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Full Description
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. 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 before. The overarching 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. While 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 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.
Contents
1 Introduction: Hertfordshire in context Steven King 2 The Old Poor Law and medicine in and around Hertford, 1700-1834 Robert Dimsdale 3 Caring for the Sick and Poor in Eighteenth-century Royston Carla Herrmann 4 Madhouses of Hertfordshire 1735-1903 Gary Moyle 5 Caring for the poor in East Hertfordshire c. 1620-1650 Alan Thomson 6 Pensions and the care of the elderly in Ashwell 1670 to 1770 David Short 7 Looking after the poor: Cheshunt parish workhouse in the mid-eighteenth century Sheila White 8 The Old Poor Law in a rural North Hertfordshire parish, 1731-1831 Helen Hofton 9 Foundling Hospital children at nurse in Hertfordshire in the eighteenth century David Allin 10 Prudence West and the Foundling Hospital in Barnet 1757 to 1771 Yvonne Tomlinson 11 The last years of the Foundling Hospital - Berkhamsted, 1935-55 Jennifer Sherwood 12 Hertfordshire's relationship with certified industrial schools 1857 - 1933 Gillian Gear
