Download or read book Obligation Entitlement and Dispute under the English Poor Laws written by Peter Jones and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-25 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With its focus on poverty and welfare in England between the seventeenth and later nineteenth centuries, this book addresses a range of questions that are often thought of as essentially “modern”: How should the state support those in work but who do not earn enough to get by? How should communities deal with in-migrants and immigrants who might have made only the lightest contribution to the economic and social lives of those communities? What basket of welfare rights ought to be attached to the status of citizen? How might people prove, maintain and pass on a sense of “belonging” to a place? How should and could the poor navigate a welfare system which was essentially discretionary? What agency could the poor have and how did ordinary officials understand their respective duties to the poor and to taxpayers? And how far was the state successful in introducing, monitoring and maintaining a uniform welfare system which matched the intent and letter of the law? This volume takes these core questions as a starting point. Synthesising a rich body of sources ranging from pauper letters through to legal cases in the highest courts in the land, this book offers a re-evaluation of the Old and New Poor Laws. Challenging traditional chronological dichotomies, it evaluates and puts to use new sources, and questions a range of long-standing assumptions about the experience of being poor. In doing so, the compelling voices of the poor move to centre stage and provide a human dimension to debates about rights, obligations and duties under the Old and New Poor Laws.
Download or read book Sickness medical welfare and the English poor 1750 1834 written by Steven King and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-30 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the core of this book are three central contentions: That medical welfare became the totemic function of the Old Poor Law in its last few decades; that the poor themselves were able to negotiate this medical welfare rather than simply being subject to it; and that being doctored and institutionalised became part of the norm for the sick poor by the 1820s, in a way that had not been the case in the 1750s. Exploring the lives and medical experiences of the poor largely in their own words, Sickness, medical welfare and the English poor offers a comprehensive reinterpretation of the so-called crisis of the Old Poor Law from the later eighteenth century. The sick poor became an insistent presence in the lives of officials and parishes and the (largely positive) way that communities responded to their dire needs must cause us to rethink the role and character of the poor law.
Download or read book Writing the Lives of the English Poor 1750s 1830s written by Steven King and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the mid-eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century, the English Old Poor Law was waning, soon to be replaced by the New Poor Law and its dreaded workhouses. In Writing the Lives of the English Poor, 1750s-1830s Steven King reveals colourful stories of poor people, their advocates, and the officials with whom they engaged during this period in British history, distilled from the largest collection of parochial correspondence ever assembled. Investigating the way that people experienced and shaped the English and Welsh welfare system through the use of almost 26,000 pauper letters and the correspondence of overseers in forty-eight counties, Writing the Lives of the English Poor, 1750s-1830s reconstructs the process by which the poor claimed, extended, or defended their parochial allowances. Challenging preconceptions about literacy, power, social structure, and the agency of ordinary people, these stories suggest that advocates, officials, and the poor shared a common linguistic register and an understanding of how far welfare decisions could be contested and negotiated. King shifts attention away from traditional approaches to construct an unprecedented, comprehensive portrait of poor law administration and popular writing at the turn of the nineteenth century. At a time when the western European welfare model is under sustained threat, Writing the Lives of the English Poor, 1750s-1830s takes us back to its deepest roots to demonstrate that the signature of a strong welfare system is malleability.
Download or read book In Their Own Write written by Steven King and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few subjects in European welfare history attract as much attention as the nineteenth-century English and Welsh New Poor Law. Its founding statute was considered the single most important piece of social legislation ever enacted, and at the same time, the coming of its institutions – from penny-pinching Boards of Guardians to the dreaded workhouse – has generally been viewed as a catastrophe for ordinary working people. Until now it has been impossible to know how the poor themselves felt about the New Poor Law and its measures, how they negotiated its terms, and how their interactions with the local and national state shifted and changed across the nineteenth century. In Their Own Write exposes this hidden history. Based on an unparalleled collection of first-hand testimony – pauper letters and witness statements interwoven with letters to newspapers and correspondence from poor law officials and advocates – the book reveals lives marked by hardship, deprivation, bureaucratic intransigence, parsimonious officialdom, and sometimes institutional cruelty, while also challenging the dominant view that the poor were powerless and lacked agency in these interactions. The testimonies collected in these pages clearly demonstrate that both the poor and their advocates were adept at navigating the new bureaucracy, holding local and national officials to account, and influencing the outcomes of relief negotiations for themselves and their communities. Fascinating and compelling, the stories presented in In Their Own Write amount to nothing less than a new history of welfare from below.
Download or read book Corpses in Belgian Anatomy 1860 1914 written by Tinne Claes and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-11-20 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of the thousands of corpses that ended up in the hands of anatomists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Composed as a travel story from the point of view of the cadaver, this study offers a full-blown cultural history of death and dissection, with insights that easily go beyond the history of anatomy and the specific case of Belgium. From acquisition to disposal, the trajectories of the corpse changed under the influence of social policies, ideological tensions, religious sensitivities, cultures of death and broader changes in the field of medical ethics. Anatomists increasingly had to reconcile their ways with the diverse meanings that the dead body held. To a certain extent, as this book argues, they started to treat the corpse as subject rather than object. Interweaving broad historical evolutions with detailed case studies, this book offers unique insights into a field dominated by Anglo-American perspectives, evaluating the similarities and differences within other European contexts.
Download or read book The Evolution of the British Welfare State written by Derek Fraser and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-10-31 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This established introductory textbook provides students with a full overview of British social policy and social ideas since the late 18th century. It is the essential starting point for anyone learning about how and why Britain created the first welfare state, and its development into the 21st century. Offering a comprehensive historical survey, this book analyses the emergence of the first welfare state, its later adaptations in the light of changing socio-political climates, and takes the story up to the present day, with discussion of the Coalition and Theresa May's early Prime Ministership, and an overview conclusion that identifies key issues in modern British social history. Building on the strong foundations of the prior editions, The Evolution of the Welfare State Sixth Edition has been updated to include: - New intersectional viewpoints on welfare, such as the role of gender - Expanded coverage of the post-1948 period - Updated methodological perspectives in the light of the latest research Ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students, this is an essential resource for all interested in the British welfare state and social history.
Download or read book Unmarried Motherhood in the Metropolis 1700 1850 written by Samantha Williams and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-04-23 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Samantha Williams examines illegitimacy, unmarried parenthood and the old and new poor laws in a period of rising illegitimacy and poor relief expenditure. In doing so, she explores the experience of being an unmarried mother from courtship and conception, through the discovery of pregnancy, and the birth of the child in lodgings or one of the new parish workhouses. Although fathers were generally held to be financially responsible for their illegitimate children, the recovery of these costs was particularly low in London, leaving the parish ratepayers to meet the cost. Unmarried parenthood was associated with shame and men and women could also be subject to punishment, although this was generally infrequent in the capital. Illegitimacy and the poor law were interdependent and this book charts the experience of unmarried motherhood and the making of metropolitan bastardy.
Download or read book Landless Households in Rural Europe 1600 1900 written by Christine Fertig and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First comparative study of landless households brings out their major role in European history and society.
Download or read book Pauper Voices Public Opinion and Workhouse Reform in Mid Victorian England written by Peter Jones and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-08-08 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book represents the first attempt to identify and describe a workhouse reform ‘movement’ in mid- to late-nineteenth-century England, beyond the obvious candidates of the Workhouse Visiting Society and the voices of popular critics such as Charles Dickens and Florence Nightingale. It is a subject on which the existing workhouse literature is largely silent, and this book therefore fills a considerable gap in our understanding of contemporary attitudes towards institutional welfare. Although many scholars have touched on the more obvious strands of workhouse criticism noted above, few have gone beyond these to explore the possibility that a concerted ‘movement’ existed that sought to place pressure on those with responsibility for workhouse administration, and to influence the trajectory of workhouse policy.
Download or read book Lawyers for the poor written by Kate Bradley and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-25 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 1890s onwards, social reformers, volunteer lawyers, and politicians increasingly came to see access to affordable or free legal advice as a critical part of helping working-class people uphold their rights with landlords, employers, and retailers – and, from the 1940s, with the welfare state. Whilst a state scheme was launched in 1949, it was never fully implemented and help from a lawyer remained out of the reach of many people. Lawyers for the poor is the first full-length study of the development of voluntary action and mutual schemes to make the law more accessible, and the pressure put on the legal profession and governments to bring in further reforms. It offers new insights of the role of access to the law in shaping ideas about citizenship and civil rights in the twentieth century.
Download or read book Fraudulent Lives written by Steven King and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2024-11-15 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Western welfare state model is beset with structural, financial, and moral crises. So-called scroungers, cheats, and disability fakers persistently occupy the centre of public policy discussions, even as official statistics suggest that relatively small amounts of money are lost to such schemes. In Fraudulent Lives Steven King focuses on the British case in the first ever long-term analysis of the scale, meaning, and consequences of welfare fraud in Western nations. King argues that an expectation of dishonesty on the part of claimants was written into the basic fabric of the founding statutes of the British welfare state in 1601, and that nothing has subsequently changed. Efforts throughout history to detect and punish fraud have been superficial at best because, he argues, it has never been in the interests of the three main stakeholders – claimants, the general public, and officials and policymakers – to eliminate it. Tracing a substantial underbelly of fraud from the seventeenth century to today, King finds remarkable continuities and historical parallels in public attitudes towards the honesty of welfare recipients – patterns that hold true across Western welfare states.
Download or read book Civic Continuities in an Age of Revolutionary Change c 1750 1850 written by Judith Pollmann and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-05 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book explores the role of continuity in political processes and practices during the Age of Revolutions. It argues that the changes that took place in the years around 1800 were enabled by different types of continuities across Europe and in the Americas. With historians of modernity tending to emphasise the rise of the new, scholarship has leaned towards an assumption that existing modes of action, thought and practice simply became extinct, irrelevant or at least subordinate to new modes. In contrast, this collection examines continuities between early modern and modern political cultures and organization in Europe and the Americas. Shifting the focus from political modernization, the authors examine the continued relevance of older, often local, practices in (post)revolutionary politics. By doing so, they aim to highlight the role of local political traditions and practices in forging and enabling political change. The book argues that while political change was in fact at the centre of both the old and new polities that emerged in the Age of Revolutions, it coexisted with, and was indeed enabled by, continuities at other levels.
Download or read book Trust Among Strangers written by Penelope Ismay and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-30 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the internal migration of a growing population transformed Britain into a 'society of strangers'. The coming and going of so many people wreaked havoc on the institutions through which Britons had previously addressed questions of collective responsibility. Poor relief, charity briefs, box clubs, and the like relied on personal knowledge of reputations for their effectiveness and struggled to accommodate the increasing number of unknown migrants. Trust among Strangers re-centers problems of trust in the making of modern Britain and examines the ways in which upper-class reformers and working-class laborers fashioned and refashioned the concept and practice of friendly society to make promises of collective responsibility effective - even among strangers. The result is a profoundly new account of how Britons navigated their way into the modern world.
Download or read book The Power of Petitioning in Early Modern Britain written by Brodie Waddell and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2024-05-21 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ‘humble petition’ was ubiquitous in early modern society and featured prominently in crucial moments such as the outbreak of the civil wars and in everyday local negotiations about taxation, welfare and litigation. People at all levels of society – from noblemen to paupers – used petitions to make their voices heard and these are valuable sources for mapping the structures of authority and agency that framed early modern society. The Power of Petitioning in Early Modern Britain offers a holistic study of this crucial topic in early modern British history. The contributors survey a vast range of sources, showing the myriad ways people petitioned the authorities from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. They cross the jurisdictional, sub-disciplinary and chronological boundaries that have otherwise constrained the current scholarly literature on petitioning and popular political engagement. Teasing out broad conclusions from innumerable smaller interventions in public life, they not only address the aims, attitudes and strategies of those involved, but also assesses the significance of the processes they used. This volume makes it possible to rethink the power of petitioning and to re-evaluate broad trends regarding political culture, institutional change and state formation.
Download or read book Emotions and Surgery in Britain 1793 1912 written by Michael Brown and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-20 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative analytical account of the changing place of emotions in British surgery in the long nineteenth century.
Download or read book Law and Society in England 1750 1950 written by William Cornish and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-31 with total page 781 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Law and Society in England 1750–1950 is an indispensable text for those wishing to study English legal history and to understand the foundations of the modern British state. In this new updated edition the authors explore the complex relationship between legal and social change. They consider the ways in which those in power themselves imagined and initiated reform and the ways in which they were obliged to respond to demands for change from outside the legal and political classes. What emerges is a lively and critical account of the evolution of modern rights and expectations, and an engaging study of the formation of contemporary social, administrative and legal institutions and ideas, and the road that was travelled to create them. The book is divided into eight chapters: Institutions and Ideas; Land; Commerce and Industry; Labour Relations; The Family; Poverty and Education; Accidents; and Crime. This extensively referenced analysis of modern social and legal history will be invaluable to students and teachers of English law, political science, and social history.
Download or read book Loyalty memory and public opinion in England 1658 1727 written by Edward Vallance and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-10 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate over the emergence of an early modern ‘public sphere’. Focusing on the petition-like form of the loyal address, it argues that these texts helped to foster a politically aware public by mapping shifts in the national ‘mood’. Covering addressing campaigns from the late-Cromwellian to the early Georgian period, the book explores the production, presentation, subscription and publication of these texts. It argues that beneath partisan attacks on the credibility of loyal addresses lay a broad consensus about the validity of this political practice. Ultimately, loyal addresses acknowledged the existence of a ‘political public’ but did so in a way which fundamentally conceded the legitimacy of the social and political hierarchy. They constituted a political form perfectly suited to a fundamentally unequal society in which political life continued to be centered on the monarchy.
