Poverty and Sickness in Modern Europe: Narratives of the Sick Poor, 1780-1938

ISBN-13: 9781441184818 / Angielski / Twarda / 2012 / 288 str.

Steven King

Opis

This book provides a genuinely pan-European analysis of pauper narratives, focusing on the experiences of the sick poor in England, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Wales. The contributions highlight the value of pauper narratives for exploring the agency, rhetoric and experiences of the poor and sick poor, significantly enhancing our understanding of the ways in which national and regional welfare systems operated. By foregrounding the particular experiences and strategies of the sick poor, this volume helps to establish and understand the central sentiments of the relief system and the core experiences of those under its care. What emerges is a demonstration that how a relief system treated its sick poor and how those sick poor were able to navigate the system tells us more about welfare history than analysis of any other group.

Spis treści

1. Narratives of poverty and sickness in Europe 1780 to 1938: Sources, methods and experiences Andreas Gestrich, Elizabeth Hurren and Steven King \ 2. Grief, sickness, and emotions in the narratives of the shamefaced poor in late eighteenth century Copenhagen Peter Wessel Hansen \ 3. Labouring on a bed of sickness': The material and rhetorical deployment of ill-health in male pauper letters Alannah Tomkins \ 4. 'I have Once more taken the Liberty to Say as you well know': The development of rhetoric in the letters of the English, Welsh and Scottish sick and poor 1780s-1830s Steven King and Alison Stringer \ 5. Poverty and epidemics: Perceptions of the poor at times of Cholera in Germany and Spain, 1830s-1860s Beate Althammer \ 6. Living with Insanity: Narratives of poverty, pauperism and sickness in asylum records 1840-1876 Cathy Smith \ 7. Narratives of poverty in Irish suicides between the Great Famine and the First World War, 1845-1914 Georgina Laragy \ 8. Stories of care and coercion: Narratives of poverty and suffering among patients with venereal disease in Sweden 1860-1920 Anna Lundberg \ 9. From unemployment to sickness and poverty. The narratives and experiences of the unemployed in Trier and surroundings, 1918-1933 Tamara Stazic-Wendt \ 10. Narratives of ill-health in applicant letters from rural Germany, 1900-1930 Katrin Marx-Jaskulski \ 11. Asking for the privilege to work. Applications for a peddling licence (Austria in the 1920s and 1930s) Sigrid Wadauer \ Appendix: Narratives writ large Richard Dyson, Peter Wessel Hansen, Elizabeth Hurren and Steven King \ Bibliography \ Index