»Rachel Was Shapely and Beautiful«: A Jewish Woman in Hostile Archives

Abstract This article examines the life of Rachel Lumbard of Nottingham, a Jewish woman who appears in English national records from 1221–1251. Placing Rachel’s »archival debris« in the context of critical archival studies, recent work on »hostile archives«, and the difficulties of writing ordinary women’s histories, it uses the legal and financial remnants of Rachel and her family, along with critical imagination and informed speculation, to construct a narrative about her business networks, household, choices, and fate. This is the first study of Rachel, the eldest child of the better-known David Lumbard of Nottingham. It argues both that she must be included alongside her brothers in any consideration of the family’s history, and that her story provides a case study for how to engage archives hostile to their subjects, particularly to recover the lives of Jewish women in England, without reifying the silences and biases of oppressive non-Jewish records.