Joseph Harley – författare

Pauper inventories were made by poor law officials to record the possessions that people on poor relief owned. These inventories have been known to exist for decades, yet they are notoriously difficult to find and have been under-utilised by generations of historians.For the first time, this book contains transcriptions of 230 pauper inventories from Norfolk. The sources are fully contextualised and indexed, alongside four comprehensive chapters which outline the source's importance and usefulness to readers. Pauper inventories are powerful documents which reveal new insights into the living conditions of the destitute and show that being poor did not necessarily equate to owning very little. The sources will be of use to economic, social and cultural historians who study a wide range of topics including consumption, material culture, production, everyday life, poverty and welfare.

Objects of Poverty is the first volume dedicated to analysing the material culture of poverty in British history from 1700 to the present. The book examines the history of poverty through the objects ‘owned’ by the poor and those crafted, repurposed or simply encountered by them, offering critical new insights into the experience of being impoverished.This collection brings together leading and emerging scholars who draw on a wide array of ‘objects of poverty’ from those that survive today, ranging from dolls to whistles to textile samples, to those that have long since gone and now only exist in visual and written sources. The contributors trace the importance of materiality in eighteenth-century and modern life, covering objects connected to sustenance, home, the makeshift, childhood, animals, money, workhouses, and injury and death. In its 23 chapters, along with some 77 illustrations, the book provides a detailed exploration of the history of poverty in Britain. Each of the chapters are based on original research and make a new contribution to the literature. This book will be fascinating reading for history enthusiasts to students to established academics across multiple disciplines.

Objects of Poverty is the first volume dedicated to analysing the material culture of poverty in British history from 1700 to the present. The book examines the history of poverty through the objects ‘owned’ by the poor and those crafted, repurposed or simply encountered by them, offering critical new insights into the experience of being impoverished.This collection brings together leading and emerging scholars who draw on a wide array of ‘objects of poverty’ from those that survive today, ranging from dolls to whistles to textile samples, to those that have long since gone and now only exist in visual and written sources. The contributors trace the importance of materiality in eighteenth-century and modern life, covering objects connected to sustenance, home, the makeshift, childhood, animals, money, workhouses, and injury and death. In its 23 chapters, along with some 77 illustrations, the book provides a detailed exploration of the history of poverty in Britain. Each of the chapters are based on original research and make a new contribution to the literature. This book will be fascinating reading for history enthusiasts to students to established academics across multiple disciplines.

This book opens the doors to the homes of the forgotten poor and traces the goods they owned before, during and after the industrial revolution (c. 1650–1850). Using a vast and diverse range of sources, it gets to the very heart of what it meant to be ‘poor’ by examining the homes of the impoverished and mapping how numerous household goods became more widespread. As the book argues, poverty did not necessarily equate to owning very little and living in squalor. In fact, its novel findings show that most of the poor strove to improve their domestic spheres and that their demand for goods was so great that it was a driving force of the industrial revolution.

This book opens the doors to the homes of the forgotten poor and traces the goods they owned before, during and after the industrial revolution (c. 1650–1850). Using a vast and diverse range of sources, it gets to the very heart of what it meant to be ‘poor’ by examining the homes of the impoverished and mapping how numerous household goods became more widespread. As the book argues, poverty did not necessarily equate to owning very little and living in squalor. In fact, its novel findings show that most of the poor strove to improve their domestic spheres and that their demand for goods was so great that it was a driving force of the industrial revolution.

These working-class homes are often imagined as distinctly unhomely spaces, which the inhabitants struggled to fill with even the most basic of furniture, let alone acquire the comforts associated with middle-class domestic space.