Tag: victorian

An ‘orphaned mite of blue-eyed, wondering humanity’: Adoption, sentiment, suspicion and the poor laws

June 23, 2013

In 1878, The Cambrian newspaper departed from its usual dry reporting of the meetings of Swansea’s Guardians of the Poor to publish an account of a ‘child adoption’, in which a female child was taken from the workhouse to be ‘adopted’ by a local woman. The only comparable entry in the guardians’ minute book is from their meeting … More An ‘orphaned mite of blue-eyed, wondering humanity’: Adoption, sentiment, suspicion and the poor laws

Profligate Women?

March 25, 2013

Were the mothers of illegitimate children humiliated in the Victorian workhouse? Evidence would suggest that workhouse management were keen to make an example of who they regarded as ‘unchaste’ women by reducing their food allowance or making them wear clothes that would mark them out. However the Poor Law Commissioners in London issued a statement … More Profligate Women?

‘Likely to conduce to the happiness and advantage of the inmates’? – Victorian Education for Deaf Children.

March 3, 2013

‘Disability is everywhere in history, once you begin looking for it, but conspicuously absent from the histories we write’ observed Douglas Baynton in 2001. Of course, since then historians have begun to fill this lacuna and disability history has burgeoned, especially here at Swansea University. Baynton’s argument that disability is everywhere in history carries particular resonance … More ‘Likely to conduce to the happiness and advantage of the inmates’? – Victorian Education for Deaf Children.

‘Saucy Harry and his Moll’ – (Workhouse) Men Behaving Badly

February 18, 2013

There is no doubt that grim tales of brutality in Victorian workhouses sell popular history books, and of course the workhouse system did generate many cases of neglect and cruelty. Most perceptions of the poor laws are defined by these incidents, but some paupers also used (and abused) the system successfully. The horrifying scandals in … More ‘Saucy Harry and his Moll’ – (Workhouse) Men Behaving Badly

Victorian education for the blind: ‘cheer them in their affliction’?

January 25, 2013

Were blind children the ‘preferred figures of disability in the Victorian imagination’ as Martha Holmes argues? Depictions in art such as The Blind Girl by John Millais, 1856 (below) suggests that representations of blindness did generate widespread Victorian sentimentality and pity, which in turn led to the establishment of specialist institutions for blind children and adults. … More Victorian education for the blind: ‘cheer them in their affliction’?

‘A d_m cock eyed b_’ Wild Workhouse Women

January 10, 2013

Many female workhouse inmates did not conform to the popular imagining of submissive downtrodden pauper, but instead resisted and sometimes undermined the power of workhouse authorities. Contemporary representation of the inmates of poor law workhouses in the nineteenth century was that of a submissive underclass, humbled by the wretchedness of their circumstances. This perception has … More ‘A d_m cock eyed b_’ Wild Workhouse Women