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基本説明
This book delineates the social rules that constructed the gendered world of Victorian London: the women who successfully petitoned the Hospital were not East End prostitutes, but rather unmarried women, often domestic servants, determined to maintain social respectability.
Full Description
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.
Contents
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.
