Poor Law Research Articles

Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England. Sarah Fox

Sarah Fox’s Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England had a long gestational period. It began as an MA thesis, became a PhD thesis and is now a book. Meticulously researched, its central claim is that ‘birthing is a process’ that can last up to 6 weeks and should not be seen as a singular event (p. 1). It includes the late stages of pregnancy, as well as labour and delivery, and the lying-in period after birth. Fox’s work is less concerned with accoucheurs or male midwives, midwifery treatises, lying-in hospitals, and birthing instruments and techniques, though at times each is mentioned. Its primary focus is on the social nature of birth and what happens in and around the birthing chamber. Central to this work are details from the nearly 1,000 letters from the collections of three women: Frances Ingram, an aristocrat who lived outside of London; Elizabeth Shackleton, a gentry woman who lived in Gretna Green, and Rebekah Bateman, the daughter of a congregationalist minister and wife of a cotton dealer in Manchester. These women lived at different times in the eighteenth century, and Fox weaves in details related to pregnancy and childbirth from letters they wrote or received with information from eighteenth-century midwifery treaties, court records from the Northern Circuit, poor law records and primary and secondary research on eighteenth-century childbirth. Attentive to both geography and social class, Fox tells readers that most sources used in the book ‘relate to the north of England’ and that viewing childbirth ‘in non-exceptional ways’ is a main goal of the work (p. 9).

TRAFFIC ANALYSIS USING IOT

Traffic congestion is a major problem in many cities of India along with other countries. Failure of signals, poor law enforcement and bad traffic management has lead to traffic congestion. One of the major problems with Indian cities is that the existing infrastructure cannot be expanded more, and thus the only option available is better management of the traffic. Traffic congestion has a negative impact on economy, the environment and the overall quality of life. Hence it is high time to effectively manage the traffic congestion problem. There are various methods available for traffic management such as video data analysis, infrared sensors, inductive loop detection, wireless sensor network, etc. All these methods are effective methods of smart traffic management. But the problem with these systems is that the installation time, the cost incurred for the installation and maintenance of the system is very high. Hence a new technology called Smart Traffic Analysis System which helps to detect strength of traffic on each side and release the traffic based on strength so that it will reduce congestion problem.

Smart Traffic Light: Diwaniyah City District Center As A Case Study

Traffic congestion is a significant problem in many cities in India and other countries. Failure of signals, poor law enforcement, and bad traffic management have led to traffic congestion. One of the major problems with Indian cities is that the existing infrastructure cannot be expanded more, and thus, the only option available is better traffic management. Traffic congestion hurts the economy, the environment, and the overall quality of life. Hence, it is high time we effectively managed the traffic congestion problem. There are various methods available for traffic management, such as video data analysis, infrared sensors, inductive loop detection, wireless sensor networks, etc. All these methods are effective methods of intelligent traffic management. However, the problem with these systems is that the installation time and the cost incurred for installing and maintaining the system are very high. Hence, a new technology called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is introduced, which can be coupled with the existing signaling system and act as a key to intelligent traffic management in real-time. This new technology will require less time for installation and will have fewer costs compared to other methods of traffic congestion management. The use of this new technology will lead to reduced traffic congestion. Bottlenecks will be detected early, so early preventive measures can be taken, thus saving the driver time and money.

ECOLOGICAL AND ECONOMIC SECURITY OF THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR

The article examines the ecological and economic security of the agricultural sector. Achieving global food security and food security requires a global approach to food systems. It was found that there is a significant relationship between agriculture and the environment. Sustainable agricultural development ensures food quality and, in tandem, prevents natural disasters such as droughts. However, to meet the food needs of a growing population, poor quality laws and unacceptable agricultural practices arise, which in turn leads to environmental degradation. To meet the food needs of the world’s population, the agricultural sector has been subjected to huge loads and created emissions. Sustainable agriculture helps increase food production while reducing the use of pesticides. It has also been observed that agricultural production sometimes accumulates carbon, thus polluting the environment. It has been shown that there is a significant link between economic growth and environmental pollution. On the other hand, pollution reduction and environmental balance are not sufficiently prioritized in developing and underdeveloped countries

Critiques, ideals and blueprints in the historical geography of Scotland’s lunatic asylums, 1857–1872

ABSTRACT The historical geography of Scotland’s nineteenth-century lunatic asylums has only been lightly researched to date, and particularly under-studied is what might be termed Scotland’s ‘Asylum Age’ – c.1857 into the 1870s – when publicly-funded and purpose-built district asylums started to appear across the Scottish landscape. This was a period of therapeutic optimism about what these asylums could achieve, as curative institutions buttressed by medical and moral ideas about how lunacy should be treated. Using Annual Reports of the General Board of Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland over a fifteen-year period, 1857–1872, this paper explores ‘expert’ criticisms directed at the perceived geographical failings of the pre-1857 establishments housing lunatics (royal asylums, private licensed houses and Poor Law facilities). Attending to the macro and micro-geographies discussed in these Reports, the Commissioners’ ideal for asylum location and architecture is reconstructed, noting how this became a geographical blueprint for the emerging district asylum system. Over the fifteen-year study period, ideas about the ideal site and building shifted once more as lunacy numbers increased and money dwindled, suggesting that the ideal was soon to be overtaken by a more pessimistic turn less sure about the curative benefits of rural sites or homely buildings.

Current Practices in Brazil on Diagnosis and Management of Women With Vulvodynia.

Vulvodynia (VVD) is a frequent and harrowing condition for which diagnosis and management remain insufficient. Our study aimed to describe and compare vulvovaginal signs and symptoms of Brazilian women with VVD and controls and describe previous medical assessment, past treatments, and vulvar pain relief among women with VVD. This cross-sectional descriptive study included Brazilian women with (n = 151) and without VVD (n = 106). All women were assessed for vaginal infection, vulvar pain intensity by means of a cotton swab test based on a numerical rate scale, and answered the Female Sexual Function Index questionnaire and a structured instrument about current vulvar symptoms. Previous treatments were assessed in the VVD group, and vulvar pain relief achieved with previous treatments was qualified through a 4-point Likert scale. Volunteers were mainly White, with mean age of 30 years. Vulvovaginal signs and symptoms were significantly more frequent in women with VVD (p < .05), and vulvar pain duration was 5.8 (±4) years. More than 50% consulted with three or more physicians, and 49% remained without a conclusive diagnosis. Previous diagnosis and treatment of vulvovaginal infection were often reported by women with VVD. Most of the tried prescriptions were self-reported as providing only low vulvar pain relief. Prolonged duration of vulvar pain, multiple visits to health care professionals, and poor relief of pain are common aspects in the clinical history of women with VVD. In addition to pain, vulvar fissure, edema, erythema, vaginal discharge, and foul odor are common and should be considered to avoid misdiagnosis. Appropriate treatments to VVD are still poorly reported.

Economics of Faith: Reforming Poor Relief in Early Modern Europe by Esther Chung-Kim

<i>Economics of Faith: Reforming Poor Relief in Early Modern Europe</i> by Esther Chung-Kim

How Welfare Worked in the Early United States: Five Microhistories by Gabriel J. Loiacono

Reviewed by: How Welfare Worked in the Early United States: Five Microhistories by Gabriel J. Loiacono Kristin O'Brassill-Kulfan (bio) Poor relief, Welfare, Poverty, Early U.S. history, Local government How Welfare Worked in the Early United States: Five Microhistories. By Gabriel J. Loiacono. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 248. Paper, $35.00.) How Welfare Worked in the Early United States explores the lives of five people connected to the poor-relief system of early-republic Rhode Island. In clear, accessible prose, Loiacono assumes the posture of a fly on the wall in council meetings, along small-town sidewalks, and as working-class people interacted with agents of the local government. Using a truly remarkable, and remarkably comprehensive, set of town, county, and state records, he contextualizes the experiences of individuals within a Janus-faced apparatus that was designed to serve one half of the population of a town while expelling the other. In following the lives of William Larned (an overseer of the poor), Cuff Roberts (a free Black Revolutionary War veteran), "One-Eyed Sarah" (a home nurse), Lydia Bates (a laborer caught up in a bastardy case), and William Fales (a literate and ill poorhouse resident) as they intersected with the early American welfare system, Loiacono demonstrates how this system relied on an uneasy balance between the humanitarian desire to provide relief for the needy and the political–economic desire to keep taxes low for those who paid them. They were often merciful toward those with legal settlement, regularly providing real survival assistance in dire cases, and offering stopgap measure that prevented others from following that path. And they were exclusionary and tight-fisted with those who they deemed to be strangers, warning out people who lacked legal settlement in that community. Loiacono argues, carefully amassing his evidence brick by brick, that agents of local government wielded an enormous amount of power in early American communities. This power stretched, effectively, from one's crib, to their wallet, to the sidewalk, to the bedroom, and the grave. While historians have generally tried to explain the structure and implementation of the poor-relief systems in early America as pursuits of either social control or economic control, Loiacono takes a both/and stance. He argues that the police power of the overseers of the poor, derived from the poor law, was marshaled through what was essentially social control, though this occurred largely in service of economic ends. Unique to this study is the close look at the figures who moved within the orbit of the welfare system but whose roles were much murkier than [End Page 171] those providing or receiving relief, such as the people who worked as a nineteenth-century version of home health-care workers, and "hired hands." While the "overseers, literally, oversaw this work," it was "paid women" who "did the work" (118). Loiacono reminds us of the fluidity of early American class status; that nearly all workers bobbed on a mercurial sea, riding waves of illness and national economic crises as best they could. There was very little distinction, on paper, between the socioeconomic status of many overseers and those who helped them carry out their work, and those who received poor relief. The micro-historical nature of this study shows how the welfare system and local government functioned, as that function might have been perceived on the ground. William Larned, overseer of the poor for Providence, Rhode Island, served in this role for several decades, so long that he is in the position of recognizing the faces of people who were warned out and later returned. It is this provincial level of the story that is especially telling, then, when we see how this individual and others in similar roles used their positions and the structures in which they worked to warn out their neighbors. Larned and another Providence overseer, in 1806, used the poor laws to excommunicate dozens of Black people from Providence, leading to mass banishments that marked the experience of Black New Englanders in the period. The construction and destruction of families and social networks is one interesting thread throughout the book. As Loiacono writes, "the poor laws prompted...

Perfecting the Union: National and State Authority in the US Constitution by Max M. Edling

Reviewed by: Perfecting the Union: National and State Authority in the US Constitution by Max M. Edling Donald F. Johnson (bio) U.S. Constitution, Constitutional history, Legal history Perfecting the Union: National and State Authority in the US Constitution. By Max M. Edling. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 208. Cloth, $29.95.) Americans have never fully agreed on the nature of the U.S. Constitution. As jurists and legal scholars have debated and re-interpreted concepts like originalism and the extent of executive power, historians have long argued over the ideological and economic motivations of the framers as well as their racial and gender politics, imperial ambitions, and countless other considerations. Recent scholarship has demonstrated just how long a genealogy these debates have had, tracing their origins to the first decades after ratification as the framers themselves changed their positions and revised their interpretations of the document they drafted to reflect [End Page 173] changing political realities.1 From James Madison to Samuel Alito, then, interpretation of the founding has had as much of an eye on the present as the past. In Perfecting the Union, Max M. Edling seeks to strip out two centuries of forward-looking interpretation and place the Constitution in both the larger context of late eighteenth-century Euro–American statecraft and the narrower context of relations between the American states in the 1770s and 1780s. What results is a refreshing new analysis of the framers' Constitution as a fundamentally "Unionist" national charter, intended neither to entrench revolutionary values—however defined—nor to empower republican elites. Rather, the leaders of the early republic sought to create a more effective alliance between the states by clearly dividing areas of sovereignty between states and the new Federal government in ways that improved upon but did not fundamentally change the conceptions of government and authority that triggered the break with Britain and underpinned the earlier Articles of Confederation. In short and to-the-point chapters, Edling takes the reader through the framers' concept of a constitution as "federal treaty" or "compact of union between the states," and of their concept of such a union as "the means whereby weak states could safeguard their sovereignty" and "a political organization meant to further the interests of the states"—concepts that largely held for both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution (11, 36). The author then turns to "internal police"—a term just emerging in the eighteenth century referring to a sphere of sovereignty with control over crime and punishment, infrastructure, economic development, poor relief; areas of government found in modern ministries of the interior or contained in domestic policy portfolios. While in the 1780s the concept had "an elastic and imprecise meaning," strong internal policing was nevertheless considered essential by late-eighteenth-century Anglophone political thinkers to "the refined, well-ordered, and opulent society" (81, 89). Through close readings of how these ideas functioned from the 1760s through the 1790s, Edling makes a persuasive case that a majority at least of the framers saw the Constitution not as a national charter supplanting state authority but rather strengthening the compact so that a more powerful [End Page 174] union could better protect the sovereignty of each state over its own internal affairs. As a result, the success of the unionist Constitution should be judged not on "the federal government's regulation of domestic affairs but its regulation of the western borderlands and the Atlantic marketplace" (14). To further the unionist interpretation, the book's intriguing final chapter uses legislative records at the Federal and state levels to demonstrate that, at least initially, the framers followed through on their promises of an outward-looking Congress and inward-looking states. Compiling an impressive quantitative analysis of legislation in Congress and the Pennsylvania legislature from 1789 through 1796—a time period in which national politicians "did their best to implement the political program that had propelled the framers to Philadelphia" (13). Using Great Britain's eighteenth-century Parliamentary record as a control, Edling demonstrates persuasively that, with a few splashy exceptions such as the Bill of Rights, the first Federal Congresses largely limited itself to "regulat[ing] relations between the United States...

The Medieval Economy of Salvation: Charity, Commerce, and the Rise of the Hospital by Adam J. Davis

Reviewed by: The Medieval Economy of Salvation: Charity, Commerce, and the Rise of the Hospital by Adam J. Davis Elma Brenner Adam J. Davis. The Medieval Economy of Salvation: Charity, Commerce, and the Rise of the Hospital. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2019. xv + 317 pp. Ill. $43.95 (978-1-501742101). Much still remains to be discovered about the complex dynamics of charity in medieval Europe, especially regarding motivations for assisting the needy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, an era of commercial growth, the multiplication of hospitals, and increasing concern by Christians about the salvation of their souls. Adam J. Davis’s 2019 book makes a vital contribution to this area through an in-depth study of rich archival material and published sources from the French county of Champagne, “the epicenter of European commerce and international exchange at the time” (p. 5). By focusing firmly on the people who distributed and received charity, his work also sheds light on the social networks, relationships, and diverse identities that shaped European society in the central Middle Ages. Davis’s book is anchored by an introduction and opening chapter that provide the broader spiritual, theological, social, and economic contexts of charity in medieval Europe. In a period of increased lay religious spirituality, where an [End Page 158] emphasis on Christ’s suffering encouraged Christians to be emotionally invested in both their own devotional lives and the needs of others, hospitals for the sick poor and leprosaria (specialist institutions for people with leprosy) were key foci for charitable action. Simultaneously, the financial prosperity of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—experienced to a heightened degree by the merchants of Champagne—may actually have led to an increase in poverty. Charity was also bound up with many other aspects of economic life, from the testamentary arrangements of individuals to the status of hospitals as major property holders. The book goes on to demonstrate how the landscape of Champagne steadily became populated by hospitals, especially in the urban centers of Provins and Troyes. Hospitals and leprosaria are also contextualized alongside other “institutional channels for the provision of charity” (p. 112), from monasteries to parish churches, and sources of informal, non-institutional support, such as neighborly or familial aid. Here, Davis adds much-needed nuance to our understanding of the place of hospitals within medieval communities, showing that they were enmeshed with other sources of assistance. A substantial chapter addresses the social networks that surrounded hospitals, from elite aristocratic patrons to the townspeople who made modest donations and sometimes lived and worked in the hospitals. As well as demonstrating how charity created and reinforced social bonds, this analysis illuminates the complex web of economic relationships in medieval Champagne. Here and elsewhere in the book are mentions of transactions by Jews and converted Jews, highlighting the importance of the Jewish community in this highly commercialized region of France and that here, as in many other parts of Europe, charity operated in a multifaith setting. While Champagne’s hospitals had varying resources, some were very significant players in the economy, acting as creditors, renting out property, selling agricultural produce, and holding stalls at fairs and markets. Davis questions whether the way that some hospitals retained and invested the alms they received fit with donors’ expectation that their gifts would directly assist the sick poor. He demonstrates, however, that the commercial environment of Champagne necessitated that the hospitals engage widely in economic life, to sustain their work and achieve their charitable mission. The final two chapters address the staffing of hospitals and the care that they provided. A wide variety of people were attracted by the spiritual rewards and material support offered by hospital service. At the same time, “the boundaries between those giving and receiving assistance . . . were remarkably permeable” (p. 190). Davis shows that, especially through their prominent economic role, hospitals provided help in multiple ways that have not previously been appreciated, from overseeing distributions of poor relief at funerals, to releasing their personnel temporarily to care for affluent sick people in their homes. Here, the reader hopes for a little more comment on the medical expertise of hospital staff. While Davis acknowledges that there is little...

The Missing Generation: Grandparents and Agency in Early Modern England

AbstractGrandparents have been largely overlooked in the otherwise rich historiography of the family in early modern England. This article shows how many were able to play significant roles in family life, in both emotional and practical terms. Some forged close bonds with their young grandchildren, or took them in for a period to relieve hard‐pressed parents, while others were willing to raise and educate the orphaned. Some also provided moral or religious guidance, assuming responsibilities conventionally assigned to godparents, and in some cases even challenging parental decisions of which they disapproved. Grandchildren were almost always remembered in wills, with testators also careful to protect the interests of any potentially at risk. The article then turns to explore the role of grandparents acting as welfare providers, whether voluntarily or through a court order, for grandchildren left as orphans or born to unmarried mothers. It assesses the often contentious issue of grandparents’ moral and legal responsibilities under the parish relief system established by the Poor Law in 1601, and disputes between the paternal and maternal kin. Finally, the article touches briefly on grandparents as repositories of information, whose memories and experience could be of value to their community as well as to their own families.

Pauper Voices, Public Opinion and Workhouse Reform in Mid-Victorian England: Bearing Witness, by Peter Jones and Steven King

Reviewed by: Pauper Voices, Public Opinion and Workhouse Reform in Mid-Victorian England: Bearing Witness by Peter Jones and Steven King Marjorie Levine-Clark (bio) Pauper Voices, Public Opinion and Workhouse Reform in Mid-Victorian England: Bearing Witness, by Peter Jones and Steven King; pp. ix + 136. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, $69.99, $54.99 ebook. Peter Jones and Steven King’s little book, Pauper Voices, Public Opinion and Workhouse Reform in Mid-Victorian England, explores demands for workhouse reform during the nineteenth century. It stands out as truly innovative in poor law literature while also engaging scholars of journalism and public opinion. The authors make three significant interventions (and several smaller ones) into poor law historiography, each introduced in the three main chapters of the book. Chapter 1 shows that historians need to reconsider the chronology and content of the resistance to deterrent workhouses. Chapter 2 introduces readers to Joseph Rowntree, an influential “amateur workhouse inspector and journalist,” “entirely neglected” in histories of the poor law (4). Most importantly, perhaps, the authors demonstrate in chapter 3 that (male) paupers inserted themselves in debates about workhouse reform. The study is deeply archival, analyzing sources from the massive MH 12 series of thousands of volumes in the National Archives in London. MH 12 has routinely been mined by historians to find correspondence between local poor law officials and central poor law authorities to tell stories of specific poor law unions. Jones and King use the collection differently. As principal members of the larger project “In Their Own Write: The Lives and Letters of the Poor 1834–c.1900,” they systematically scoured the MH 12 series to locate the letters of paupers across the volumes. (They expect to find 20,000 to 30,000 letters when the project is complete.) This broad look at the series also unearthed the prolific record of a man like Rowntree. In addition to their close archival readings, the authors employed digital searching of the online British Library Newspaper Archive to study the ways that the language relating to poor law reform changed over time. These two approaches to text prove richly rewarding in complicating our received historical narratives. Parts of this research have been introduced and published previously, most notably in the authors’ own edited volume Obligation, Entitlement and Dispute under the English Poor Laws (2015), which underscores the agency of the poor. Pulling the research together in one book, however, allows Jones and King to address more substantively continuities across the Old Poor Law and the New and when significant changes occurred, as well as to investigate more thoroughly the specifically Victorian aspects of their material and arguments. Chapter 1 tells the fascinating story of rhetorical and thematic shifts in criticisms of the workhouse from the Old Poor Law through the end of the nineteenth century. The authors convincingly show that both the idea of the deterrent workhouse and opposition to that idea existed long before the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. It was the New Poor Law, however, that galvanized resistance and regular attacks in the local and national press. Using the results of digital newspaper searching, the authors illustrate that a language of “abuse” and “cruelty” that followed the establishment of the work-house system changed in the second half of the century to a language of “scandal” (1). While scandal certainly encompassed distinct workhouse abuses, it more importantly came to stand for a general critique of the workhouse that came to dominate [End Page 727] the pages of newspapers. Jones and King insist that “something clearly happened in the 1860s” to shift the public discourse to emphasize the need to hold poor law officials accountable to those for whom they were responsible: the poor themselves (23). This is a persuasive new way of understanding workhouse scandal. As Jones and King note, scholars have tended to use scandal narrowly to focus on individual horrors at single workhouses. The authors’ revisioning of scandal as a broad public concern with the management of workhouses and the care of the poor transforms the story of the Victorian Poor Law in creative ways. In chapter 2 the authors add more to this story by examining the...

Many Mouths: The Politics of Food in Britain from the Workhouse to the Welfare State, by Nadja Durbach

Reviewed by: Many Mouths: The Politics of Food in Britain from the Workhouse to the Welfare State by Nadja Durbach Rebecca Earle (bio) Many Mouths: The Politics of Food in Britain from the Workhouse to the Welfare State, by Nadja Durbach; pp. xii + 363. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020, £36.99, £30.00 ebook, $46.99, $38.00 ebook. Many Mouths: The Politics of Food in Britain from the Workhouse to the Welfare State explores a series of occasions when the modern British state undertook to feed “some members of its population (but not others) and what government food meant to those who devised, those who executed, those who used, and those who refused the state’s alimentary interventions” (17). These programs of state feeding were motivated by a range of concerns; discontent over the mounting cost of poor relief, desire to ensure the robustness of the labor supply, anxieties that hungry children would be unable to benefit from state education, and humanitarian responses to famine (among other factors) all shaped the diverse occasions on which the modern British state sought to provide food for sections of the population. Precisely because these programs responded to diverse situations, the responses were themselves inconsistent and incoherent, Durbach argues. History, she writes, reveals “no arc of progressive change” (245); she does not trace “a growing state interest in feeding its citizens” (5). Rather, her themes are the agency exercised by the recipients of state feeding, the important role of local authorities in implementing, and modifying, national initiatives, and the limited impact of nutritional science in shaping any of these policies. A particular strength is Durbach’s sustained attention to Britain’s status as an empire. State feeding initiatives demonstrate clearly the unequal levels of responsibility the government felt toward ensuring that different imperial subjects were not hungry. Many Mouths explores these themes through a series of case studies ranging from debates over the provision of Christmas meals in Victorian workhouses to the efforts of the Welfare Foods Service to supply orange juice to small children during and after the Second World War. Other chapters study, inter alia, the attempts to design standard dietaries for nineteenth-century prisons, the principles governing eligibility for free school meals in the interwar years, and the unexpected popularity of British restaurants. Weaving together these case studies are helpful historical synopses that provide a framework for understanding the specificities of each example. The book is based on extensive research in the United Kingdom’s National Archives and other repositories, a mass of printed primary sources, and much engagement with the [End Page 729] considerable scholarship on the evolution of the British diet, biopolitics, and other relevant topics. The result is a readable, compelling, and authoritative book that adds greatly to our understanding of the complexities shaping the alimentary interventions that Durbach studies. Her use of case studies is intended to underscore the contingency and variability of these interventions. Officials rarely learned from past experiences of state feeding, were inconsistent in their use of nutritional science, and responded more to the specifics of each situation than to broader comparisons with other state feeding programs. Consistency, indeed, was rarely the goal. To be sure, as Durbach concedes, there were some overarching trends; over the twentieth century the state began to accept some responsibility for supporting the wellbeing of all members of the nation, but Durbach’s focus is on the “messiness” of these processes (4). As much as she identifies change, she stresses unexpected continuities linking (for instance) Charles Trevelyan and the 1943 London Council of Social Service: both decried the provision of subsidized food to unde-serving eaters. What did it mean to receive food from the state? On occasion, it meant a recognition of the recipient’s membership in the body politic. When inhabitants of the work-house demanded the Christmas meal of roast beef, plum pudding, and beer abolished by the New Poor Law, they were affirming their rights as British citizens to participate in the cultural life of the nation. For this very reason, the guardians of some workhouses refused to comply with the prohibition, allowing inmates this customary “old English fare” on holidays...

Gender and Class in Nineteenth‐Century Catholic Charity: Categories of Difference in the Discourses and Practices of the Belgian Vincentians

During the nineteenth century, Catholic charity was an important source of poor relief in Belgium, as well as a means for Catholics to practice and express their devotion. Driven by a renewed religious fervour, men and women actively engaged in lay charitable organisations with the purpose of serving God through the poor and working towards self‐sanctification. Historical research has especially noted women's charitable fervour, furthering the idea that the nineteenth century was characterised by a feminisation of religion. Recent studies have shown, however, that men did not become estranged from religion, and that multiple religious identities and practices existed at the same time across different contexts. Charity attracted both men and women, but the various masculinities and femininities that existed in the charitable space have seldom been explored. This study examines how gender roles were defined in the discourses of Catholic charities and the ways in which these roles structured social interactions among charitable actors, and between them and their recipients. To this end, two lay charities are taken as a case study: the Society and the Ladies of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, both committed to the practice of poor visits.

Climate Change, Security, and the International System: It’s Still the Same Old Story

Climate Change, Security, and the International System: It’s Still the Same Old Story

A Review on Traffic Management and Road Analysis of Porwal Road

Abstract: Traffic congestion is a major problem in many cities of India along with other countries. Failure of signals, poor law enforcement, and bad traffic management has to lead to traffic congestion. One of the major problems with Indian cities is that the existing infrastructure cannot be expanded more, and thus the only option available is better management of the traffic. Traffic congestion has a negative impact on the economy, the environment, and the overall quality of life. Hence it is high time to effectively manage the traffic congestion problem. In cities, where the number of vehicles continuously increases faster than the available traffic infrastructure to support them, congestion is a difficult issue to deal with and it becomes even worse in case of car accidents. There are various methods available for traffic management such as video data analysis, infrared sensors, inductive loop detection, wireless sensor network, etc. Traffic congestion is a major problem in many cities of India along with other countries. Failure of signals, poor law enforcement, and bad traffic management have led to traffic congestion. This problem affects many aspects of modern society, including economic development, traffic accidents, increase in greenhouse emissions, time spent, and health damages.

Foreign exploration of immature markets and incidence of money laundering

PurposeMoney laundering (ML) is the process used to convert the proceeds of crimes into lawful form. This global problem promotes social ills, corruption and organized crimes. Various instruments are used to counter individual illicit behavior. However, in low-income countries, these regulations are not common because of weak institutions, poor governance and a lack of awareness about the negative consequences of ML. In these countries, multinational corporations take advantage of poor law and order, lower environmental regulations and corruption and shift their domestic operations into foreign countries.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a multiple mediator model to investigate the link between foreign direct investment (FDI), environmental degradation measured as CO2 emissions (CE), exports and ML for 118 countries between 2008 to 2018.FindingsResults indicate that FDI promotes exports and CE, leading to illicit financial flows.Originality/valuePolicymakers should enforce checks on foreign funds flow and adopt illicit flow mitigation measures to minimize ML globally.

Dr John Conolly: An Owenite in Disguise?

An in-depth reform of the asylum system took place in Great Britain from the 1830s onwards, under the influence of Dr John Conolly, who succeeded in imposing a new model at Hanwell pauper lunatic asylum, near London, a model that was more respectful of the patients and based on the abandonment of mechanical restraint (non-restraint) combined with occupational therapy. The success of this system at Hanwell, the largest asylum in the country with over a thousand inmates, contributed to the spread of what became a form of psychiatric orthodoxy for the next thirty years. Far from being a strictly medical measure, this reform was anchored in a general reform of poor relief. In this respect, it was in line with the Poor Law of 1834 (inspired by Jeremy Bentham, notably under the aegis of Edwin Chadwick, secretary of the Poor Law Commission). This reform was also part of a more political reflection on the extension of civil and social rights for the working classes, in particular under the impetus of John Conolly: his personality and his political commitments, in favour of Chartism, his participation in popular education movements such as the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and his links with Lord Brougham and Robert Owen make him a particularly representative figure of the reformers of the time, moving in complementary circles with porous boundaries. This study thus sets out to demonstrate the combined influence of utilitarianism and utopian socialism on lunacy reform and its implementation at Hanwell Asylum.

Bij het afscheid van een dame. De Roermondse Sint Elisabethvereniging in 1909

At the farewell of a lady. The Roermond women’s charity of Saint-Elisabeth by 1909&#x0D; In the Low Countries, poor relief was primarily the responsibility of private organisations until the early twentieth century. One out of many was the Roermond ‘Sint Elisabethvereniging’, a Roman Catholic women’s charity that tried to help the urban poor in times of unemployment, illness, old age and financial worries. By 1909 the work of the Sint Elisabethvereniging was done by fifteen women. Being part of the Roermond elite, many of these ladies were related to one another. Only four of them were married, and their husbands, like the fathers and brothers of the other ladies, were almost exclusively working as legal experts (lawyers, judges and notaries). The ladies lived near to each other in the better neighbourhoods of the city. It was almost impossible for outsiders to become a member of this rather exclusive group of ladies. Charity provided them with a means of fulfilling their Christian duties and confirming their social status. Furthermore the work gave them the opportunity to meet other women at a time when women of the higher social classes were expected to stay at home. For most of the ladies their membership of the Roermond Sint Elisabethvereniging was also ‘an escape from loneliness’.

‘Train them in Habits of Morality’: Did Boarding out Deter Poor Law Children from Getting Married?

How prevalent was marriage for children who were removed from their birth community by the poor law authorities? This article investigates whether children who experienced intervention from the Islington poor law authorities during the late nineteenth century were deterred from marrying and having children as adults. To answer these questions two samples of children were assembled and traced through various records. The first sample consisted of children who were sent to foster homes in rural communities and the second consisted of siblings of the first group who were not boarded out. Although the sample sizes were relatively small due to the extensive archival research needed to answer these questions, the analysis suggests there is a possibility that relocation had an impact on marital formation and childbearing but did not necessarily sever a child’s connection to their birth community. Children who were boarded out were less likely to marry, or have children, compared to those who stayed in Islington. However, they often retained strong connections to their birth community and/or biological family members. This article also explores instances of irregular family arrangements including illegitimate births, possible cohabitation, marital separation and one instance of a potentially bigamous marriage.