colour of the world that Janie and Fred lived in.

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Meeting Samuel Plimsoll, and did Janie propose?

Episode 10: (Correction: Blackpool is in the North West of England, (not the North East, apols fellow Lancastrians) Fred goes on holiday in Blackpool and gives us an eyewitness account of the first generation of the Blackpool Illuminations, the world's first ever municipal electric street lights, and we get to enjoy Janie and Fred's back and forth correspondence during that fortnight. We also take a look at the fashions of the day and Janie's work as a Sunday School teacher.

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'Artificial Sunshine' at the Seaside, and Sunday Best

Ingrid answers questions from listeners about Janie, Fred and the letters. Including everyday enquiries about what they ate, to asking about gender attitudes of the day. Season 2 starts next time.

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Q&A Bonus Episode (Season 1)

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