DOCSLIB.ORG

Download (8Mb)

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Download (8Mb) University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/65690 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. Senility Before Alzheimer: Old Age in British Psychiatry, c. 1835-1912 Emily Stella Andrews History Department, University of Warwick Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History April 2014 ii Contents List of Figures………………………………………………………………………………vi List of Tables………………………………………………………………………………..vi Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….vii Declaration………………………………………………………………………………...vii Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………viii Introduction……………………………………………………………………………1 Defining the Object of Study…………………………………………….......2 Defining the Locus of Study…………………………………………………6 The History of the Asylum …………………………...…………………….12 The History of Old Age……………………………………………………...23 Sources, Approaches and Arguments……………..……………………….28 Chapter One: Senility, Dementia and Dissolution in Psychiatric Theory….…...34 The Classification of Senility and Dementia in Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry…………………………………………………………………….38 James Cowles Prichard, and Dementia as Loss………………….……39 David Skae and Somato-Aetiological Classification………………….44 Dissolution, Dementia and Senility…………………………………..51 The Symptoms of Dementia and the ‘Cognitive Paradigm’…...………...62 Sensation, Attention and Memory…………………………………....65 Dementia and Emotion………………………………………………..68 Dissolution and the Cognitive Paradigm……………………………..70 The Localisation of Dementia………………………………………….71 Models of Ageing…………………………………………………………….75 The Bodily Economy; the Exhaustion of Life…………………………..75 Old Bodies: Arteries and Atrophy…………………………………….85 Second Childhood and the Phylogenic Metaphor……………………..….91 The Lebenstreppe……………………………………………………….91 Second Childhood………………………………………………………94 Ontogeny and Phylogeny………………………………………………97 Ontegenic and Phylogenic Memory…………………………………….99 iii Conclusion: The Natural and the Pathological……………………………...101 Chapter Two: The Politics of Lunacy and the Exclusion of Senility……..………...107 The Lunacy Commissioners, Incurables and the Senile……………..………110 The Enumeration of Senility………………………………………..……113 Explaining the Increase: the Four-Shilling Grant………………….…...116 The Meaning of Insanity and the Exclusionary Discourse of Senility……………………………………………………………….......119 The Commissioners’ Solution…………………………………………….123 Senility at Hanwell………………………………………………………….…..128 Senility and the Metropolitan Asylums Board…………………………….…131 The MAB Response to the Problem of the Senile………………………...135 The View from the Workhouse…………………..…………………………….142 Conclusion………………………………………..……………………………...145 Chapter Three: Older Patients’ Journeys to Hanwell………………………………..147 The Historiography of Asylum Admission…………………………………..150 Old Age in the Family…………………………………………………………..155 Relationships and Care Before Institutionalisation………………………….161 Troublesome Husbands, Troubled Wives………………………………...161 Adult Children and the Extended Family………………………………..165 Friendship, Neighbourhood and Charity Networks……………………...173 Care and Management in the Home..…………………………………………178 Order in the Workhouse………………………………………………………..182 Conclusion……..………………………………………………………………...187 Chapter Four: The Emergence of the Senile Patient at Hanwell……………………189 The Aged Subject………………………………………………………………..190 The Structure of the Patient Records…………………………………………194 The Form of Insanity…………………………………………………………...199 The Patient’s Body……………………………………………………………...207 Describing and Examining the Body…………………………………….208 The Senile Body…………………………………………………………..211 Aetiology and the Lay Narratives………………………………..…………....214 iv Economic Anxiety………………………………………………………...215 The Marginalisation of the Lay Voice…………………………………….219 Recording the Lay Narratives…………………………………………….220 Senility as a Cause of Insanity…………………………………………...224 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….226 Chapter Five: Leaving the Asylum; The Death and Discharge of Aged Patients……………………………………………………………………………………228 Dying and Death………………………………………………………………...229 Discharge…………………………………………………………………………242 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………..253 Understandings and Categories……………………………………………….253 Reponses………………………………………………………………………….259 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………...266 Appendix 1: The 1882 Medico-Psychological Association ‘Form of Insanity’ Classification……………………………………………………………..296 Appendix 2: The Format of the Case Books at Hanwell…………………………….297 v Abbreviations LCC (London County Council) MAB (Metropolitan Asylums Board) MPA (Medico-Psychological Association) vi List of Figures Figure 1. (Artist Unknown) ‘Life and age of man: stages of man's life from the cradle to the grave’ (New York: Currier and Ives, between 1856 and 1907), Library of Congress, cph 3a04025……………………………………93 Figure 2. Detail from ‘The Stages of Life’ (London: James Catnach, c. 1830), British Museum, 1992,0125.31, AN347203……………………………………………..94 Figure 3. Detail from Bernard Van Oven, On the Decline of Life in Health and Disease (London, 1853), p. 36. ………………………………………………………95 Figure 4. Annual admissions to Hanwell Asylum, 1850-1910……………………....115 Figure 5. The proportion of annual admissions to Hanwell Asylum reported to be aged 60 or over on admission, 1850-1910………………………….…116 Figure 6. Outcome of residence of patients reported to be aged 60 or over on admission to Hanwell, 1851-1912. ………………………………………………….….228 List of Tables Table 1. Senile forms of insanity in patients reported to be aged 60 or over on admission to Hanwell, 1851-1912………………………………………………………200 vii Acknowledgements First thanks go to my supervisor, Hilary Marland, for her calm and consistent faith in this thesis and its writer, and her considerable support along the way. Thanks also to members of the Warwick History Department for their input and encouragement at various stages of this project. Thanks to my CHM compatriots Jack Elliot, Gareth Millward, Martin Moore, Harriet Palfreyman, Stephen Soanes and Rebecca Williams for listening ears, good times, and useful suggestions. I could not have got through this without such thoughtful, intelligent and tolerant peers. Thanks also to Jennifer Wallis and Åsa Janssen. Thanks to Anamika Basu, Ruth Baker, Simone Cooper, Lauren Ding, Julia Lambeth, Charlotte Moss, Sarah Stevens and Jayne Yong for being inspirational women, and a light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks to Rosi and David Pitcher, for their kindness and interest. Thanks to my dad, David Andrews, for intelligent thoughts, encouraging words, and the occasional good feed. This project would not exist without my grandmother, Pat Nichols, 'my muse'. She has been a thoughtful and incisive listener, and a beacon of love. Final thanks go to Chris Pitcher, who has given me every type of support imaginable over the last few years, and in particular in the final months. I can't express in words how much that has meant to me, but I can start doing the washing up again. This thesis is dedicated to my mum, Debbie Andrews, whose determination to understand people on their own terms inspired this project. I hope some of that humanity speaks through these pages. Declaration I declare that this thesis is entirely my own work, and does not contain material submitted for examination for a degree at any other university. viii Abstract This thesis addresses the place of old age in British psychiatry, from 1835-1912. It asks: how were mental disorders in old age understood, categorised and responded to? It seeks answers to these questions in three sets of sources: theoretical published works written by professional psychiatrists, the official reports of the bodies charged with managing the asylum at a national and local level, and in the patient records of Hanwell County Lunatic Asylum. It argues that the ‘senile’ became more clearly defined in the latter nineteenth century, in politics and in medicine, as a residual category of person: too insane for the workhouse, too old for the asylum. It shows that, during this period, older people in the asylum were increasingly likely to be viewed as ‘old’. Through the increasing focus on internal pathology as an aetiological determinant of mental disorder, both engendered and reflected in changes to the asylum’s patient records, the inherent agedness of older people – with associations of inevitable decline, incurability and dependency – became central to the way that psychiatrists interpreted their mental disorders. The senile were a controversial group in nineteenth-century psychiatry. The administrators of Lunacy made attempts to exclude them from the asylum, but families and workhouse officials continued to send them there. The asylum played an important role in latter-nineteenth-century London as a pressure-valve for those whose behaviour made them unmanageable in other settings. Without more specialised provision, the asylum was often the only institution which could manage the elderly mentally disordered. Once there, aged patients worked and were cared for alongside the rest of the asylum population, usually until their death. 1 Introduction On July 19th 1900, three medical students sat down to take the examination for the Certificate in Psychological Medicine, accredited by the Medico-Psychological Association of Great Britain and Ireland
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Scandal, Child Punishment and Policy Making in the Early Years of the New Poor Law Workhouse System
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Lincoln Institutional Repository ‘Great inhumanity’: Scandal, child punishment and policy making in the early years of the New Poor Law workhouse system SAMANTHA A. SHAVE UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN ABSTRACT New Poor Law scandals have usually been examined either to demonstrate the cruelty of the workhouse regime or to illustrate the failings or brutality of union staff. Recent research has used these and similar moments of crisis to explore the relationship between local and central levels of welfare administration (the Boards of Guardians in unions across England and Wales and the Poor Law Commission in Somerset House in London) and how scandals in particular were pivotal in the development of further policies. This article examines both the inter-local and local-centre tensions and policy conseQuences of the Droxford Union and Fareham Union scandal (1836-37) which exposed the severity of workhouse punishments towards three young children. The paper illustrates the complexities of union co-operation and, as a result of the escalation of public knowledge into the cruelties and investigations thereafter, how the vested interests of individuals within a system manifested themselves in particular (in)actions and viewpoints. While the Commission was a reactive and flexible welfare authority, producing new policies and procedures in the aftermath of crises, the policies developed after this particular scandal made union staff, rather than the welfare system as a whole, individually responsible for the maltreatment and neglect of the poor. 1. Introduction Within the New Poor Law Union workhouse, inmates depended on the poor law for their complete subsistence: a roof, a bed, food, work and, for the young, an education.
    [Show full text]
  • Vagrants and Vagrancy in England, 1485-1553
    W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1986 Basilisks of the Commonwealth: Vagrants and Vagrancy in England, 1485-1553 Christopher Thomas Daly College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the European History Commons Recommended Citation Daly, Christopher Thomas, "Basilisks of the Commonwealth: Vagrants and Vagrancy in England, 1485-1553" (1986). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539625366. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-y42p-8r81 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BASILISKS OF THE COMMONWEALTH: Vagrants and Vagrancy in England, 1485-1553 A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts fcy Christopher T. Daly 1986 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts . s F J i z L s _____________ Author Approved, August 1986 James L. Axtell Dale E. Hoak JamesEL McCord, IjrT DEDICATION To my brother, grandmother, mother and father, with love and respect. iii TABLE OE CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................. v ABSTRACT.......................................... vi INTRODUCTION ...................................... 2 CHAPTER I. THE PROBLEM OE VAGRANCY AND GOVERNMENTAL RESPONSES TO IT, 1485-1553 7 CHAPTER II.
    [Show full text]
  • The Poor Law of 1601
    Tit) POOR LA.v OF 1601 with 3oms coi3ii3rat,ion of MODSRN Of t3l9 POOR -i. -S. -* CH a i^ 3 B oone. '°l<g BU 2502377 2 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Chapter 1. Introductory. * E. Poor Relief before the Tudor period w 3. The need for re-organisation. * 4. The Great Poor La* of 1601. w 5. Historical Sketch. 1601-1909. " 6. 1909 and after. Note. The small figares occurring in the text refer to notes appended to each chapter. Chapter 1. .Introductory.. In an age of stress and upheaval, institutions and 9 systems which we have come to take for granted are subjected to a searching test, which, though more violent, can scarcely fail to be more valuable than the criticism of more normal times. A reconstruction of our educational system seems inevitable after the present struggle; in fact new schemes have already been set forth by accredited organisations such as the national Union of Teachers and the Workers' Educational Association. V/ith the other subjects in the curriculum of the schools, History will have to stand on its defence.
    [Show full text]
  • Caring for the Poor, Sick and Needy. a Brief History of Poor Relief in Scotland
    Caring for the poor, sick and needy. A brief history of poor relief in Scotland Aberdeen City Archives Contents 1. A brief history of poor relief up to 1845 2. A brief history of poor relief after 1845 3. Records of poor relief in Scotland: a. Parochial Board/Parish Council Minute Books b. Records of Applications c. General Registers of the Poor d. Children’s Separate Registers e. Register of Guardians f. Assessment Rolls g. Public Assistance Committee Minutes 4. Records for Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire 5. Further Reading 2 1. A brief history of poor relief up until 1845 The first acts of parliament to deal with the relief of the poor were passed in 1424. Most of these and subsequent acts passed in the 15th and 16th centuries. dealt with beggars and little information on individuals survives from this time. After the Reformation, the responsibility for the poor fell to the parish jointly through the heritors, landowners and officials within burghs who were expected to make provision for the poor and were also responsible for the parish school til 1872 and the church and manse til 1925, and the Kirk Sessions (the decision making body of the (or local court) of the parish church, made up of a group of elders, and convened (chaired) by a minister. The heritors often made voluntary contributions to the poor fund in preference of being assessed, and the kirk sessions raised money for the poor from fines, payments for carrying out marriages, baptisms, and funerals, donations, hearse hiring, interest on money lent, rent incomes and church collections.
    [Show full text]
  • ARCHITECTURE, POWER, and POVERTY Emergence of the Union
    ARCHITECTURE, POWER, AND POVERTY Emergence of the Union Workhouse Apparatus in the Early Nineteenth-Century England A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Gökhan Kodalak January 2015 2015, Gökhan Kodalak ABSTRACT This essay is about the interaction of architecture, power, and poverty. It is about the formative process of the union workhouse apparatus in the early nineteenth-century England, which is defined as a tripartite combination of institutional, architectural, and everyday mechanisms consisting of: legislators, official Poor Law discourse, and administrative networks; architects, workhouse buildings, and their reception in professional journals and popular media; and paupers, their everyday interactions, and ways of self-expression such as workhouse ward graffiti. A cross-scalar research is utilized throughout the essay to explore how the union workhouse apparatus came to be, how it disseminated in such a dramatic speed throughout the entire nation, how it shaped the treatment of pauperism as an experiment for the modern body-politic through the peculiar machinery of architecture, and how it functioned in local instances following the case study of Andover union workhouse. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Gökhan Kodalak is a PhD candidate in the program of History of Architecture and Urbanism at Cornell University. He received his bachelor’s degree in architectural design in 2007, and his master’s degree in architectural theory and history in 2011, both from Yıldız Technical University, Istanbul. He is a co-founding partner of ABOUTBLANK, an inter-disciplinary architecture office located in Istanbul, and has designed a number of award-winning architectural and urban design projects in national and international platforms.
    [Show full text]
  • Almshouse, Workhouse, Outdoor Relief: Responses to the Poor in Southeastern Massachusetts, 1740-1800” Historical Journal of Massachusetts Volume 31, No
    Jennifer Turner, “Almshouse, Workhouse, Outdoor Relief: Responses to the Poor in Southeastern Massachusetts, 1740-1800” Historical Journal of Massachusetts Volume 31, No. 2 (Summer 2003). Published by: Institute for Massachusetts Studies and Westfield State University You may use content in this archive for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the Historical Journal of Massachusetts regarding any further use of this work: [email protected] Funding for digitization of issues was provided through a generous grant from MassHumanities. Some digitized versions of the articles have been reformatted from their original, published appearance. When citing, please give the original print source (volume/ number/ date) but add "retrieved from HJM's online archive at http://www.westfield.ma.edu/mhj. Editor, Historical Journal of Massachusetts c/o Westfield State University 577 Western Ave. Westfield MA 01086 Almshouse, Workhouse, Outdoor Relief: Responses to the Poor in Southeastern Massachusetts, 1740-1800 By Jennifer Turner In Duxbury, Massachusetts, local folklore emphasizes that before the current Surplus Street was named, it was called Poverty Lane because it led to the “poor” farm, and before it was Poverty Lane, local residents knew it as Folly Street, over which one’s folly led to the Almshouse.1 Although such local folklore suggests a rather stringent attitude towards giving alms to the poor in colonial society, the issue of poor relief absorbed much of the attention of town officials before and after the American Revolution. Throughout the colonial period and early republic, many Massachusetts towns faced growing numbers of needy men, women and children in need of relief.
    [Show full text]
  • Government and Social Conditions in Scotland 1845-1919 Edited by Ian Levitt, Ph.D
    -£e/. 54 Scs. S«S,/io SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY FIFTH SERIES VOLUME 1 Government and Social Conditions in Scotland Government and Social Conditions in Scotland 1845-1919 edited by Ian Levitt, ph.d ★ EDINBURGH printed for the Scottish History Society by BLACKWOOD, PILLANS & WILSON 1988 Scottish History Society ISBN 0 906245 09 5 Printed in Great Britain ^ e ia O' >40 PREFACE A work of this kind, drawing on material from a wide variety of sources, could not have been possible without the active help and encouragment of many people. To name any individual is perhaps rather invidious, but I would like to draw special attention to the assistance given by the archivists, librarians and administrative officers of those authorities whose records I consulted. I would hope that this volume would in turn assist a wider understanding of what their archives and libraries can provide: they offer much for the history of Scotland. I must, however, record my special thanks to Dr John Strawhorn, who kindly searched out and obtained Dr Littlejohn’s report on Ayr (1892). I am greatly indebted to the following for their kind permission to use material from their archives and records: The Keeper of Records, the Scottish Record Office The Trustees of the National Library of Scotland The Archivist, Strathclyde Regional Council The Archivist, Ayr District Archives The Archivist, Edinburgh District Council The Archivist, Central Regional Council The Archivist, Tayside Regional Council Midlothian District Council Fife Regional Council Kirkcaldy District Council
    [Show full text]
  • Thomas Hainsworth (Ainsworth) (B
    Thomas Hainsworth (Ainsworth) (b. 1840 - d. 1909) 11th December 2019 Karen Mackie Thomas Hainsworth was born on 20th December 1840 (1). His parents David and Esther Hainsworth had him baptised on 21st March at Leeds Parish Church (2) (this is St Peters, now Leeds Minster) (3). As a child he lived on Byron Street in Leeds (4). He had an older brother and sister, William and Mary (5). His birth and death records show his name as Hainsworth, but during most of his time in the workhouse his surname is recorded as Ainsworth on official records. In September 1850, when he was only nine years old, his mother, Esther died and was buried in Beckett St Cemetery (6). The following year his father, David, remarried (7). Around 1856, when Thomas was 16, he entered the Leeds Union Workhouse (8). However, his older brother was still living in the family home and remained there at least until the age of 25 (9). His father and stepmother remained local to Leeds, living at Penn St; and in Thorner at David’s death in 1886 (10). We do not have a discharge record to confirm whether Thomas remained in the workhouse for the remainder of his life. The 1871 census describes him as an imbecile from birth and this may explain his admission at a young age (11). He is described as having paralysis in the long-term inmates list of 1861 (12). Nonetheless, he worked as a labourer and coal miner throughout much of his life (13). In 1891, Thomas was described as a hawker and was placed in the infirmary at the workhouse (14).
    [Show full text]
  • 'Army of One': Mrs Nassau Senior, 1828-1877, the First Woman in Whitehall
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln The George Eliot Review English, Department of 2008 Review of Jeanie, an 'Army of One': Mrs Nassau Senior, 1828-1877, the First Woman in Whitehall Sybil Oldfield Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/ger Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Oldfield, Sybil, "Review of Jeanie, an 'Army of One': Mrs Nassau Senior, 1828-1877, the First Woman in Whitehall" (2008). The George Eliot Review. 541. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/ger/541 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in The George Eliot Review by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Sybil Oldfield,]eanie, an 'Army ojOne': Mrs Nassau Senior, 1828-1877, the First Woman in Whitehall (Sussex Academic Press, 2007), pp. 360. ISBN 978 1 84519 253 2 (hardback); 978 1 84519 254 9 (paperback) Sybil Oldfield is well-known for her work on humanitarian women, creative philanthropists and pacifists, and her new book is an important contribution to Victorian studies, a life-story told with admiration, sympathy and style, as cramful of character and emotion as a novel, and of great interest to George Eliot scholars. The neglect of Jeanie Senior, called Jeanie, pronounced Janie - her enthusiastic biographer puts 'sic' after deviations, eccentrically rather than pedantically since Jeanie was christened Jane Elizabeth and named Jane on her tomb and even in this book's index - is at first sight puzzling, because her ideals and zeal as radical reformer were comparable to those of Octavia Hill and Florence Nightingale, who knew and admired her.
    [Show full text]
  • Material Lives of the Poor and Their Strategic Use of the Workhouse During the final Decades of the English Old Poor Law
    Continuity and Change 30 (1), 2015, 71–103.©Cambridge University Press 2015. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi:10.1017/S0268416015000090 Material lives of the poor and their strategic use of the workhouse during the final decades of the English old poor law JOSEPH HARLEY* ABSTRACT. This article is the first to use a combination of three different types of inven- tories from Dorset to examine the material lives of paupers inside and outside Beaminster workhouse. It argues that life was materially better for paupers on outdoor relief, compared with workhouse inmates and with paupers in the moments before they entered the workhouse. The article also examines how the poor used admission into the workhouse as part of their economy of makeshifts. The evidence demonstrates that the able-bodied poor used the workhouse as a short-term survival strategy, whereas more vulnerable inmates struggled to use this tactic. This article therefore furthers our understanding of the nature of poor relief and adds further weight to re- cent historical work that has emphasised pauper agency. 1. INTRODUCTION By the 1830s public opinion had turned against the way in which workhouses were managed.1 On one side, people viewed workhouses as the location of misery and injustice due to overcrowding, poor management and their prison- like character; others conversely viewed workhouses as institutions which made the poor idle and immoral, owing to the lack of discipline and the rela- tive material abundance found within the workhouse.2 A Royal Commission was set up in 1832 to investigate the state of the poor laws.
    [Show full text]
  • "Freedom": the New Poor Law and Emancipation
    The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare Volume 36 Issue 2 June Article 6 2009 Building Their Readiness For Economic "Freedom": The New Poor Law and Emancipation Anne O'Connell York University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw Part of the Inequality and Stratification Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, and the Social Work Commons Recommended Citation O'Connell, Anne (2009) "Building Their Readiness For Economic "Freedom": The New Poor Law and Emancipation," The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 36 : Iss. 2 , Article 6. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol36/iss2/6 This Article is brought to you by the Western Michigan University School of Social Work. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Building Their Readiness For Economic "Freedom": The New Poor Law and Emancipation ANNE O'CONNELL York University School of Social Work Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies Contemporary studies that track the new racialization of poverty in Canada require an historical account. The history we invoke in North America is often borrowed from the British poor laws, a literature that is severed from its counterpart: the histories of racial slavery, racial thinking, White bourgeois power and the making of White settler societies. The effects of severing the his- tory of poor relief from racial classifications and racism(s) are far reaching. Systems of oppression come to be seen as separate structures in which the New Poor Law appears as a domestic policy in Britain unrelated to racial thinking and racial slavery. This paper argues that attempts at managing and civilizing the poor in Britain and Upper Canada were racial projects suited to colonial ambitions and enterprises.
    [Show full text]
  • 1851 Census Index for North West Kent
    NORTH WEST KENT FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY 1851 CENSUS INDEX FOR NORTH WEST KENT . LEWISHAM ’ 9.0. DARTFORD [in BROMLEY RD. SEVENOAKS RII Volume III Deptford St. Paul & St. Nicholas parishes Piece Nos. H.O.107/1584—85 ISBN()9513760447 North West Kent Family History Society 1851 CENSUS INDEX FOR NORTH WEST KENT Volume III Deptford St. Paul and St. Nicholas parishes Piece Numbers H0 107/ 1584, H0 107/ 1585 1990 Contents Introduction ii. Location of Census Microfilms and Transcripts iii. Historical Background _ iv. Arrangement of the Deptford 1851 Census Returns xi. Guide to Enumeration Districts and Folio Numbers xiv. Index of Streets 1—2. INDEX OF NAMES 3—166. Society Publications 167. (c) North West Kent Family History Society, 1990 ISBN 0 9513760 4 7 INTRODUCTION This volume is the third in the Society's series of indexes to the 1851 census of _ north west Kent, and is the result of some five years work. Its production would not have been possible without the help of a number of volunteers, and I would like to record my thanks and those of the Society to: — The transcribers and checkers who have helped with Deptford St. Paul and St. Nicholas — i. e. Bob Crouch, Rose Medley, Mary Mullett, Edna Reynolds, Helen Norris, Norman Sears, Len Waghorn and Malcolm Youngs. Of these, I would particularly like to single out Len Waghorn, who alone transcribed 20 of the 35 enumeration districts. -— Members of the Society with BBC or MS—DOS microcomputers, for their work on entering the data into computer files — i.
    [Show full text]