Voices from the workhouse / Peter Higginbotham.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Higginbotham, Peter.

ProQuest ebook central.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Almshouses.

Poverty.

Social Welfare.

Public welfare.

History.

Workhouses.

United Kingdom.

Workhouses--Anecdotes.

Workhouses--History--Sources.

Poverty--Great Britain--History.

Public welfare--Great Britain--History.

Great Britain.

Great Britain--Public welfare.

Medical Subjects:

Almshouses.

Poverty.

Social Welfare.

United Kingdom.

Genre:

Sources.

Anecdotes.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (224 pages) : illustrations, portraits

Place of Publication:

Stroud : History, 2012.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Voices from the Workhouse tells the inside story of the workhouse - in the words of those who experienced the institution at first hand, including the pauper inmates themselves, workhouse staff, administrators, official inspectors, journalists and social explorers. Featuring a wide variety of sources - letters, poems, autobiographies, official reports, testimony at official inquiries, and newspaper articles, historian Peter Higginbotham paints a vivid portrait of what really went on behind the doors of the workhouse - all the sights, sounds and smells of these institutions, and the effect it had on those whose lives it touched. Was the workhouse the cruel and inhospitable place it is often presented, or was there more to it than that? This book lets those who knew the place provide the answer, and finally unmasks the anonymous author of Indoor Paupers, the Victorian exposé of life in a London workhouse.

Hearing from those who passed through the doors of a workhouse - including visitor Charles Dickens and inmate Charlie Chaplin - and experienced conditions for themselves, this book provides a valuable and unique insight into the workhouse system. Book jacket.

Contents:

1. Inmates (London Corporation Workhouse: Pooer cast-out children's song and cry ; John Trusty: Dinner speech at the Bishopsgate Workhouse ; Paul Patrick Kearney: London pauper farms ; Ann Candler: Reflections on my own situation ; Charles Shaw: When I was a child ; James Reynolds Withers: Written from a Newmarket Union ; Thomas Hartley: Letters of complaint to the Poor Law Commissioners ; Anonymous: An unemployed London carpenter ; H.M. Stanley (John Rowlands): Autobiography ; Richard Gibson: Neglect at St. Giles's Workhouse ; Casual ward inmates: Workhouse graffiti ; 'W.H.R.': The autobiography of a pauper boy ; John Rutherford: Indoor paupers ; Charles [Charlie] Chaplin: Newington Workhouse and Hanwell School ; Charles Burgess: Shoreditch Union cottage homes ; Bill Golding: Stockbridge Workhouse and Southampton cottage homes ; Bella Aronovitch: A London workhouse infirmary ; Len Saunders: Croydon Union Workhouse and children's homes).

2. Workhouse staff and administrators (Richard Hutton: steward of the Quaker Workhouse at Clerkenell ; John T. Becher: The anti-pauper system ; Benjamin Woodcock: Master of the Barnet Union Workhouse ; Reverend Dennis L. Cousins: Extracts from the diary of a workhouse chaplain ; Richard Ellis: Profitable employment of paupers on workhouse land ; Joseph Rogers, M.D.: Reminiscences of a workhouse medical officer ; William A. Bailward: Are workhouses made unduly attractive? ; Will Crooks: Evidence to a local government board inquiry ; Margaret Joan Wells-Gardner: Growing up in the workhouse ; D.J. Evans: Days remembered).

3. Reports and inquiries (Anonymous: An account of several work-houses ; Sir Frederic Eden: The state of the poor ; 1832 Royal Commission on the Poor Laws: Bethnal Green Workhouse ; Charles Mott: The Bulcamp House of Industry, Suffolk ; Samuel Green: Evidence to the Select Committee on Andover Union ; The Lancet: Reports on metropolitan workhouse infirmaries ; Richard B. Cane: Poor Law Board inspection reports ; British Medical Journal: Reports on workhouse infirmaries ; 1905 Royal Commission: Visits to Poor Law institutions ; Herbert Preston-Thomas: The work and play of a Government inspector).

4. Social explorers (James Greenwood: A night in a workhouse ; J.H. Stallard: The female casual and her lodging ; Jack London: The people of the abyss ; Mary Higgs: A first night in the workhouse tramp ward ; Frank Gray: The tramp: his meaning and being)

5. Visitors (J.G. Kohl: The North Dublin Workhouse ; Louisa Twining: Recollections of life and work ; W.H. Wills and Philip Taylor: A day in a pauper palace ; Charles Dickens: Wapping Workhouse ; Anonymous: London pauper burials ; R.J. Pye-Smith: The Sheffield Unon Workhouse ; Anonymous: A phonograph at the Haslingden Workhouse).

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780752477176

075247717X

Publisher Number:

99980358436

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.