Victorian Women, Unwed Mothers and the London Foundling Hospital

AvJessica A. Sheetz-Nguyen

Inbunden, Engelska, 2012

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Beskrivning

This title covers sex, gender, charity and class in Victorian Britain. This volume seeks to address the questions of poverty, charity, and public welfare, taking the nineteenth-century London Foundling Hospital as its focus. It delineates the social rules that constructed the gendered world of the Victorian age, and uses 'respectability' as a factor for analysis: the women who successfully petitioned the Foundling Hospital for admission of their infants were not East End prostitutes, but rather unmarried women, often domestic servants, determined to maintain social respectability. The administrators of the Foundling Hospital reviewed over two hundred petitions annually; deliberated on about one hundred cases; and, accepted not more than 25 per cent of all cases. Using primary material from the Foundling Hospital's extensive archives, this study moves methodically from the broad social and geographical context of London and the Foundling Hospital itself, to the micro-historical case data of individual mothers and infants.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2012-07-12
Mått:156 x 234 x 19 mm
Vikt:575 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Continuum
Antal sidor:272
Förlag:Continuum Publishing Corporation
ISBN:9781441110923

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Mer om författaren

Jessica Sheetz-Nguyen is Director of the History Education Program at the University of Central Oklahoma, USA.

Recensioner i media

This is a fascinating and exhaustive study of unmarried mothers who applied to the London Foundling Hospital in the Victorian period. Sheetz-Nguyen has mined applications for admission in order to draw a detailed picture of the ‘calculus of respectability’ employed by members of the Foundling Hospital’s Board of Governors and Committee to assess petitioners’ claims ... Sheetz-Nguyen combines comprehensive quantitative analysis of these issues with qualitative evidence drawn from the rich biographies of individual petitioners assembled from the petition packets.

Innehållsförteckning

Introduction; 1. 'Ornament of the Metropolis' - the London Foundling Hospital; 2. 'Charity Injures the Providence of the Giver'; 3. 'To Hear the True State of the Mother's Case'; 4. 'When First Acquainted with Father I Was'; 5. 'If You Will Kindly Take Her from Me, You Will Save My Character'; 6. 'Dear Mr Brownlow'; 7. 'Received - A Blank Child'; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.