‘No more for Now or Praps Never’
The meaning and function of pauper writing in Britain, 1750s to early 1900s
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20053729 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Steven King (0000-0003-3526-7242, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Publication date | 2023-12-05 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Common Writer in Modern History (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Manchester University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.7765/9781526170767.00008 |
| OpenAlex | W4394924139 |
| ISBN | 9781526170767 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 7 |
Studies of the Old Poor Law (1601–1834 in England and Wales, from 1845 in Scotland) show that the very poorest strata of English, Welsh and Scottish society were more literate than many studies of British literacy have allowed. That literacy was often fragile, but poor people found ways to write and send letters with striking regularity. Their counterparts under the New Poor Law (1834–1929) also wrote in huge numbers to local authorities, to each other, to advocates, to newspapers and (above all) the central authorities as they sought to contest welfare. For the first time in the historiography, this chapter brings together Old and New Poor Law letters – some five million words – to look at the meaning and function of writing by the poor. It focusses not on the way that the Poor Law worked, but on: where the poor gained their literacy; why they wrote themselves as opposed to adopting some other means of communicating with those in power; how they understood the act and process of writing; what value and meaning they used to frame the written word; and how they learned and unlearned the linguistic registers that ebbed and flowed in this long period of societal and cultural change. A corpus of this size allows us to understand different models of writing among the poor: writing as habit; writing as last resort; writing as (literally in some cases) painful necessity; writing as investment; writing as precaution; and writing as a symbol of respectability and honesty
Art · CONTEST · Honesty · Literacy · Literature · Media studies · Political science · Sociology · Welsh · Cultural History and Identity Formation · History · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Psychology · Scottish History and National Identity
‘No more for Now or Praps Never’
The Emancipation of WritingGerman Civil Society in the Making, 1790s1820s
A New History from Below? The Writing Culture of Ordinary People in Europe
I think we ought not to acknowledge them [paupers] as that encourages them to write’
Writing Upwards
Supplicants and Citizens
Letters of the Labouring Poor
| Citations per year | 0.67 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |