The Uses of Charity: The Poor on Relief in the Nineteenth-Century Metropolis

Description

Who were the poor of the world's first metropolises, and how did they survive? This collection of eight original essays proposes a revisionist perspective on poverty and its relief in the nineteenth-century city, emphasizing the position of women and children and the importance of charity and welfare in their lives. Historians have tended to focus on the motives and achievements of the benefactors and institutions, in part because donors left behind such rich documentation. These essays, taking their cue from recent trends in the social sciences, address charity from below, as experienced from the point of view of the recipients, and challenge assumptions about the marginality and dependency of the poor. The authors find that the demand for charity was constant, that the forms in which it was offered rarely matched the forms in which it was needed, that the poor used considerable ingenuity in adapting both the gifts and themselves to meet their needs, and that their attitudes toward charity often were not what either donors or historians have believed. The Uses of Charity is a valuable resource for students and scholars of history, anthropology, sociology, and women's studies. Contents Acknowledgments 1. Poverty and Charity in the Nineteenth- Century Metropolis: An Introduction 2. “Total Institutions” and the Survival Strategies of the Laboring Poor in Antwerp, 1770-1860 3. The Survival of the Unfit: Welfare Policies and Family Maintenance in Nineteenth-Century London 4. Preserving the Future of France: Aid to the Poor and Pregnant in Nineteenth-Century Paris 5. Waifs and Strays: Child Abandonment, Foster Care, and Families in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York 6. Hungry Children: Housewives and London Charity, 1870-1918 7. To Give and to Receive: Philanthropy and Collective Responsibility Among Jews in Paris, 1880-1914 8. The History of an Impudent Poor Woman in New York City from 1918 to 1923 Contributors Index