The Charleston Orphan House: Children’s Lives in the First Public Orphanage in America by John E. Murray (review)

Abstract

The Charleston Orphan House: Children's Lives in First Public Orphanage in America. By John E. Murray. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. 268. Cloth, $30.00.)Childhood poverty in United today is appallingly high. Approximately 16 million children, more than one out of every five, currently lives in households that earn less than half of national median income-one of standard measurements of poverty as defined by United Nations. In a ranking of 35 wealthiest countries, United is 34th in its level of poverty among youngsters. In reality, more than 22 percent of American children are impoverished at some point during their young lives, since poorer households tend to cycle back and forth across poverty line. Furthermore, their material futures are bleak: 45 percent of youngsters who live in poverty for half of their childhood will still be poor at age 35. The safety net for children in United likewise is also dreadful, and it is getting worse rather than better; proportionally speaking, government assistance has been growing more rapidly for oldest rather than youngest members of our society during past few decades.John Murray's marvelous new book examines one aspect of safety net in past-the first orphanage in United States. He tracks thousands of orphans, their families, and officials at institution in Charleston from time of its establishment in 1790 until Civil War. Murray is my kind of historian: He strains his eyes with microfilm and gets his hands dusty from handling records, and lots of them. His impressive, prodigious research draws primarily on applications written by parents (or their literate friends) for admission of their children into orphanage. It surely is a remarkable set of documents, perhaps even, as Murray claims, the greatest collection of first-person reports on work and family lives of poor anywhere in United States (4). Moreover, author makes records yield a great deal of information about poorer families in Charleston throughout antebellum era.Why was Charleston first city in United (and for many years only urban center) to establish an orphanage? Murray's answer is one of book's major arguments. Like so many American institutions, especially in South, orphanage grew in part out of tensions between slavery and freedom. One resolution was to solidify class solidarity among whites by emphasizing that they all belonged to superior race. The orphanage thus served political and social functions of allowing elites to express their sympathy for lower-class whites, and in turn, for poorer whites to enjoy at least assurance that in worst of circumstances, their children would have a place to live. In this instance, race trumped class.This book also makes an enormous contribution to our knowledge in its richly detailed reconstruction of family lives of poorer whites. Murray displays great sensitivity in recounting their stories. Mrs. S. L. Wright, for example, applied in 1814 for admission of two of her four children to orphanage when her husband, a plasterer, died. Like many other women, demise of her husband spelled economic disaster. Without a piece of property, like a boardinghouse, widows simply could not earn sufficient money in jobs open to them (usually washing or sewing clothes) to keep their families together. …