scholarly journals “Precocious Girls”: Age of Consent, Class and Family in Late Nineteenth-Century England

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-266
Author(s):  
Laura Lammasniemi
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Girl Child ◽  
Child Prostitution ◽  
Age Of Consent ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Social Concerns ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Late Nineteenth

A fixed legal age of consent is used to determine when a person has the capacity to consent to sex yet in the late Victorian period the idea became a vehicle through which to address varied social concerns, from child prostitution and child sexual abuse to chastity and marriageability of working-class girls. This article argues that the Criminal Law Amendment Act (CLAA) 1885, the Act that raised the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen, and its application were driven by constructions of gender in conjunction with those of social class and working class family. The article firstly argues that CLAA 1885 and related campaigns reinforced class boundaries, and largely framed the working class family as absent, thereby, requiring the law to step in as a surrogate parent to protect the girl child. Secondly, the paper focuses on narratives emerging from the archives and argues that while narratives of capacity and protection in particular were key concepts behind reforms, the courts showed limited understanding of these terms. Instead, the courts focused on notions resistance, consent, and untrustworthiness of the victim, even when these concepts were not relevant to the proceedings due to victims' young age.

scholarly journals Insomnia and the late nineteenth-century insomniac: the case of Albert Kimball

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 20190074 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Beaumont
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sleep Problems ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Individual

This article explores the emergence, in late nineteenth-century Britain and the USA, of the ‘insomniac’ as a distinct pathological and social archetype. Sleeplessness has of course been a human problem for millennia, but only since the late-Victorian period has there been a specific diagnostic name for the individual who suffers chronically from insufficient sleep. The introductory section of the article, which notes the current panic about sleep problems, offers a brief sketch of the history of sleeplessness, acknowledging the transhistorical nature of this condition but also pointing to the appearance, during the period of the Enlightenment, of the term ‘insomnia’ itself. The second section makes more specific historical claims about the rise of insomnia in the accelerating conditions of everyday life in urban society at the end of the nineteenth century. It traces the rise of the insomniac as such, especially in the context of medical debates about ‘neurasthenia’, as someone whose identity is constitutively defined by their inability to sleep. The third section, tightening the focus of the article, goes on to reconstruct the biography of one exemplary late nineteenth-century insomniac, the American dentist Albert Kimball, in order to illustrate the claim that insomnia was one of the pre-eminent symptoms of a certain crisis in industrial and metropolitan modernity as this social condition was lived by individuals at the fin de siècle .

The Battle of Žižkov: Urban Planners’ Transition from Heritage Protection to Neoliberal Discursive Planning

2020 ◽  
pp. 009614422090888
Author(s):  
Petr Roubal
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Planning ◽  
Common Root ◽  
Velvet Revolution ◽  
Major Shift ◽  
The Common ◽  
Heritage Protection ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Class Nature

On the example of working-class Prague quarter of Žižkov, the article studies the interrelation between heritage protection of late nineteenth-century tenement housing and neoliberal city policies after 1989. It locates the common root of both phenomena in the strong sense of crisis of socialist modernist urbanism among urban planners and architects since the early 1970s. The criticism of socialist urbanism culminated shortly before the Velvet Revolution of 1989 in a public struggle against demolition and redevelopment of the entire Žižkov quarter, led by a group of young architects. The article concludes by describing a bitter victory as the quarter’s architecture was eventually saved, while neoliberal urban policies and gentrification eroded its working-class nature. This process illustrates a major shift in urban expertise from social planning under socialism to neoliberal discursive planning in which a “story” of a city is constructed through preservation of belle-époque tenement housing.

Labor Violence in Russia in the Late Nineteenth Century

Slavic Review ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Brower
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Stress ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Collective Violence ◽  
Factory Workers ◽  
Revolutionary Movement ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Labor Violence ◽  
Insight Into

Protest action accompanied by violence was widespread among Russian factory workers during the late nineteenth century. The phenomenon was noted by tsarist officials and radicals alike, but historians since then have paid little attention to the problem. This neglect has contributed to a distorted picture of the working-class movement and of the relations between Russian workers and factory and state authorities. In recent years it has become a truism to affirm that collective violence constitutes evidence of profound social stress. It is also true that the form and character of the violence in certain historical circumstances provide unique insight into the attitudes and expectations of groups, such as factory workers, otherwise unable to express their views. The violent actions of Russian workers are particularly important to an understanding of the origins of the revolutionary movement among the workers in the early twentieth century. What form did these actions take? Who were the participants, and what goals did they seek to attain? How did the incidence and nature of the actions change over the last decades of the century? Although the evidence is not abundant, answers to these questions suggest that collective violence played an important part in the working-class movement in the late nineteenth century.

‘Heroism displayed’: revisiting the Franklin Gallery at the Royal Naval Exhibition, 1891

Polar Record ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huw W.G. Lewis-Jones
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Polar Regions ◽  
Juvenile Literature ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The Royal Naval Exhibition (RNE) of 1891 offers an important entry point for the study of naval mythmaking. Scrutinising one part of the RNE showcase, ‘The Franklin Gallery,’ highlights the imaginative potential of the polar regions as a resource for imperial visions. This paper provides a review of the RNE and, more closely, considers the ideology of polar exploration in the context of political debate and naval reforms. The utility of images of the Arctic presented at the RNE is discussed, in particular, its role in displaying the ‘heroic martyrdom’ of Sir John Franklin (1786–1847). The paper draws upon an extensive study of late nineteenth-century newspapers, illustrated weeklies, periodical reviews, popular adult and juvenile literature, art, poetry, pamphlets, exhibition catalogues and handbooks, and associated ephemera. It argues that the RNE played a central part in the construction and enshrining of narratives of naval and national achievement in the late-Victorian period and in reviving a British commitment to the exploration of the polar regions.

And They Sang the “Marseillaise”: A Look at the Left French Press as It Responded to the Haymarket

1986 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 28-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Paris Commune ◽  
Symbolic Function ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This is a tale of two cities: Chicago and Paris. They were different worlds, one the gem of western Europe, the other the gem of the prairies, yet both had a working-class movement in the 1870s and 1880s that produced a unique set of historical events which have served a symbolic function of communicating between one side of the globe and another. To illustrate these events as they appeared to one continent from the other I will begin with Chicago and demonstrate how the Paris Commune served as a symbolic event which gave meaning to local political struggles in the Windy City. Then, as the Haymarket Affair of 1886 unfolds, I will shift to Paris and the left-wing press as it tried to translate Chicago events into something meaningful for French workers. If these were the best of times and worst of times for workers in the late nineteenth century, then it is worth exploring the uses of these events in the creation of a working-class language of internationalism.

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