This book offers a detailed examination of the living arrangements and material circumstances of the poor betweeen 1650 and 1850. Chapters investigate poor households in urban, rural and metropolitan contexts, and contribute to wider investigations into British economic and social conditions in the long Eighteenth century.
This book is an examination of early modern English almshouses in the 'mixed economy' of welfare. Drawing on archival evidence from three contrasting counties - Durham, Warwickshire and Kent - between 1550 and 1725, the book assesses the contribution almshouses made within the developing welfare systems of the time and the reasons for the enduring popularity of this particular form of charity. Post-Reformation almshouses are usually considered to have been places of privilege for the respectable deserving poor, operating outside the structure of parish poor relief to which ordinary poor people were subjected, and making little contribution to the genuinely poor and needy. This book challenges these assumptions through an exploration of the nature and extent of almshouse provision; it examines why almshouses were founded in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who the occupants were, what benefits they received and how residents were expected to live their lives. The book reveals a surprising variation in the socio-economic status of almspeople and their experience of almshouse life.
Exploring a range of poverty experiences-socioeconomic, moral and spiritual-this collection presents new research by a distinguished group of scholars working in the medieval and early modern periods. Collectively they explore both the assumptions and strategies of those in authority dealing with poverty and the ways in which the poor themselves tried to contribute to, exploit, avoid or challenge the systems for dealing with their situation. The studies demonstrate that poverty was by no means a simple phenomenon. It varied according to gender, age and geographical location; and the way it was depicted in speech, writing and visual images could as much affect how the poor experienced their poverty as how others saw and judged them. Using new sources-and adopting new approaches to known sources-the authors share insights into the management and the self-management of the poor, and search out aspects of the experience of poverty worthy of note, from which can be traced lasting influences on the continuing understanding and experience of poverty in pre-modern Europe.
The Routledge History of Poverty, c.1450–1800 is a pioneering exploration of both the lives of the very poorest during the early modern period, and of the vast edifices of compassion and coercion erected around them by individuals, institutions, and states. The essays chart critical new directions in poverty scholarship and connect poverty to the environment, debt and downward social mobility, material culture, empires, informal economies, disability, veterancy, and more. The volume contributes to the understanding of societal transformations across the early modern period, and places poverty and the poor at the centre of these transformations. It also argues for a wider definition of poverty in history which accounts for much more than economic and social circumstance and provides both analytically critical overviews and detailed case studies. By exploring poverty and the poor across early modern Europe, this study is essential reading for students and researchers of early modern society, economic history, state formation and empire, cultural representation, and mobility.
This book offers a detailed examination of the living arrangements and material circumstances of the poor betweeen 1650 and 1850. Chapters investigate poor households in urban, rural and metropolitan contexts, and contribute to wider investigations into British economic and social conditions in the long Eighteenth century.
What makes private law private? What is its domain? What are the values it promotes? Relational Justice: A Theory of Private Law addresses these foundational questions in a robust analysis of the key doctrines of private law, including torts, contracts, and restitution. Discarding the vision of private law as a bastion of negative duties of non-interference or efficiency maximization, this book reframes private law in terms of what it calls 'relational justice' - reciprocal respect for self-determination and substantive equality. By vindicating self-determination, private law can forge the horizontal interactions vital to the ability to shape and implement a conception of the good life. By structuring these interactions in terms requiring parties to respect one another for who they are, private law can cast them as interactions between equals. In the book's first part, the authors set out a normative position they term relational justice, whereby the rules of private law abide by the fundamental maxim of reciprocal respect for self-determination and substantive equality. The second part of the book applies this framework to an analysis of familiar private law doctrinal areas, followed by a third part charting newer areas including workplace safety, poverty, discrimination, and implications for international law. Throughout, the authors show how relational justice theory provides a normative vocabulary for evaluating core features of existing private law, while suggesting directions for necessary or desirable reforms.
“Provides a wealth of information about . . . people who have gone through debt collectives, hospitals, bankruptcy, crime, homelessness—the list is huge.” —UK Historian Many people in the past—perhaps a majority—were poor. Tracing our ancestors amongst them involves consulting a wide range of sources. Stuart Raymond’s handbook is the ideal guide to them. He examines the history of the poor and how they survived. Some were supported by charity. A few were lucky enough to live in an almshouse. Many had to depend on whatever the poor law overseers gave them. Others were forced into the Union workhouse. Some turned to a life of crime. Vagrants were whipped and poor children were apprenticed by the overseers or by a charity. Paupers living in the wrong place were forcibly “removed” to their parish of settlement. Many parishes and charities offered them the chance to emigrate to North America or Australia. As a result, there are many places where information can be found about the poor. Stuart Raymond describes them all: the records of charities, of the poor law overseers, of poor law unions, of Quarter Sessions, of bankruptcy, and of friendly societies. He suggests many other potential sources of information in record offices, libraries, and on the internet. “Packed with incredibly useful reference information which no family historian should be without.” —The Essex Family Historian
Presents the latest research on the causes and consequences of British population change from the medieval period to the eve of the Industrial Revolution, in both town and countryside Population, Welfare and Economic Change presents the latest research on the causes and consequences of British population change from the medieval period to the eve of the Industrial Revolution, in both town and countryside. Its overarching concern is with the economic and demographic decision-making of individuals and groups and the extent to which these were constrained by institutions and resources. Within this, the volume's particular focus is on population growth: its causes and the welfare challenges it posed. Several chapters investigate the success with which the English Old Poor Law provided care for the poor and elderly, and new work on alternative welfare institutions, such as almshouses, is also presented. A further distinctive feature of this book is its comparative perspective. By making systematic comparisons between economic and demographic developments in pre-industrial Britain and those taking place in various regions of contemporary Continental Europe and Russia, several chapters uncover how far Britain in this period was 'different'. Stimulating to experts and students alike, Population, Welfareand Economic Change offers overviews and summaries of the latest scholarship by leading economic historians and historical demographers, alongside detailed case studies which showcase the original research of younger scholars. Chris Briggs is Lecturer in Medieval British Economic and Social History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Selwyn College. P.M. Kitson is a former Research Associate at the Cambridge Group for the Historyof Population and Social Structure and Bye-Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. S.J. Thompson is a former J.H. Plumb Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Christ's College, Cambridge. CONTRIBUTORS: Lorraine Barry, Jeremy Boulton, Chris Briggs, Bruce M.S. Campbell, Tracy Dennison, Nigel Goose, R.W. Hoyle, Peter Kitson, Julie Marfany, Rebecca Oakes, Sheilagh Ogilvie, Stephen Thompson, Samantha Williams, Sir Tony Wrigley, Margaret Yates
The population of London soared during the Industrial Revolution and the poorer areas became iconic places of overcrowding and vice. Focusing on the communities of Westminster, MacKay shows that many of the plebeian populace retained traditional working-class pursuits, such as gambling, drinking and blood sports.