Victorian women, unwed mothers and the London Foundling Hospital / Jessica A. Sheetz-Nguyen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sheetz-Nguyen, Jessica A., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Social conditions--19th century.

Women.

Poverty.

Charity.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 254 pages)

Edition:

First ed.

Place of Publication:

London : Bloomsbury, 2012.

Summary:

"This volume seeks to address the questions of poverty, charity, and public welfare, taking the nineteenth-century London Foundling Hospital as its focus. It delineates the social rules that constructed the gendered world of the Victorian age, and uses 'respectability' as a factor for analysis: the women who successfully petitioned the Foundling Hospital for admission of their infants were not East End prostitutes, but rather unmarried women, often domestic servants, determined to maintain social respectability. The administrators of the Foundling Hospital reviewed over two hundred petitions annually; deliberated on about one hundred cases; and accepted not more than 25 per cent of all cases. Using primary material from the Foundling Hospital's extensive archives, this study moves methodically from the broad social and geographical context of London and the Foundling Hospital itself, to the micro-historical case data of individual mothers and infants."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Electronic reproduction. London : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. Available via World Wide Web. Access limited by licensing agreement. s2014 dcunns

Other Format:

Original

ISBN:

9781350048966 (online)

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.