London Lives

Hitchcock, Tim; Shoemaker, Robert B.

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139177979

Cited by 46 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Despite the principle of deterrence enshrined in the establishment and running of many metropolitan workhouses, it was, in fact, the sick, the elderly, and lying-in women who filled their wards. 127 The diversity of experiences across London revealed in the Town Queries was also reflected at the local level of St George the Martyr, St Mary Newington, and St Saviour. Such parochial variety suggests that factors outside the jurisdiction of magistrates were more important, which, in itself, reveals something about legal cultures; justices might have been able to issue affiliation warrants and orders but it was the overseer who had to deal with the day-to-day reality of extracting maintenance payments.…”

Section: IVmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…41 If a single pregnant woman's settlement was elsewhere, and since the child took for its settlement the parish of its birth, parish officers were eager to remove her before delivery back to her parish. 42 Since London was a magnet for migrants, and it could be difficult to acquire a new settlement there, this might account for the lower levels of metropolitan illegitimacy as women who became pregnant in the metropolis might have been removed from it. Between one-third and one-half of all paupers removed in England and Wales came from London.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The maintenance of bastard children in London, 1790–1834

Williams

2016

The Economic History Review

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This article examines the dynamics of the maintenance of illegitimate children in London during the protracted 'crisis' of the old poor law between the 1790s and the 1830s. This was a period of rapidly rising illegitimacy as well as national, and metropolitan, poor law expenditure. The affiliation system offered parish officials a parallel system by which poor rates could be deflated, but analysis of the 1834 Town Queries reveals that metropolitan parishes could be particularly poor at recovering the costs of chargeable bastards from putative fathers. The article interrogates in detail the workings of the affiliation system in Southwark and Lambeth in terms of the proportion of fathers (and mothers) who paid maintenance for their children, either in lump sums or in weekly allowances, plus the associated costs of childbirth and legal fees, the range of weekly sums, which could be higher than previously thought, and the duration for which they were paid, which could be surprisingly long. The article reveals a complex system, variable at the parochial and regional level, as was the wider old poor law. D espite recent scholarship historians still know relatively little about the complicated dynamics of the maintenance of illegitimate children under the old poor law, particularly after the 1790s. It is important to consider this issue, and especially in this period, because the old poor law experienced a prolonged period of 'crisis' between the late eighteenth century and 1834: national expenditure on the poor increased from £1,912,241 for the period 1783-5, to £4,077,891 in 1803, and to £7.9 million in 1818. 1 The crisis was due to many factors, including rapid population increase, parliamentary enclosure, the decline of rural industries, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, harvest failures, price inflation, and postwar depression. 2 Attitudes towards the poorincluding unmarried mothers-hardened. 3 Concerns of over-population and the new population theory of the Revd. T. R. Malthus, along with the new ideas of

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Section: IVmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

The maintenance of bastard children in London, 1790–1834

Williams

2016

The Economic History Review

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“…48 The historian must also seek to recover individual agency and the "semi-autonomous culture of the poor." 49 Poor behavior in workhouses can be understood as "weapons of the weak," powerfully disruptive actions that frustrated discourses of discipline. 50 The understandings of repression and resistance put forward by James C. Scott, in terms such as "exchange of small arms fire" and "a small skirmish," provide a model within which to contextualize social relations in the workhouse.…”

Section: Discipline In the Workhousementioning

confidence: 99%

Paupers Behaving Badly: Punishment in the Victorian Workhouse

Williams¹

2020

J. Br. Stud.

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The deterrent workhouse, with its strict rules for the behavior of inmates and boundaries of authority of the workhouse officers, was a central expression of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, known widely as the New Poor Law. This article explores for the first time the day-to-day experience of the power and authority of workhouse masters, matrons, other officers of the workhouse, and its Board of Guardians, and the resistance and agency of resentful inmates. Despite new sets of regulations to guide workhouse officers in the uniform imposition of discipline on residents, there was a high degree of regional diversity not only in the types of offenses committed by paupers but also in welfare policy relating to the punishments inflicted for disorderly and refractory behavior. And while pauper agency was significant, it should not be overstated, given the disparity in power between inmates and workhouse officials.

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“…65 As Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker have suggested, small acts of plebeian agency in pursuit of short-term goals combined to exert pressure on institutions. 66 Dramatic change, such as the Mendicity Society's about-face on street entertainment, was rare. Charities usually evolved slowly, as they reacted on a case-by-case basis to plebeian actions.…”

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confidence: 99%

Troubling agency: agency and charity in early nineteenth-century London

Webber

2017

Hist Res

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Agency is a fashionable concept, particularly among historians of poverty, welfare and charity in Britain in the long eighteenth century, and yet the concept is seldom scrutinized. This article troubles agency, subjecting it to the critical examination that it has largely eluded thus far. The first section outlines the manifold, and occasionally contradictory, ways in which historians characterize human agency. The second examines agency through the lens of charity in early nineteenth-century London (c.1800-c.1837), dissecting how the poor exercised agency in their interactions with charitable organizations and illustrating how philanthropists represented and sought to define the limits of plebeian agency. Case studies from individual charities test the boundaries of agency, proposing new ways of approaching the concept. The article concludes by reflecting on the usefulness of agency as a tool for historical analysis.

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London Lives

Cited by 46 publications

References 2 publications

The maintenance of bastard children in London, 1790–1834

The maintenance of bastard children in London, 1790–1834

Paupers Behaving Badly: Punishment in the Victorian Workhouse

Troubling agency: agency and charity in early nineteenth-century London

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