"Bringing ‘house’ and ‘home’ into perfect coincidence”: contemporary remarks on Dr Mackenzie’s (1900) lecture to the St James' Literary Society on the subject of "The working man’s house: its possibilities as a home" and related matters

Gurney, C. M. (2021) "Bringing ‘house’ and ‘home’ into perfect coincidence”: contemporary remarks on Dr Mackenzie’s (1900) lecture to the St James' Literary Society on the subject of "The working man’s house: its possibilities as a home" and related matters. Housing Studies Association Conference, Sheffield, UK, 14-15 Apr 2021. (Unpublished)

Abstract

In keeping with the historical theme of this year’s HSA conference, this paper takes as it’s subject the text of a lecture delivered by W. Leslie Mackenzie in November 1900 to the St James Literary Society, Leith and published in a 10,000 word pamphlet. The pamphlet is not extraordinary, nor was the lecture particularly controversial. It is typical of pamphlets reporting similar lectures delivered to learned societies in Edinburgh and Glasgow in the late 19th early 20th century and archived in the Wellcome Trust library collection. The pamphlet is fascinating however with the benefit of hindsight because of the social, conceptual and policy changes it anticipates (or fails to anticipate). Although the author is not trained as a historian and thus the analysis presented here should be regarded with some caution, key themes of dirt/disorder; gendered roles in home making; morality and self-improvement are interrogated in the context of Octavia Hill’s contemporaneous maxim of “improving the tenants with the tenements”. The paper concludes with some reflections about what the paper does not address and makes some speculative remarks on lessons that can be learnt and opportunities for similar such analyses of historical housing research papers

• Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item
• Status: Unpublished
• Refereed: No
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Gurney, Dr Craig
• Authors: Gurney, C. M.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Urban Studies