Unmarried Motherhood in the Metropolis, 1700–1850

Unmarried Motherhood in the Metropolis, 1700–1850

Author: Samantha Williams

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2018-05-04

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783319733197

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In this book Samantha Williams examines illegitimacy, unmarried parenthood and the old and new poor laws in a period of rising illegitimacy and poor relief expenditure. In doing so, she explores the experience of being an unmarried mother from courtship and conception, through the discovery of pregnancy, and the birth of the child in lodgings or one of the new parish workhouses. Although fathers were generally held to be financially responsible for their illegitimate children, the recovery of these costs was particularly low in London, leaving the parish ratepayers to meet the cost. Unmarried parenthood was associated with shame and men and women could also be subject to punishment, although this was generally infrequent in the capital. Illegitimacy and the poor law were interdependent and this book charts the experience of unmarried motherhood and the making of metropolitan bastardy.


English Poor Law Policy

English Poor Law Policy

Author: Sidney Webb

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-05-20

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 0429748868

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First published in 1910, this volume is a dispassionate analysis of the changes in and the various aspects of official policy towards pauperism from the ‘Revolution of 1834’ to the Majority and Minority Reports of 1909. In their preface to this volume the Webbs wrote: "What obscured the history was the manner in which masses of heterogeneous facts were heaped together. To read, one after another, these complicated Orders and lengthy Reports, each dealing with all kinds of paupers and various methods of relief, was but to accumulate confusion. They resembled a heap of geological conglomerates which could not be assayed until they had been broken up in such a way as to sort the different materials into separate homogeneous parcels". This book succeeds in presenting a masterly survey of this sector of the British social services on the eve of the foundation of the Welfare State, and completes the corpus of the Webbs on the Poor Law.


A History of the English Poor Law

A History of the English Poor Law

Author: Sir George Nicholls

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-09-13

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 131546795X

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First published in 1854, this comprehensive work charts over three volumes the history of poor relief in England from the Saxon period through to the establishment of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834 and its reception. This edition, updated in 1898, also includes a biography of the author, Sir George Nicholls. Volume I examines poor relief from the accession of George I to 1854. This set of books will be of interest to those studying the history of the British welfare state and social policy.