Navigating the Old English Poor Law
The Kirkby Lonsdale Letters, 1809-1836
$407.02
- Hardcover
400 pages
- Release Date
11 November 2020
Summary
This edition of over 600 letters written by or for the poor in the early nineteenth-century Cumbrian town of Kirkby Lonsdale provides a unique window onto the experiences, views and conditions of a much-neglected group in English society.
At the most human level, these letters are replete with sickness and suffering, the inability of mothers and fathers to fulfil their basic roles, claims that people were starving and naked, writers who were at death’s door and those who were homeless…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780197266816 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0197266819 |
| Author: | Peter Jones, Steven King |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
| Imprint: | Oxford University Press |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 400 |
| Release Date: | 11 November 2020 |
| Weight: | 776g |
| Dimensions: | 241mm x 164mm x 30mm |
| Series: | Records of Social and Economic History |
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What They're Saying
Critics Review
“This edition of primary sources is a welcome addition to the history of English welfare…” – Samantha Williams, Family & Community History
An impressively rich resource of primary sources … It is simultaneously fascinating and depressing to see the historical problems of poverty that echo today … providing an enriched understanding of the workings of an historic system of poor relief. * Gráinne McKeever, Journal of Social Security Law *This edition of primary sources is a welcome addition to the history of English welfare… * Samantha Williams, Family & Community History *This collection provides thought-provoking insights into the workings of the Old Poor Law. * Rechtsgeschichte - Legal History *
About The Author
Peter Jones
Peter Jones has longstanding research and publication interests in the histories of protest, clothing, class and welfare. Most recently he has worked on the voices of the dependent poor as they engaged with the central authorities overseeing the New Poor Law. Recent publications include P. Jones and S.A. King, Pauper Voices, Public Opinion and Workhouse Reform in Mid-Victorian England: Bearing Witness (Basingstoke, 2020); P. Jones and N. Carter, ‘Writingfor Redress: Redrawing the Epistolary Relationship under the New Poor Law’, Continuity and Change (2019), 1-25; and P. Jones and S.A. King (eds.), Obligation, Entitlement and Dispute under the English Poor Laws,1600-1900 (Newcastle, 2015).
Steven King has a long history with the history of welfare. He started his career investigating the historical demography of poor people in West Yorkshire in the period between 168 and 1820. Subsequently he has worked on the theoretical modelling of British and European welfare regimes and most substantially on the experiences and agency of the poor between 1750 and 1910. He also has supplementary interests in the histories of courtship, clothing, death and burial, the medical marketplace and histories of the family. His Writing the Lives of the English Poor, 1750s-1830s won the British Academy Peter Townsend Prize for 2019.
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