Mental Disability in Victorian England: The Earlswood Asylum 1847–1901. By David Wright. [Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001. xii, 244 and (Index) 10 pp. Hardback £40. ISBN 0–19–924639–4.]

2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-492
Author(s):  
M. A. Stein
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disability ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
National Network ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Mentally Disabled ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Drastic Increase ◽  
History Of

Under the auspices of the 1808 Asylums Act, twelve county asylums for the institutionalised care of “dangerous idiots and lunatics” were created from 1808 through 1834. The advent of the New Poor Law in that latter year, with its emphasis on economising costs through “relieving” the poor in Union workhouses, resulted in a drastic increase in the number of mentally disabled people under the care of the Poor Law Overseers. Subsequently (and partially in consequence) the Lunatics Act of 1845 directed that all “lunatics, idiots, or persons of unsound mind” be institutionalised in county asylums. The Earlswood Asylum (formerly the National Asylum for Idiots) was the premier establishment for the care of people with mental disabilities throughout the Victorian era, and the institution upon which a national network would be modelled. This book chronicles and examines the history of the Earlswood Asylum from 1847–1901.

Scandal in Somers town: conspiracism and Catholic schools in early Victorian England

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-439
Author(s):  
Aidan Cottrell-Boyce
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Schools ◽  
Urban Population ◽  
Conspiracy Theory ◽  
Small School ◽  
Charitable Organizations ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
The Poor ◽  
History Of

The middle years of the nineteenth century are notable in the history of Catholicism in England for the development of the ‘papal aggression’ crisis. Catholic emancipation had been met with suspicion by Protestant groups and this suspicion grew into violent antipathy with the publication by Nicholas Wiseman of ‘Ex Porta Flaminia.’ At the same time that this crisis was emerging, Catholic charitable organizations were also attempting to garner support from the state for the building of Catholic schools. With a boom in the poor, urban population, fuelled by the arrival of Irish refugees, this assistance was urgently required. In the midst of this a small school in the heart of London became the focus of a cause célèbre. The belief that this school had been funded by lucre, defrauded from dying and vulnerable members of the Somers Town community by simonist priests, provided the source of a widespread conspiracy theory. The result of this conspiracy theory was a lawsuit, brought in 1851 by the relatives of a deceased benefactor of the school, against the newly enthroned Cardinal Wiseman. Metairie vs. Wiseman became one of the most celebrated and cited cases of the early Victorian era.

The Break-Up of the Poor Laws— German Style: Progressivism and the Origins of the Welfare State, 1900–1918

2008 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 981-1009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Frohman
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Social Security Systems ◽  
Security Systems ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Poor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Welfare State

While the 1834 New Poor Law and the controversies over its reform represent one of the central threads in every narrative of the history of modern Britain, the same can hardly be said of the German poor laws, whose history is far less known. This is due in large part to a historiographical tradition that sees the Bismarckian social insurance programs as the fons et origo of the German welfare state and thus marginalizes all forms of social assistance that can not be neatly fitted into the narrative pre-history or subsequent development of these programs. This contrasts with a British tradition where, as E. P. Hennock has recently argued, national insurance was primarily conceived as a means of poor law reform, and where the poor laws figure prominently in the historiography of the welfare state. On the other hand, this insurance-centered approach to the welfare state is not entirely to blame because, for their part, historians of poor relief have not been able to establish any positive connections between individualized, subsidiary, deterrent relief and social insurance or social security systems based on rights deriving from either contributions or citizenship.

Rich and Poor: the Great Divide in Ancient Rome and Victorian England

1990 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. J. Bastomsky
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Third World ◽  
First Century ◽  
Absolute Maximum ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
World Series ◽  
The Poor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cost

In his book, The Roman Empire (Fontana History of the Ancient World Series), Colin Wells mentions incomes and the cost of living in first-century Italy. He concludes that a wage of 4 sesterces a day was an ‘absolute maximum’ and goes on to comment that ‘it is hard to tell whether the discrepancy between the really rich and the labouring poor was greater in some third-world countries today, or in Victorian England… To prove his point Wells gives £300,000 per annum for the Marquess of Bute as an example of an enormous income in the nineteenth century, though he does not tell us what the poor would have earned then.

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