iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

In a bizarre mixture of fortune telling and corporate recruitment practice, a woman applied for a job in 1956 and her handwriting was analysed: “a sensible girl”, “a good nurse, clerk, bookeeper or home worker”; she will be “fortunate in her friendships”. Gender played no role in the analysis 👀

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I’ve just discovered the existence of “Coffin Paths” (or “Corpse Roads”), down which people were carried to be buried in the nearest Parish Church. They could be miles long. Down to the C19th, they were believed to be heavily haunted and often crossed rivers, because spirits were stopped by water

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Bizarrely tone deaf advertisement in London newspaper, 7 November 1941

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Reposted by Naomi Baker

Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

A woman leaves the following to her children in her 1681 will 🤔 To my son Henry, 10s, a six year old sheep and a stall of bees; To my daughter Joan, £2, my best hat, my best suit, my cloth waistcoat, black suit, two stalls of bees, all my poultry and a box; 1/2

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

To my daughter Frances, 10s; To my daughter Margaret, £5, a featherbed I lie on and its trappings; Residue to my son John, exec. 2/2 #earlymodern

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

20 September written as it should be every time ✍🏻

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

… or, let’s say, as serious individuals, as you assume the men are in the same mystical group? From a book published in 1996 #earlymodern

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

One of the most beautiful libraries in the world @thejohnrylands.bsky.social

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Yes, I edited it in “Scripture Women”, which has this narrative alongside another woman’s life writing. You should be able to get it through Amazon I think

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Rose Thurgood’s autobiographical account, describing what it felt like to be facing starvation in England in the 1630s, is on display at the Rylands Library in Manchester. It’s thrilling that this incredible woman is getting the attention she so deserves 💫 @thejohnrylands.bsky.social

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Reposted by Naomi Baker

Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

An English woman insisting on inclusive language in 1684! The main text refers to “man” and Ann Bathurst corrects this in the margin - “that is … men & women” #earlymodern

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

An English woman insisting on inclusive language in 1684! The main text refers to “man” and Ann Bathurst corrects this in the margin - “that is … men & women” #earlymodern

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Oh yes! Didn’t look closely enough!! 😂

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

I’m wondering if it’s “to due”, as in “to do”??

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Thank you! Have posted another image with a larger extract

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Can anyone decipher the words in the centre here? #earlymodern #paleography

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

“”Voices of Thunder” is both smart and approachable”, demonstrating an “unappreciated breadth of possibilities for women in English radicalism” ✨ Thank you @jliedl.bsky.social for this lovely review in Sixteenth-Century Journal 📚 @16csociety.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him ~ Annie Dillard, “Total Eclipse”

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

… sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. ~ Hamlet 1.1.119

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Yes although the spelling is a challenge! I don’t know much about her education, unfortunately

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

It’s slow going but I get really absorbed in it!

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Hardly anyone has bothered to go looking, that’s what it comes down to. She’s not well known, I only know of a couple of other people who might have seen this letter and they just assumed it was by a man!

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

She was a religious radical at the end of the 17th century who wrote a long diary full of accounts of visions and angels, she believed in universal redemption and it’s some of the most uplifting writing I’ve ever read!

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Her visions and, interestingly, about her sense of herself as an author

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

By the writing, the style, the references within the letter, the doodled initials - I’ve been working on her writing for a while and there are clues everywhere once you know them

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Naomi Baker @drnaomibaker.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Today I discovered that a letter attributed to a man was actually written by Ann Bathurst, the 17th-century visionary woman I’m researching. 🤩 Archival work might be slow and painstaking but it’s totally thrilling to be going in search of lost voices from the past and finding them! 📚

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