The history of women in Wales and Scotland is in a thriving infancy compared to England. This book draws on this work to examine the significance of contrasting social, economic and religious conditions in shaping the lives of women in Britain. Although gender assumptions were broadly similar, female experience varied. Changes in clanship and inheritance, the employment of single women, the punishment of pregnant brides and scolds, the introduction of Protestantism, and the fusion of fairy beliefs with ideas of demonological witchcraft all contributed to the diversity of women's lives in...

The English Poor Laws, 1700-1930 traces the laws' development from localized measures of poor relief designed primarily for rural communities to an increasingly centralized system attempting to grapple with the urgent crises of urban poverty. Some of the topics covered are the deterrent workhouse, medical care, education, assisted emigration, family maintenance, vagrancy, and the relationship of the poor laws to private charity.