Jones, P. (2022) Looking through a different Lens: Microhistory and the workhouse experience in late nineteenth-century London. Journal of Social History, 55(4), pp. 925-947. (doi: 10.1093/jsh/shab078)
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Abstract
This article uses a microhistorical approach to investigate the “workhouse experience” of a single pauper in late nineteenth-century London. Its subject is Frank Burge, a remarkably prolific (though by no means unique) correspondent who wrote several lengthy letters of complaint from the Poplar workhouse to the Local Government Board (the central poor law authority) between 1884 and 1885. It places these letters, and the official responses they stimulated, alongside other public and official documents and uses a blended methodological approach to uncover a rich narrative of hardship, struggle, and personal agency. In doing so, it argues that, in contrast to more orthodox histories of welfare, it is only through this kind of painstaking and sensitive historical reconstruction that we truly can understand the nature, and the legacy, of poverty and the “workhouse experience” on the nineteenth-century poor.
Item Type: | Articles |
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Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: | Jones, Dr Peter |
Authors: | Jones, P. |
College/School: | College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences |
Journal Name: | Journal of Social History |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
ISSN: | 0022-4529 |
ISSN (Online): | 1527-1897 |
Published Online: | 27 December 2021 |
Copyright Holders: | Copyright © 2021 The Author |
First Published: | First published in Journal of Social History 55(4): 925-947 |
Publisher Policy: | Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy |
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