Moral Economy, Mixed Economy, and the Biohazardous Shaping of Health Infrastructure in Eighteenth-Century London

Abstract

Abstract: This study analyzes London workhouse infirmaries in the eighteenth century to explore how medical infrastructure was produced and administered through negotiated contestation between local elites and the poor they governed. It shows how workhouse infirmaries manufactured and reinforced social arrangements at a time of transition when advancing capitalism fractured elements of the traditional caring economy. Yet, the codifying of customary social obligations in the Old Poor Law afforded the sick poor considerable traction in their demands for medical care, demands that resulted in tangible changes to the structure and purpose of medical infrastructure during the early stages of industrialization.