The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700-1948

ISBN-13: 9780521572613 / Angielski / Twarda / 1998 / 392 str.

Lynn Hollen Lees

Opis

This study of English policies toward the poor from the seventeenth century to the present combines individual stories with official actions. Lynn Lees shows how clients as well as officials negotiated welfare settlements--cultural definitions of entitlement, rather than available resources, determined amounts and beneficiaries. The English poor laws went through cycles of generosity and meanness that affected men and women unequally. The long term history of welfare in England and Wales was not one of continued progress and improvement but one determined by continually changing attitudes toward poverty.

Recenzje

'Lynn Hollen Lee's book puts flesh on the dry bones of poor law administration by citing human experiences … derived from a largely untapped wealth of local records, autobiographies and other personal testimony … this is a particularly timely book … [and] is of great value in making sense of the wide range of poor law research in recent years and in focusing on the human experience of public relief.' The Times Literary Supplement

Spis treści

Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Residualism Taken for Granted, 1700–1834: 1. The welfare process under the old poor laws; 2. Weekly doles: communal support in the eighteenth century; 3. Excluding paupers, 1780–1834; Part II. Residualism Refined and Restricted, 1834–60; 4. Classifying and confining paupers, 1834–60; 5. 'Though poor, I'm a gentleman still'; 6. 'Pauperism' in practice, 1834–70; Part III. Residualism Re-evaluated and Rejected, 1860–1948; 7. Re-evaluating the urban poor, 1860–90; 8. The multicampaign war on pauperism, 1870–1906; 9. Popular rejection of the poor laws; 10. New principles for social action, 1906–48; Epilogue: residualism redux, 1948–95; Appendix: collection and analysis of settlement examinations; Bibliographic essay; Index.