{"id":32805,"date":"2024-06-28T10:22:30","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T14:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=32805"},"modified":"2024-07-02T09:54:30","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T13:54:30","slug":"furman-research-on-princess-amelia-king-george-iii-shine-light-on-historical-treatment-of-mental-physical-illness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/furman-research-on-princess-amelia-king-george-iii-shine-light-on-historical-treatment-of-mental-physical-illness\/","title":{"rendered":"Furman research on Princess Amelia, King George III shines light on historical treatment of mental, physical illness"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Megan Nunn \u201925 began thinking about her plan for the summer, Carolyn Day, a Furman University professor of history, hooked her on research when she read an excerpt from a letter Princess Amelia of the United Kingdom wrote to her lover in the early 19th Century.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat sounds more entertaining than being an intern anywhere,\u201d said Nunn, a fan of the royals who\u2019s watched the fictional show \u201cBridgerton\u201d and read the book series it\u2019s based on.<\/p>\n

Day, a specialist in 18th- and 19th-century British history, roughly the period covered in the Netflix series, needed help researching the illness of King George III of the U.K. and the illness and death of his youngest and favorite daughter, Amelia.<\/p>\n

\"Two

Megan Nunn ’25 and Carolyn Day, professor of history, in front of Kew Palace, home of King George III and Queen Charlotte. Photo provided.<\/p><\/div>\n

Day and Nunn collaborated and spent a week in London in early June visiting the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, the Royal College of Physicians and sites at Kew Palace, including Queen Charlotte\u2019s cottage and the Dutch House, where King George III would often go for treatments during his episodes of mental illness, which remains undiagnosed. The summer research project was made possible through the Waco F. Childers Jr. Research Fellowship in History<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the Royal Archives, Nunn recorded Amelia\u2019s receipts of purchases made throughout her life to provide insight into her romantic relationship with Charles FitzRoy, one of King George III\u2019s equerries, or officers of the household.\u00a0Nunn made an exciting discovery there, a receipt of a bracelet commissioned by Amelia for Charles. \u201cIt had an \u2018A\u2019 and a \u2018C\u2019 on it with two hands clasped,\u201d Nunn said. \u201cIt was very obvious that it was supposed to represent Amelia and Charles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hands-on learning is a hallmark of The Furman Advantage, with 42% of undergraduates like Nunn doing research. For students not into Georgian-era royal history, there\u2019s study away (44%) and the arguably less romantic internship (51%). In all, about 85% of Furman students do at least one of these high-impact practices.<\/p>\n

Nunn\u2019s research will inform Day\u2019s third book, which will focus on Princess Amelia, whose death from tuberculosis in 1810 precipitated her father’s final break with sanity. The researchers brought the data they gathered in London back to Furman, where they are transcribing Amelia\u2019s love letters, which were kept from the public for hundreds of years and only recently made available through the Georgian Papers Programme<\/a>. Day is also hoping to create one of the first-ever catalogs of Amelia\u2019s correspondence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fun part of this is that Amelia not only is ill and the king\u2019s daughter, she’s quite sassy, and she is also carrying on a scandalous relationship,\u201d said Day, who began this project a decade ago.<\/p>\n

Day said historical figures often omitted undesirable history from their accounts, making it difficult to know how people really acted. Much of Amelia\u2019s correspondence was destroyed by the royal family \u2014\u00a0 contributing to the \u201csanitization of history,\u201d she said \u2014 but some of her letters were saved by FitzRoy\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

\"Two

Day and Nunn ’25 outside the Royal Archives, which are housed in Windsor Castle. Photo provided.<\/p><\/div>\n

This research comes during a popular era of 18th and 19th century British history due to Netflix\u2019s adaptation of the \u201cBridgerton\u201d and \u201cQueen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story\u201d series. Though Day said much of the shows are inaccurate, she liked the sympathetic treatment of King George\u2019s illness.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnderstanding mental illness and not stigmatizing it, but being sympathetic to that plight is a really important way in which we can think about George differently,\u201d she said. \u201cTo understand that is also something we can carry forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nunn said she enjoyed the on-screen portrayal of George\u2019s relationship with Charlotte.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was nice to see him portrayed in that way and Charlotte standing by him the entire time, as she probably would have done in real life. Because lots of kings aren’t very loyal,\u201d Nunn said.<\/p>\n

Day\u2019s upcoming publication will be the second ever about just the princess. The last, \u201cThe Romance of Princess Amelia,\u201d was published in 1910 and reflects outdated views of women, according to Day.<\/p>\n

Day said her thousands of pages of transcripts will shed light on the way Amelia dealt with her disease and will seem familiar with how people today manage chronic illnesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are still the kind of things that people have to deal with in healthcare today,\u201d Day said. \u201cThere’s the great, fun scandal part of it, as well as interesting personal dynamics, but there’s also the reality of somebody who is suffering from a terminal illness for a decade and trying to manage her own healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nunn said Princess Amelia\u2019s story can appeal to a variety of people \u2013 history buffs and Bridgerton fans alike. \u201cShe has the intrigue to pull in a wider audience outside of just historians and academics because she does have the scandal and the heartbreak and the dad situation,\u201d Nunn said.<\/p>\n

The Georgian period carries relevance, Day said. \u201cPeople in the past were people and they dealt with things in very similar ways that we do today. There’s a lot of resonance there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carolyn Day, professor of history, and Megan Nunn \u201925 traveled to the Royal Archives in London to study uncatalogued receipts and letters that belonged to Princess Amelia, whose death in 1810 accelerated King George III\u2019s madness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":394,"featured_media":32828,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,55],"tags":[741,637,207,208],"class_list":["post-32805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-undergraduate-research","tag-history","tag-research","tag-student-research","tag-undergraduate-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/394"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32805"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32880,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32805\/revisions\/32880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}