Download or read book The Poorhouses of Massachusetts written by Heli Meltsner and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since the English settled in America, extreme poverty and the inability of individuals to support themselves and their families have been persistent problems. In the early nineteenth century, many communities established almshouses, or "poorhouses," in a valiant but ultimately failed attempt to assist the destitute, including the sick, elderly, unemployed, mentally ill and orphaned, as well as unwed mothers, petty criminals and alcoholics. This work details the rise and decline of poorhouses in Massachusetts, painting a portrait of life inside these institutions and revealing a history of constant political and social turmoil over issues that dominate the conversation about welfare recipients even today. The first study to address the role of architecture in shaping as well as reflecting the treatment of paupers, it also provides photographs and histories of dozens of former poorhouses across the state, many of which still stand.
Download or read book Locked in the Poorhouse written by Fred R. Harris and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 1998 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty years ago President Johnson convened the Kerner Commission to examine the reasons why race riots were rampant. The commission concluded that the U.S. was moving towards two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal. Today, poverty in America is worse than in 1968. In the midst of a U.S. economic boom, the country is resegregating, and poor African Americans and Hispanics continue to be concentrated in urban environments. With contributors including best-selling author William Julius Wilson, this book shows what works and what doesn't in dealing with these problems and offers practical policy recommendations.
Download or read book The Poorhouse written by David Wagner and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of us grew up hearing our parents exclaim 'you are driving me to the poorhouse!' or remember the card in the Monopoly game which says 'Go to the Poorhouse! Lose a Turn!' Yet most Americans know little or nothing of this institution that existed under a variety of names for approximately three hundred years of American history. Exploring the history of the 'inmates' as well as staff and officials in New England, this book connects contemporary times to the 'poorhouse' history as the homeless shelter, jail, prison, and other institutions again hold millions of poor people under institutional care, sometimes in the very same structures that were poorhouses.
Download or read book Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts on the condition of idiots and lunatics in prisons and asylums etc written by Dorothea Lynde Dix and published by . This book was released on 1843 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Arts and Crafts Houses of Massachusetts written by Heli Meltsner and published by Bauhan Pub. This book was released on 2019 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the opening of the twentieth century, Massachusetts architects struggled to create an authentic new look that would reflect their clients' increasingly informal way of life. Inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement in England, the result was a charming style that proved especially appropriate for the rapidly expanding suburbs and vacation houses in the state--charming but overlooked, principally because the style is somewhat difficult to describe. The Arts and Crafts Houses of Massachusetts brings these homes, hidden in plain sight, the attention they deserve. Meticulously researched and with abundant color photos, the book is the only work focusing on the state's Arts and Crafts domestic architecture and the only one to include an illustrated field guide. It is also the first book to explore the use of this cutting-edge style in designing buildings for estate servants, transit workers, and renters--groups that historically lacked access to professionally designed homes.
Download or read book The Workhouse System 1834 1929 written by M. A. Crowther and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-17 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1981. Professor Crowther traces the history of the workhouse system from the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 to the Local Government Act of 1929. At their outset the large residential institutions were seen by the Poor Law Commissioners as a cure for nearly all social ills. In fact these formidable, impersonal, prison-like buildings – housing all paupers under one roof – became institutionalised: places where routine came to be an end in itself. In the early twentieth century some of the workhouses became hospitals or homes for the old or handicapped but many continued to form a residual service for those who needed long-term care. Crowther pays attention not only to the administrators but also to the inmates and their daily life. She illustrates that the workhouse system was not simply a nineteenth-century phenomenon but a forerunner of many of today’s social institutions.
Download or read book Asylum Prison and Poorhouse written by Dorothea Lynde Dix and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The appalling conditions endured by most mentally ill inmates in prisons, jails, and poorhouses led her to take an active interest also in prison reform and in efforts to ameliorate poverty.
Download or read book Victims of Ireland s Great Famine written by Jonny Geber and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With one million dead, and just as many forced to emigrate, the Irish Famine (1845-52) is among the worst health calamities in history. Because historical records of the Victorian period in Ireland were generally written by the middle and upper classes, relatively little has been known about those who suffered the most, the poor and destitute. But in 2006, archaeologists excavated an until then completely unknown intramural mass burial containing the remains of nearly 1,000 Kilkenny Union Workhouse inmates. In the first bioarchaeological study of Great Famine victims, Jonny Geber uses skeletal analysis to tell the story of how and why the Famine decimated the lowest levels of nineteenth century Irish society. Seeking help at the workhouse was an act of desperation by people who were severely malnourished and physically exhausted. Overcrowded, it turned into a hotspot of infectious disease--as did many other union workhouses in Ireland during the Famine. Geber reveals how medical officers struggled to keep people alive, as evidenced by cases of amputations but also craniotomies. Still, mortality rates increased and the city cemeteries filled up, until there was eventually no choice but to resort to intramural burials. Deceased inmates were buried in shrouds and coffins--an attempt by the Board of Guardians of the workhouse to maintain a degree of dignity towards these victims. By examining the physical conditions of the inmates that might have contributed to their institutionalization, as well as to the resulting health consequences, Geber sheds new and unprecedented light on Ireland’s Great Hunger.
Download or read book New England s Hidden Past written by Dan Landrigan and published by Down East Books. This book was released on 2020-06-15 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New England is so compact that even casual visitors can sample its diverse history in just a short time. But travelers and residents alike can also pass right by historic buildings, landscapes, and iconic objects without noticing them. New England's Hidden Past presents the region’s history in an engaging new way: through 58 lists of historic places and things usually hidden in plain sight in all six New England states. Pay attention and you’ll find stone structures built by Indians, soaring churches financed by Franco-American millworkers, and public high schools started by colonists when New England was still a howling wilderness. You may have seen them, but you probably don’t know the story behind them. New England's Hidden Past takes readers to the grave sites of revolutionary heroines, Loyalist house museums, as well as, Revolutionary taverns and colonial inns. It takes them to Indian trails, the oldest houses, historic department stores, ghost towns, and Little Italys. Each unique, interesting location or object has a counterpart in the other five New England states. A perfect guide to keep in the car and refer to when traveling New England or planning a trip.
Download or read book Poverty and the Government in America 2 volumes written by Jyotsna Sreenivasan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 761 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most comprehensive encyclopedia available on the U.S. government's responses to poverty from the colonial era to the present day. Poverty and the Government in America: A Historical Encyclopedia looks at one of the most important and controversial issues in U.S. history. Debated vigorously every election year, poverty is a topic that no politician at any level of government can escape. Ranging from colonial times to the New Deal, from Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty to welfare reform and beyond, it is the only encyclopedia focused exclusively on policy initiatives aimed at underprivileged citizens and the impact of those initiatives on the nation. Poverty and the Government in America offers over 170 entries on policies implemented to alleviate poverty—their historic contexts, rationales, and legacies. The encyclopedia also features separate essays on how poverty has been addressed at federal, state, local, and Native American tribal levels throughout U.S. history. Complimented by a richly detailed chronology and a wealth of primary documents, these features help readers grasp both the broad contours of government efforts to fight poverty and the details and results of specific policies.
Download or read book Automating Inequality written by Virginia Eubanks and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER: The 2018 McGannon Center Book Prize and shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice The New York Times Book Review: "Riveting." Naomi Klein: "This book is downright scary." Ethan Zuckerman, MIT: "Should be required reading." Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body: "A must-read." Astra Taylor, author of The People's Platform: "The single most important book about technology you will read this year." Cory Doctorow: "Indispensable." A powerful investigative look at data-based discrimination—and how technology affects civil and human rights and economic equity The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps and cash benefits in three years—because a new computer system interprets any mistake as “failure to cooperate.” In Los Angeles, an algorithm calculates the comparative vulnerability of tens of thousands of homeless people in order to prioritize them for an inadequate pool of housing resources. In Pittsburgh, a child welfare agency uses a statistical model to try to predict which children might be future victims of abuse or neglect. Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, employment, politics, health and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems—rather than humans—control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor. In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America. The book is full of heart-wrenching and eye-opening stories, from a woman in Indiana whose benefits are literally cut off as she lays dying to a family in Pennsylvania in daily fear of losing their daughter because they fit a certain statistical profile. The U.S. has always used its most cutting-edge science and technology to contain, investigate, discipline and punish the destitute. Like the county poorhouse and scientific charity before them, digital tracking and automated decision-making hide poverty from the middle-class public and give the nation the ethical distance it needs to make inhumane choices: which families get food and which starve, who has housing and who remains homeless, and which families are broken up by the state. In the process, they weaken democracy and betray our most cherished national values. This deeply researched and passionate book could not be more timely.
Download or read book In the Shadow Of the Poorhouse written by Michael B. Katz and published by Perseus (for Hbg). This book was released on 1996-12-11 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With welfare reform a burning political issue, this special anniversary edition of the classic history of welfare in America has been revised and updated to include the latest bipartisan debates on how to "end welfare as we know it". With an informative new Introduction and a new concluding chapter, this timely edition makes for important reading. Index.
Download or read book How Welfare Worked in the Early United States written by Gabriel J. Loiacono and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was American welfare like in George Washington's day? It was expensive, extensive, and run by local governments. Known as "poor relief," it included what we would now call welfare and social work. Unlike other aspects of government, poor relief remained consistent in structure between the establishment of the British colonies in the 1600s and the New Deal of the 1930s. In this book, Gabriel J. Loiacono follows the lives of five people in Rhode Island between the Revolutionary War and 1850: a long-serving overseer of the poor, a Continental Army veteran who was repeatedly banished from town, a nurse who was paid by the government to care for the poor, an unwed mother who cared for the elderly, and a paralyzed young man who attempted to become a Christian missionary from inside of a poorhouse. Of Native, African, and English descent, these five Rhode Islanders utilized poor relief in various ways. Tracing their involvement with these programs, Loiacono explains the importance of welfare through the first few generations of United States history. In Washington's day, poor relief was both generous and controlling. Two centuries ago, Americans paid for--and many relied on--an astonishing governmental system that provided food, housing, and medical care to those in need. This poor relief system also shaped American households and dictated where Americans could live and work. Recent generations have assumed that welfare is a new development in the United States. This book shows how old welfare is in the United States of America through five little-known, but compelling, life stories.
Download or read book Retiring Men written by Gregory Wood and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2012-01-18 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As life spans expanded dramatically in the United States after 1900, and employers increasingly demanded the speed and stamina of youth in the workplace, men struggled to sustain identities as workers, breadwinners, and patriarchs—the core ideals of twentieth-century masculinity. Longer life threatened manhood as men confronted age discrimination at work, mandatory retirement, and fixed incomes as recipients of Social Security and workplace pensions. They struggled to somehow sustain manliness in retirement, a new phase of life supposedly defined by the absence of labor. Ironically, retiring men pursued ways to stay “productive”: retirees created new daily routines of golf and shuffleboard games, tinkered with tools in garages, attended social club meetings, armed themselves for hunting and fishing excursions, and threw themselves into yard work. Others looked for new jobs or business ventures. Only unending activity could help to ensure that the “golden years” would be good years for older men of the twentieth century.
Download or read book As a City on a Hill written by Daniel T. Rodgers and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill," John Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans at New England's founding in 1630. More than three centuries later, Ronald Reagan remade that passage into a timeless celebration of American promise. How were Winthrop's long-forgotten words reinvented as a central statement of American identity and exceptionalism? In As a City on a Hill, leading American intellectual historian Daniel Rodgers tells the surprising story of one of the most celebrated documents in the canon of the American idea. In doing so, he brings to life the ideas Winthrop's text carried in its own time and the sharply different yearnings that have been attributed to it since. As a City on a Hill shows how much more malleable, more saturated with vulnerability, and less distinctly American Winthrop's "Model of Christian Charity" was than the document that twentieth-century Americans invented. Across almost four centuries, Rodgers traces striking shifts in the meaning of Winthrop's words--from Winthrop's own anxious reckoning with the scrutiny of the world, through Abraham Lincoln's haunting reference to this "almost chosen people," to the "city on a hill" that African Americans hoped to construct in Liberia, to the era of Donald Trump. As a City on a Hill reveals the circuitous, unexpected ways Winthrop's words came to lodge in American consciousness. At the same time, the book offers a probing reflection on how nationalism encourages the invention of "timeless" texts to straighten out the crooked realities of the past.
Download or read book Bunker Hill written by Nathaniel Philbrick and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of In the Heart of the Sea, Mayflower, and In the Hurricane's Eye tells the story of the Boston battle that ignited the American Revolution, in this "masterpiece of narrative and perspective." (Boston Globe) In the opening volume of his acclaimed American Revolution series, Nathaniel Philbrick turns his keen eye to pre-Revolutionary Boston and the spark that ignited the American Revolution. In the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party and the violence at Lexington and Concord, the conflict escalated and skirmishes gave way to outright war in the Battle of Bunker Hill. It was the bloodiest conflict of the revolutionary war, and the point of no return for the rebellious colonists. Philbrick gives us a fresh view of the story and its dynamic personalities, including John Adams, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and George Washington. With passion and insight, he reconstructs the revolutionary landscape—geographic and ideological—in a mesmerizing narrative of the robust, messy, blisteringly real origins of America.
Download or read book Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts 1843 written by Dorothea Lynde Dix and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
