Victorian England measured social acceptability in terms of the number of servants employed in a household. It is perhaps unsurprising then that this frequently overlooked body of workers actually formed the largest occupational group in the country at the end of the nineteenth century. In this illustrated account, Pamela Horn draws upon a wealth of contemporary sources and 'servants' books' as well as personal reminiscences by servants and employers. She presents a comprehensive record of recruitment and training; the duties expected by servants, and the wide range of conditions under which they worked, some of which led to happy retirement, others to prostitution or squalid death. It is a compelling picture of a vanished social system.
Read India Black's blog and other content on the Penguin Community. When Sir Archibald Latham of the War Office dies from a heart attack while visiting her brothel, Madam India Black is unexpectedly thrust into a deadly game between Russian and British agents who are seeking the military secrets Latham carried. Blackmailed into recovering the missing documents by the British spy known as French, India finds herself dodging Russian agents-and the attraction she starts to feel for the handsome conspirator.
In the mid-nineteenth century many parts of England and Wales were still subjected to a system of regulated prostitution which, by identifying and detaining for treatment infected prostitutes, aimed to protect members of the armed forces (94 per cent of whom were forbidden to marry) from venereal diseases. The coercive nature of the Contagious Diseases Acts and the double standard which allowed the continuance of prostitution on the ground that the prostitute 'herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue', aroused the ire of many reformers, not only women’s rights campaigners. Paul McHugh analyses the social composition of the different repeal and reform movements – the liberal reformists, the passionate struggle of the charismatic Josephine Butler, the Tory reformers whose achievement was in the improvement of preventative medicine, and finally the Social Purity movement of the 1880s which favoured a coercive approach. This is a fascinating study of ideals and principles in action, of pressure-group strategy, and of individual leaders in the repeal movement’s sixteen year progress to victory. The book was originally publised in 1980.
In nineteenth century Cisleithanian Austria, poor, working-class women underwent mass migrations from the countryside to urban centers for menial or unskilled labor jobs. Through legal provisions on women’s work in the Habsburg Empire, there was an increase in the policing and surveillance of what was previously a gender-neutral career, turning it into one dominated by thousands of female rural migrants. Servants of Culture provides an account of Habsburg servant law since the eighteenth century and uncovers the paternalistic and maternalistic assumptions and anxieties which turned the interest of socio-political players in improving poor living and working conditions into practices that created restrictive gender and class hierarchies. Through pioneering analysis of the agendas of medical experts, police, socialists, feminists, legal reformers, and even serial killers, this volume puts forth a neglected history of the state of domestic service discourse at the turn of the 19th century and how it shaped and continues to shape the surveillance of women.
Drawing Upon A Wide Range And Variety Of Literary And Non-Literary Sources Of Nineteenth Century British India, Woman And Empire Examines Perceptions Of Gender Over The 1858 1900 Period. The Book Focuses On Representations Of White And Indian Women, In Addition To Women Of Mixed Races, In Fiction As Well As In Colonial Newspapers And Journals.
Established in the belief that imperialism as a cultural phenomenon had as significant an effect on the dominant as it did on the subordinate societies, the "Studies in Imperialism" series seeks to develop the new socio-cultural approach which has emerged through cross-disciplinary work on popular culture, media studies, art history, the study of education and religion, sports history and children's literature. The cultural emphasis embraces studies of migration and race, while the older political, and constitutional, economic and military concerns are never far away. It incorporates comparative work on European and American empire-building, with the chronological focus primarily, though not exclusively, on the 19th and 20th centuries, when these cultural exchanges were most powerfully at work. This work explores the sexual attitudes and activities of those who ran the British Empire. The study explains the pervasive importance of sexuality in the Victorian Empire, both for individuals and as a general dynamic in the working of the system. Among the topics included in the book are prostitution, the manners and mores of missionaries and aspects of race in sexual behaviour.
The essays collected in this volume reflect the upsurge of interest in the research and writing of feminist history in the 1970s/80s and illustrate the developments which have taken place – in the types of questions asked, the methodologies employed, and the scope and sophistication of the analytical approaches which have been adopted. Focusing on women in nineteenth-century Britain and America, this book includes work by scholars in both countries and takes its place in a long history of Anglo-American debate. The collection adopts 'the doubled vision of feminist theory', the view that it is the simultaneous operation of relations of class and of sex/gender that perpetuate both patriarchy and capitalism. This view informs a wide variety of contributions from 'Class and Gender in Victorian England', to 'Servants, Sexual Relations and the Risks of Illegitimacy', 'Free Black Women', 'The Power of Women’s Networks', and 'Socialism, Feminism and Sexual Antagonism in the London Tailoring Trade'. Both the vigour and the urgency of scholarship infused with social aims can be clearly felt in the essays collected here.
The seventh edition of this two-volume narrative of English history draws on the most up-to-date primary and secondary research, encouraging students to interpret the full range of England's social, economic, cultural, and political past from its first inhabitants to the 2020s. A History of England, Volume 2: 1688 to the Present focuses on the key social, economic, cultural, environmental, intellectual, and political events and themes of English history since 1688. Topics include Britain's emergence as a great power in the eighteenth century, the American War for Independence, the Industrial Revolution, and the economic crisis of the 1970s. The text discusses events in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland as they affected developments in England. The second volume features an in-depth treatment of the origins and course of the First and Second World Wars and provides an updated analysis of developments since 2012, including an account of Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union; the resignations of David Cameron, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss as prime minister; the selection of Rishi Sunak as the nation’s first British Asian prime minister; and a discussion of the 2015, 2017, and 2019 elections. This book is essential introductory reading for students of the history of England and Britain.