Workhouses and punishment (Historiography)
Key Reading
Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England, chapter 10
Further Reading
- Beate Althammer, Andreas Gestrich, Jens Grundler (eds), The welfare state and the 'deviant poor' in Europe, 1870-1933 , esp chapters 3 & 4
- Joseph Harley, '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, 2014
- J. Boulton and L. Schwarz, 'The medicalisation of a parish workhouse in Georgian Westminster : St Martin in the Fields, 1725–1824', Family & Community History, 2014
- Lewis Darwen, 'Workhouse Populations of the Preston Union, 1841-61', Local Population Studies, 2014
- Megan Evans and Peter Jones, ''A stubborn, intractable body' : resistance to the workhouse in Wales, 1834–1877', Family & Community History, 2014
- Charlotte Newman, 'To Punish or Protect : The New Poor Law and the English Workhouse', International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 2014
- Jane Hamlett, Lesley Hoskins and Rebecca Preston, Residential institutions in Britain, 1725-1970 : inmates and environments
- Ian Miller, Ian, 'Feeding in the Workhouse : The Institutional and Ideological Functions of Food in Britain, ca. 1834–70', Journal of British Studies, 2013
- Jonathan Reinarz and Leonard Schwarz, Medicine and the workhouse
- Ruth Richardson, Dickens and the workhouse : Oliver Twist and the London poor
- Andrew J. Gritt and Peter Park, 'The workhouse populations of Lancashire in 1881' Local Population Studies 2011
- David Green, Pauper capital : London and the Poor Law, 1790-1870
- Elaine Murphy, 'Workhouse care of the insane, 1845-1890' in Pamela Dale and Joseph Melling, Mental illness and learning disability since 1850 : finding a place for mental disorder in the United Kingdom
- Anna Clark, 'Wild Workhouse Girls and the Liberal Imperial State in Mid-Nineteenth Century Ireland',
Journal of Social History, 2005 - R. Adair, B. Forsythe and J. Melling, ‘A Danger to the Public? Disposing of Pauper Lunatics in Late-Victorian and Edwardian England: Plympton St Mary Union and the Devon County Asylum, 1867-1914’, Medical History, 42 (1998)
- Felix Driver, ‘The Historical Geography of the Workhouse System in England and Wales, 1834-1883’, Journal of Historical Geography, 15 (1989)
- Leonard Smith, ‘The Pauper Lunatic Problem in the West Midlands 1818-1850’, Midland History, 21 (1996)
- P. Bartlett, The Poor Law of Lunacy: The Administration of Pauper Lunatics in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England
- Frank Crompton, Workhouse Children: Infant and Child Paupers Under the Worcestershire Poor Law 1781 -1871
- M. A. Crowther, The Workhouse System 1834 -1929: The History of an English Social Institution
- Anne Digby, Pauper Palaces
- Simon Fowler, The Workhouse: the People, the Places, the Life Behind Doors
- Nigel Goose, ‘Workhouse Populations in the Mid Nineteenth Century: the Case of Hertfordshire’, Local Population Studies, 62 (1999)
- Norman Longmate, The Workhouse
- Kathryn Morrison, The Workhouse: a Study of Poor Law Buildings in England
- Peter Wood, Poverty and the Workhouse in Victorian Britain
Questions
- Were workhouses prisons or pauper palaces?
- How effective were workhouses at dealing with issues of poverty and crime?
- What resistance to workhouses were there, and how effective were these?
- Why did Victorians turn to institutions to address social problems?
- Did the architecture of the workhouse reinforce social control and surveillance?
- Were workhouses there to punish or protect?
- What were the characteristics of the workhouse population?