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Home > Hertfordshire Publications Social History > A Caring County?
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A Caring County?

Social Welfare in Hertfordshire from 1600

Editor: Steven King, Gillian Gear

Price: £16.99 (free postage)

"

“The editors are to be congratulated on having assembled a collection of very well researched topics that go way beyond the normal scope of surveys of the treatment of the poor. This should encourage more local historians to look beyond the standard appraisals and further delve into the twentieth century. The volume, which includes a good number of black and white maps, photographs and other illustrations, has a very extensive bibliography and an in-depth subject index.”

-Peter Bysouth,
The Local Historian

About the book

“The book is produced to UH Press's usual high standards and is highly recommended for two reasons. Firstly, the various case-studies are object lessons for how anyone working on the Poor Law in Cambridgeshire should eventually present their findings; and secondly, Professor King's Introduction is an immensely valuable summary of current work on both the Poor Law and charitable provision. He suggests (and the Hertfordshire evidence would seem to support this) that the 'moral economy' of rural England meant there was a recognition on all sides (officials, paupers and the community at large) that the 'deserving poor' (the elderly, the mentally and physically ill and children) should be cared for but that much more research is needed on the spatial and temporal variations that might occur even within a single small county. Over to you, readers!” Tony Kirby, CALH Review

This comparative study gathers together new research by local historians into aspects of welfare in Hertfordshire spanning four centuries and focusing on towns and villages across the county, including Ashwell, Cheshunt, Hertford, Pirton and Royston amongst many others.

In so doing it makes a valuable contribution to the current debate about the spatial and chronological variation in the character of welfare regimes within single counties, let alone more widely.

  • More about the book

    As well as viewing poor relief geographically and chronologically, the book also considers the treatment of particular groups such as the aged, the mad, children and the unemployed and shows how, within the constraints of the relevant welfare laws, each group was dealt with differently, giving a more nuanced picture than has perhaps been the case previously.

    The over-arching question that the book attempts to answer is how effectively Hertfordshire cared for those in need. With chapters on madhouses, workhouses, certified industrial schools, the Foundling Hospital, pensions and medical care, the book covers a very broad range of topics through which a complex picture emerges.

    Whilst some officials seem to have been driven by a relatively narrow sense of their obligations to the poor and vulnerable, others appear to have tailored welfare packages to their precise needs. Naturally self-interest played a part: if the weakest citizens were well-managed, vagrancy might be lessened, the spread of disease contained and, perhaps above all, control maintained over the cost of looking after the poor and sick.

    It seems that Hertfordshire was relatively nimble and sensitive in discovering and treating its people's needs. Evidence is beginning to emerge, in other words, that Hertfordshire was in essence a 'caring county'.

  • View the table of contents

    Contents


     List of Figuresxi
     List of Tablesxiv
    1Introduction: Hertfordshire in context
    Steven King
    1
    2The Old Poor Law and medicine in and around Hertford, 1700–1834
    Robert Dimsdale
    14
    3Caring for the sick and poor in eighteenth-century Royston
    Carla Herrmann
    45
    4Madhouses of Hertfordshire, 1735–1903
    Gary Moyle
    69
    5Caring for the poor in East Hertfordshire c.1620–50
    Alan Thomson
    99
    6Pensions and the care of the elderly in Ashwell, 1670–1770
    David Short
    124
    7Looking after the poor: Cheshunt parish workhouse in the mid-eighteenth century
    Sheila White
    148
    8The Old Poor Law in a rural North Hertfordshire parish, 1731–1831
    Helen Hofton
    178
     Introduction to Chapters 9-11:
    A note on the history of the London Foundling Hospital
    Jennifer Sherwood
    203
    9Foundling Hospital children at nurse in Hertfordshire in the eighteenth century
    David Allin
    207
    10Prudence West and the Foundling Hospital in Barnet, 1757–1771
    Yvonne Tomlinson
    234
    11The last years of the Foundling Hospital – Berkhamsted, 1935–55
    Jennifer Sherwood
    272
    12Hertfordshire's relationship with certified industrial schools, 1857–1933
    Gillian Gear
    298
     Bibliography323
     Index341

  • About the Editor/s:

    Steven King

    Prof. Steven King is Director of the University of Leicester Centre for Medical Humanities. He is a co-editor of Poverty and Sickness in Modern Europe: Narratives of the Sick Poor (2012) and edits the journal Family and Community History.


    Gillian Gear

    Dr Gillian Gear completed her PhD at the University of London in 1999 on the subject of Certified Industrial Schools.

    She was co-editor of Herts Past and Present, secretary of the Hertfordshire Association for Local History and also the archivist for Barnet Museum.

ISBN: 978-1-909291-12-6 Format: Paperback, 360pp Published: Nov 2013

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Any questions

Contact us at UH Press if you have any queries or would like to find out more about this book.

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