Steven A King
Biographic Data
| ID | 259295 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steven A King |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steven A |
| FAMILY NAME | King |
| SIGNATURE | KING S A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Leicester |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9152-9190 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 50 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Benefit Fraud, Occupational Community, and Oral History
This article focuses on concepts of occupational community in the recent history of benefit fraud in the UK. It suggests that two ‘community’ reference points (with strong historical foundations) have come to dominate the current literature: physical concentrations of benefit claimants and benefit fraudsters in particular communities, which themselves have a sustained presence in media commentary; and the neighbourhoods in which benefit fraudster…
Fractured Courtships in Britain in the Long Nineteenth-Century
In this article I use a dataset which spans three broad source types – poor law records, coronial records, and forms of life-writing including memoirs – to understand the scale of fractured courtships in the long nineteenth century. Having established that ordinary people experienced failed courtships more often than we have supposed, I look (using whole corpus approaches and individual case studies) at the causative variables standing behind fai…
Remembering the Dead Poor in the Midlands, 1750s to 1880s
The deaths of ordinary poor people are, in both the popular imagination and much of the historiography, indelibly linked with pauper funerals, mass graves, anatomization in British medical schools and the striking absence of any of the structures and symbols of remembrance (headstones, death notices, etc.) that we often associate with other classes in 18th and 19th-century England. The dead poor under the Old and New Poor Laws were not remembered…
Introduction: Death, Memory and Commemoration in the English Midlands, 1600-1900
Our special issue makes five new contributions. Firstly, methodological advances including the need to focus on the boundaries between ‘active’ and passive memory and on the theoretical perspectives of the wider discipline of memory studies. Secondly, the importance of ‘telling the dead’, through intricate stories. Thirdly, we capture collectively the importance of ‘legacy’ for the dying and their families, a concept that in the past has been ove…
Still About the Town’: Constructing Disability in Small Town Nineteenth Century England
This article draws on the largest source base ever assembled – some 12 million words of diverse material ranging from letters, through life-writing and to committee minutes – to investigate the public presence of those with sensory, physical or mental impairments. Focusing on the nineteenth century, the classic period in which it is argued that impairment came to be constructed into ‘disability’ and subject to medical intervention, and on poor pe…
Women, Migration and Textile Work in West Yorkshire, 1800–1851
Between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century, the West Yorkshire woollen industry was one of the heartbeats of the Industrial Revolution and British prosperity on the international stage. At least until the 1830 s, much of this woollen cloth production was undertaken in a domestic or small workshop context and with a significant use of family labour. The communities that were at the heart of this industry thickened and grew. At the same…
Clothing the New Poor Law workhouse in the nineteenth century
The workhouse remains a totemic institution for social historians, yet we still know very little about the day-to-day experiences of the indoor poor. Nowhere is this clearer than in discussions about workhouse clothing, which remain overwhelmingly negative in the literature and consistent with the predominant view of the workhouse as a place of suffering and humiliation. Yet more often than not, this view is based on relatively shallow empirical …
I think we ought not to acknowledge them [paupers] as that encourages them to write’: The administrative state, power and the Victorian pauper
At the heart of this article stand three questions that we believe are crucial to an understanding of the character of the poor law and its role in the lives of the poor who had to navigate its rules. First, what was actually ‘new’ about the central administrative structures and processes required to make the New Poor Law function? Second, how did those processes change over time and, in particular, how far did the central authority itself engage…
Fragments of Fury? Lunacy, Agency, and Contestation in the Great Yarmouth Workhouse, 1890s-1900s
A methodological and philosophical focus on scandals has turned the workhouse that stands at the heart of popular and historiographical understandings of the English and Welsh New Poor Law (1834-1929) into a dark place of confinement and harsh treatment that the poor were largely powerless to resist. Yet viewed through the lens of interdisciplinary methods not often applied to the history of welfare-in particular, historical sociolinguistics and …
Imperfect Children’ in Historical Perspective
The file associated with this record is under embargo until 24 months after publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above
Thinking and Rethinking the New Poor Law
At the core of this article is the observation that, notwithstanding recent advances, we understand much less about the New Poor Law than the Old. An increasingly strong grasp of who was in workhouses is balanced by an historiography on the agency of workhouse inmates which is best described as 'thin'. The medical functions of the workhouse have, both for 'normal' times and occasions of scandal, been increasingly well researched. By contrast the …
Voices from the Far North: Pauper Letters and the Provision of Welfare in Sutherland, 1845–1900
This article explores the changing relationship between paupers and the parish authorities in Tongue, in the far north of Scotland, between the passing of the Scottish New Poor Law in 1845 and the end of the nineteenth century. It does so by focusing on Scottish pauper letters and petitions for relief. Such sources, though relatively abundant in the archives, have so far been ignored by welfare historians. The article begins with a discussion of …
Testifying for the Poor: Epistolary Advocates and the Negotiation of Parochial Relief in England, 1800–1834
At the heart of the English and Welsh Old Poor Law (1601–1834) lay a set of timeless questions: who should be eligible for welfare payments; how such payments should be balanced with contribution; and what to “do” about migrants. In recent historiography, answers to these questions have been constructed through the lens of pauper letters: narratives written by or for the poor who were out of their place of settlement. These documents show that th…
Nursing Under the Old Poor Law in Midland and Eastern England 1780–1834
This article uses data drawn from the overseers' accounts and supporting documentation in thirty-six parishes spread over four English counties, to answer three basic questions. First, what was the character, extent, structure, range of activities, and remuneration of the nursing labor force under the Old Poor Law between the late eighteenth century and the implementation of the New Poor Law in the 1830s? Second, were there regional and intra-reg…
Poverty and sickness in modern Europe: Narratives of the sick poor, 1780-1938
"This book provides a genuinely pan-European analysis of pauper narratives, focusing on the experiences of the sick poor in England, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Wales. The contributions highlight the value of pauper narratives for exploring the agency, rhetoric and experiences of the poor and sick poor, significantly enhancing our understanding of the ways in which national and regional welfare s…
Courtship and the Remarrying Man in Late-Victorian England
The remarrying man has attracted relatively little historiographical attention, both absolutely and particularly for the nineteenth century. Their motivations for marriage and experiences of courtship have been subsumed into wide generalizations, such as the sense that men with children had to remarry in order to evidence their masculinity and to obtain care for their children. This article challenges such generalizations. Focusing on the detaile…
Welfare Regimes and Welfare Regions in Britain and Europe, c.1750s to 1860s
Welfare Regimes and Welfare Regions in Britain and Europe, c.1750s to 1860s This article is concerned with the models that might be used to classify and compare welfare regimes in different European states prior to the broad convergence of welfare debates and structures of the late-nineteenth century. Reviewing existing models («Nordic» welfare systems, confessional divides, welfare peripheries, etc.) the article contends that a more sensitive se…
Negotiating the Law of Poor Relief in England, 1800–1840
Over the last two decades, the historiography of poverty and welfare has moved decisively away from considerations of either black letter or case law, in favour of the study of the socio‐cultural experiences of the poor themselves. This article uses a large corpus of pauper letters and other correspondence for a number of Midland counties to argue for a reconsideration of the place of the law in shaping pauper entitlements and beliefs. It argues …
Forme et fonction de la parenté chez les populations pauvres d'Angleterre, 1800-1840
De récents travaux ont commencé à remettre en question l'orthodoxie historiographique qui voulait que les familles anglaises fussent des structures petites et simples, localisées dans des réseaux de parenté peu denses: la parenté anglaise aurait eu une fonction très limitée. Cet article cherche au contraire à montrer l'étendue, la profondeur et la fonction de la parenté parmi ceux qui dépendaient de l'aide sociale instaurée par la ' Old Poor Law …
Population and Disease: Transforming English Society, 1550-1850
At the core of this book are three interlinking themes: the idea that population growth was an independent rather than a dependent variable in the Industrial Revolution; the idea that existing understandings of the nature and drivers of English population growth are flawed; and the idea that mortality in particular has more explanatory power in the English population revolution than has usually been allowed. These themes are simply stated and Pet…
I Fear You Will Think Me Too Presumtuous in My Demands but Necessity Has No Law”: Clothing in English Pauper Letters, 1800–1834
This article investigates the way in which the English poor used the rhetoric of clothing in their engagement with local officials as they attempted to secure poor relief. Using letters written about or by the dependent poor from a wide selection of English communities, the article suggests that the poor employed concepts such as raggedness, lost clothing, nakedness, compromised dignity, and community presence and the link between poor clothing a…
Pauper Letters as a Source
(2007). Pauper Letters as a Source. Family & Community History: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 167-170
Regional patterns in the experiences and treatment of the sick poor, 1800-40: Rights, Obligations and Duties in the Rhetoric of Paupers
This article focuses on three individual paupers who wrote a series of letters about sickness to their home towns in Essex, Northamptonshire and Lancashire. While it would be wrong to claim that the rhetoric and strategies employed by the three writers are representative of all pauper writers, they are representative of those who wrote multiple letters to their parish of settlement and a detailed exposition of their writing can tell us much about…
Pauvreté et assistance. La politique locale de la mortalité dans l'Angleterre des XVIIIeet XIXesiècles
Cet article a pour objet les recherches sur la période clé du ' décollage ' démographique en Angleterre à la charnière des XVIIIeet XIXesiècles, et le développement lent et prudent des méthodes statistiques et des ressources empiriques qui l'ont accompagné. Depuis la fin des années 1960, on a attribué à l'Angleterre ancienne un régime de faible pression démographique dominé par la nuptialité. L'article examine d'abord les explications macroscopiq…
"Stop This Overwhelming Torment of Destiny": Negotiating Financial Aid at Times of Sickness under the English Old Poor Law, 1800-1840
The issue of entitlement under the English Poor Law (1601–1834) is a complex question, and nowhere more so than in the context of the sick poor. Using the example of communities in one of England's most parsimonious Poor Law counties, Lancashire, this article will show that the sick poor faced uncertain and uneven entitlement to relief and medical intervention. Faced with such uncertainty, they adopted three core linguistic and posturing strategi…
Negotiating the Law of Poor Relief in England, 1800–1840
Over the last two decades, the historiography of poverty and welfare has moved decisively away from considerations of either black letter or case law, in favour of the study of the socio‐cultural experiences of the poor themselves. This article uses a large corpus of pauper letters and other correspondence for a number of Midland counties to argue for a reconsideration of the place of the law in shaping pauper entitlements and beliefs. It argues …
We Might be Trusted”: Female Poor Law Guardians and the Development of the New Poor Law: The Case of Bolton, England, 1880–1906
This article uses the only surviving working diary of an English female Poor Law guardian in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to explore two interrelated bodies of historiography. First, it engages with an historiography of the New Poor Law which has by and large seen the late nineteenth century as a period of atrophication. Second, it engages with a literature on female Poor Law guardians which has on balance questioned their ac…
Dying with Style: Infant Death and its Context in a Rural Industrial Township 1650-1830
The literature on the demographic impact of rural industrialization in England has lagged somewhat behind continental inspired historiography. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the sphere of infant mortality, where commentators have failed to balance the effects of rural industry on health and welfare--such as higher earnings and the existance of more dense kinship networks--with the negative effects--proximity of rural industrial areas to ra…
Migrants on the margin? Mobility, integration and occupations in the West Riding, 1650–1820
Voices from the Far North: Pauper Letters and the Provision of Welfare in Sutherland, 1845–1900
This article explores the changing relationship between paupers and the parish authorities in Tongue, in the far north of Scotland, between the passing of the Scottish New Poor Law in 1845 and the end of the nineteenth century. It does so by focusing on Scottish pauper letters and petitions for relief. Such sources, though relatively abundant in the archives, have so far been ignored by welfare historians. The article begins with a discussion of …
Chance Encounters? Paths to Household Formation in Early Modern England
Since 1981, nuptiality has been identified as the main driver of rapid eighteenth-century English population growth. Over the course of the long eighteenth century, “national” rates of female non-marriage declined while female age at first marriage fell by roughly three years, reaching 22–23 years by the 1820s. The cumulative impact of more and earlier marriage on fertility is believed to have greatly outweighed the effect of falling mortality in…
Welfare Regimes and Welfare Regions in Britain and Europe, c.1750s to 1860s
Welfare Regimes and Welfare Regions in Britain and Europe, c.1750s to 1860s This article is concerned with the models that might be used to classify and compare welfare regimes in different European states prior to the broad convergence of welfare debates and structures of the late-nineteenth century. Reviewing existing models («Nordic» welfare systems, confessional divides, welfare peripheries, etc.) the article contends that a more sensitive se…
I Fear You Will Think Me Too Presumtuous in My Demands but Necessity Has No Law”: Clothing in English Pauper Letters, 1800–1834
This article investigates the way in which the English poor used the rhetoric of clothing in their engagement with local officials as they attempted to secure poor relief. Using letters written about or by the dependent poor from a wide selection of English communities, the article suggests that the poor employed concepts such as raggedness, lost clothing, nakedness, compromised dignity, and community presence and the link between poor clothing a…
Regional patterns in the experiences and treatment of the sick poor, 1800-40: Rights, Obligations and Duties in the Rhetoric of Paupers
This article focuses on three individual paupers who wrote a series of letters about sickness to their home towns in Essex, Northamptonshire and Lancashire. While it would be wrong to claim that the rhetoric and strategies employed by the three writers are representative of all pauper writers, they are representative of those who wrote multiple letters to their parish of settlement and a detailed exposition of their writing can tell us much about…
Imperfect Children’ in Historical Perspective
The file associated with this record is under embargo until 24 months after publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above
Pauper Letters as a Source
(2007). Pauper Letters as a Source. Family & Community History: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 167-170
The English protoindustrial family: Old and new perspectives
English research on protoindustrial communities in general and the protoindustrial family in particular has fallen somewhat behind that in many continental countries. Constrained by inadequate sources and a historiographical literature that has constantly placed the small and simple nuclear unit at the heart of English residential arrangements, English historians have often seen the protoindustrial family as little different in form and function …
Fragments of Fury? Lunacy, Agency, and Contestation in the Great Yarmouth Workhouse, 1890s-1900s
A methodological and philosophical focus on scandals has turned the workhouse that stands at the heart of popular and historiographical understandings of the English and Welsh New Poor Law (1834-1929) into a dark place of confinement and harsh treatment that the poor were largely powerless to resist. Yet viewed through the lens of interdisciplinary methods not often applied to the history of welfare-in particular, historical sociolinguistics and …
Forme et fonction de la parenté chez les populations pauvres d'Angleterre, 1800-1840
De récents travaux ont commencé à remettre en question l'orthodoxie historiographique qui voulait que les familles anglaises fussent des structures petites et simples, localisées dans des réseaux de parenté peu denses: la parenté anglaise aurait eu une fonction très limitée. Cet article cherche au contraire à montrer l'étendue, la profondeur et la fonction de la parenté parmi ceux qui dépendaient de l'aide sociale instaurée par la ' Old Poor Law …
Population and Disease: Transforming English Society, 1550-1850
At the core of this book are three interlinking themes: the idea that population growth was an independent rather than a dependent variable in the Industrial Revolution; the idea that existing understandings of the nature and drivers of English population growth are flawed; and the idea that mortality in particular has more explanatory power in the English population revolution than has usually been allowed. These themes are simply stated and Pet…
Pauvreté et assistance. La politique locale de la mortalité dans l'Angleterre des XVIIIeet XIXesiècles
Cet article a pour objet les recherches sur la période clé du ' décollage ' démographique en Angleterre à la charnière des XVIIIeet XIXesiècles, et le développement lent et prudent des méthodes statistiques et des ressources empiriques qui l'ont accompagné. Depuis la fin des années 1960, on a attribué à l'Angleterre ancienne un régime de faible pression démographique dominé par la nuptialité. L'article examine d'abord les explications macroscopiq…
Dying with Style: Infant Death and its Context in a Rural Industrial Township 1650-1830
The literature on the demographic impact of rural industrialization in England has lagged somewhat behind continental inspired historiography. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the sphere of infant mortality, where commentators have failed to balance the effects of rural industry on health and welfare--such as higher earnings and the existance of more dense kinship networks--with the negative effects--proximity of rural industrial areas to ra…
Migrants on the margin? Mobility, integration and occupations in the West Riding, 1650–1820
Chance Encounters? Paths to Household Formation in Early Modern England
Since 1981, nuptiality has been identified as the main driver of rapid eighteenth-century English population growth. Over the course of the long eighteenth century, “national” rates of female non-marriage declined while female age at first marriage fell by roughly three years, reaching 22–23 years by the 1820s. The cumulative impact of more and earlier marriage on fertility is believed to have greatly outweighed the effect of falling mortality in…
Ancestral Trails: The Complete Guide to British Genealogy and Family History, Mark D. Herber
Journal Article Ancestral Trails: The Complete Guide to British Genealogy and Family History, Mark D. Herber Get access Steven King Steven King Oxford Brookes University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume 116, Issue 467, June 2001, Pages 688–689, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/116.467.688 Published: 01 June 2001
The Rural Poor in Eighteenth Century Wales
The English protoindustrial family: Old and new perspectives
English research on protoindustrial communities in general and the protoindustrial family in particular has fallen somewhat behind that in many continental countries. Constrained by inadequate sources and a historiographical literature that has constantly placed the small and simple nuclear unit at the heart of English residential arrangements, English historians have often seen the protoindustrial family as little different in form and function …
We Might be Trusted”: Female Poor Law Guardians and the Development of the New Poor Law: The Case of Bolton, England, 1880–1906
This article uses the only surviving working diary of an English female Poor Law guardian in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to explore two interrelated bodies of historiography. First, it engages with an historiography of the New Poor Law which has by and large seen the late nineteenth century as a period of atrophication. Second, it engages with a literature on female Poor Law guardians which has on balance questioned their ac…
"Stop This Overwhelming Torment of Destiny": Negotiating Financial Aid at Times of Sickness under the English Old Poor Law, 1800-1840
The issue of entitlement under the English Poor Law (1601–1834) is a complex question, and nowhere more so than in the context of the sick poor. Using the example of communities in one of England's most parsimonious Poor Law counties, Lancashire, this article will show that the sick poor faced uncertain and uneven entitlement to relief and medical intervention. Faced with such uncertainty, they adopted three core linguistic and posturing strategi…
Pauvreté et assistance. La politique locale de la mortalité dans l'Angleterre des XVIIIeet XIXesiècles
Cet article a pour objet les recherches sur la période clé du ' décollage ' démographique en Angleterre à la charnière des XVIIIeet XIXesiècles, et le développement lent et prudent des méthodes statistiques et des ressources empiriques qui l'ont accompagné. Depuis la fin des années 1960, on a attribué à l'Angleterre ancienne un régime de faible pression démographique dominé par la nuptialité. L'article examine d'abord les explications macroscopiq…
Pauper Letters as a Source
(2007). Pauper Letters as a Source. Family & Community History: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 167-170
Regional patterns in the experiences and treatment of the sick poor, 1800-40: Rights, Obligations and Duties in the Rhetoric of Paupers
This article focuses on three individual paupers who wrote a series of letters about sickness to their home towns in Essex, Northamptonshire and Lancashire. While it would be wrong to claim that the rhetoric and strategies employed by the three writers are representative of all pauper writers, they are representative of those who wrote multiple letters to their parish of settlement and a detailed exposition of their writing can tell us much about…
Population and Disease: Transforming English Society, 1550-1850
At the core of this book are three interlinking themes: the idea that population growth was an independent rather than a dependent variable in the Industrial Revolution; the idea that existing understandings of the nature and drivers of English population growth are flawed; and the idea that mortality in particular has more explanatory power in the English population revolution than has usually been allowed. These themes are simply stated and Pet…
I Fear You Will Think Me Too Presumtuous in My Demands but Necessity Has No Law”: Clothing in English Pauper Letters, 1800–1834
This article investigates the way in which the English poor used the rhetoric of clothing in their engagement with local officials as they attempted to secure poor relief. Using letters written about or by the dependent poor from a wide selection of English communities, the article suggests that the poor employed concepts such as raggedness, lost clothing, nakedness, compromised dignity, and community presence and the link between poor clothing a…
Forme et fonction de la parenté chez les populations pauvres d'Angleterre, 1800-1840
De récents travaux ont commencé à remettre en question l'orthodoxie historiographique qui voulait que les familles anglaises fussent des structures petites et simples, localisées dans des réseaux de parenté peu denses: la parenté anglaise aurait eu une fonction très limitée. Cet article cherche au contraire à montrer l'étendue, la profondeur et la fonction de la parenté parmi ceux qui dépendaient de l'aide sociale instaurée par la ' Old Poor Law …
Welfare Regimes and Welfare Regions in Britain and Europe, c.1750s to 1860s
Welfare Regimes and Welfare Regions in Britain and Europe, c.1750s to 1860s This article is concerned with the models that might be used to classify and compare welfare regimes in different European states prior to the broad convergence of welfare debates and structures of the late-nineteenth century. Reviewing existing models («Nordic» welfare systems, confessional divides, welfare peripheries, etc.) the article contends that a more sensitive se…
Negotiating the Law of Poor Relief in England, 1800–1840
Over the last two decades, the historiography of poverty and welfare has moved decisively away from considerations of either black letter or case law, in favour of the study of the socio‐cultural experiences of the poor themselves. This article uses a large corpus of pauper letters and other correspondence for a number of Midland counties to argue for a reconsideration of the place of the law in shaping pauper entitlements and beliefs. It argues …
Poverty and sickness in modern Europe: Narratives of the sick poor, 1780-1938
"This book provides a genuinely pan-European analysis of pauper narratives, focusing on the experiences of the sick poor in England, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Wales. The contributions highlight the value of pauper narratives for exploring the agency, rhetoric and experiences of the poor and sick poor, significantly enhancing our understanding of the ways in which national and regional welfare s…
Courtship and the Remarrying Man in Late-Victorian England
The remarrying man has attracted relatively little historiographical attention, both absolutely and particularly for the nineteenth century. Their motivations for marriage and experiences of courtship have been subsumed into wide generalizations, such as the sense that men with children had to remarry in order to evidence their masculinity and to obtain care for their children. This article challenges such generalizations. Focusing on the detaile…
Nursing Under the Old Poor Law in Midland and Eastern England 1780–1834
This article uses data drawn from the overseers' accounts and supporting documentation in thirty-six parishes spread over four English counties, to answer three basic questions. First, what was the character, extent, structure, range of activities, and remuneration of the nursing labor force under the Old Poor Law between the late eighteenth century and the implementation of the New Poor Law in the 1830s? Second, were there regional and intra-reg…
Voices from the Far North: Pauper Letters and the Provision of Welfare in Sutherland, 1845–1900
This article explores the changing relationship between paupers and the parish authorities in Tongue, in the far north of Scotland, between the passing of the Scottish New Poor Law in 1845 and the end of the nineteenth century. It does so by focusing on Scottish pauper letters and petitions for relief. Such sources, though relatively abundant in the archives, have so far been ignored by welfare historians. The article begins with a discussion of …
Testifying for the Poor: Epistolary Advocates and the Negotiation of Parochial Relief in England, 1800–1834
At the heart of the English and Welsh Old Poor Law (1601–1834) lay a set of timeless questions: who should be eligible for welfare payments; how such payments should be balanced with contribution; and what to “do” about migrants. In recent historiography, answers to these questions have been constructed through the lens of pauper letters: narratives written by or for the poor who were out of their place of settlement. These documents show that th…
Imperfect Children’ in Historical Perspective
The file associated with this record is under embargo until 24 months after publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above
Thinking and Rethinking the New Poor Law
At the core of this article is the observation that, notwithstanding recent advances, we understand much less about the New Poor Law than the Old. An increasingly strong grasp of who was in workhouses is balanced by an historiography on the agency of workhouse inmates which is best described as 'thin'. The medical functions of the workhouse have, both for 'normal' times and occasions of scandal, been increasingly well researched. By contrast the …
Fragments of Fury? Lunacy, Agency, and Contestation in the Great Yarmouth Workhouse, 1890s-1900s
A methodological and philosophical focus on scandals has turned the workhouse that stands at the heart of popular and historiographical understandings of the English and Welsh New Poor Law (1834-1929) into a dark place of confinement and harsh treatment that the poor were largely powerless to resist. Yet viewed through the lens of interdisciplinary methods not often applied to the history of welfare-in particular, historical sociolinguistics and …
Women, Migration and Textile Work in West Yorkshire, 1800–1851
Between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century, the West Yorkshire woollen industry was one of the heartbeats of the Industrial Revolution and British prosperity on the international stage. At least until the 1830 s, much of this woollen cloth production was undertaken in a domestic or small workshop context and with a significant use of family labour. The communities that were at the heart of this industry thickened and grew. At the same…
Historical Economic and Social Studies (27 works) · Political science (25 works) · Sociology (25 works) · History (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes (18 works) · Law (16 works) · History (14 works) · Economics (12 works) · Poor relief (9 works)