Early modern ideas about artistic geography related to the Baltic Region

The paper analyses the gradual changes in assistance offered to widows and widowers between 1900 and 1964. It highlights the conflicts between the principle of the family as provider of welfare and the principle of self-help embodied in poor relief, in varying municipal pensions during the inter-war period and in the right to economic assistance legitimised through the Mothers' and Widows' Pension Act in 1964. The development is seen as part of the construction of a welfare society, built on the perception of men as wage-earners and providers, women as wives and mothers. These perceptions of masculinity and femininity resulted in gender-differentiated needs in the case of widowhood, and in gender-differentiated means of covering such needs. Civil status had no importance for men's role as wage-earners, while it was decisive for the economic situation of women. Focusing on the problem of economic support, the paper discusses solutions at the individual private level, at the municipal level and at the national level. The different weighting of widows as mothers or as providers is taken into consideration, and so are consequences of demographic changes in the widowed population.     

CHILD PATIENTS,HOSPITALS AND THE HOME IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

Abstract

This article seeks to map out some of the principal pathways to medical care used by the parents of poor children. We focus on the most formal provider of healthcare in eighteenth-century towns, the voluntary general hospitals, but we use these institutions as a prism to consider the way that the treatment of child sickness was managed more generally in five local settings. Utilising eighteenth-century hospital admissions and discharge registers we find that not only were children consistently treated as patients; but that these institutions also operated as part of a wider medical network which included domiciliary care, poor law services, and other medical charities. The boundaries surrounding hospital treatment in eighteenth-century towns were thus considerably more porous than is usually thought, and suggests that they operated as part of a wider medical network accessed by poor families for their children.     

THE MEDICALISATION OF A PARISH WORKHOUSE IN GEORGIAN WESTMINSTER: ST MARTIN IN THE FIELDS, 1725–1824

Abstract

Any standard account of the history of medicine in eighteenth-century England would include a survey of the proliferation of medical institutions and charities in the nation’s capital. The eighteenth century, it is well known, saw the foundation of large numbers of hospitals, charitable dispensaries, private mad-houses and infirmaries in London. Such institutions, moreover, often served as a blue print for provincial foundations. However, the eighteenth-century also saw the growth of indoor relief, particularly in the metropolis. Few historians have connected the two phenomena. Those interested in the growth of institutional medical provision have tended to neglect the role of parish workhouses. Using evidence from one of London’s biggest workhouses, that of St Martin in the Fields, this article argues that the medical services provided by the parish workhouse became increasingly extensive, and, for this reason, reliance on external medical provision declined over time.     

Geography, geographers and the New Dictionary of National Biography

Work on a new edition of the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) is beginning at the University of Oxford with support from the British Academy and Oxford University Press. The new edition like the old will collate signed biographical memoirs of individuals to form the definitive biographical record of British life. The new edition will include the lives of many people, such as women, popular entertainers and people important outside the metropolis, who were inadequately covered in the original edition. In doing so it will help redefine the concepts of "the nation" and "national life." New technology for sorting and manipulating data will greatly enhance the usefulness of the New DNB. Geographers have much to contribute to the project and their assistance is sought.     

THE DORKING EMIGRATION SCHEME OF 1832

Abstract

Statistical records of British emigration for the I9th century are very poor. Therefore it is important that all information that can be produced on assisted emigration should be considered to enhance our knowledge of the process of migration. In I832 the Dorking Emigration Scheme facilitated emigration of a group of poor rural labourers and their families from Surrey to make a new life in Canada. These were people dependent for support on parish relief. This article discusses this scheme in relation to British emigration policy in the years I8I5-30. Investigating assisted emigration at a local level enables an assessment of the viability of Wilmont Horton’s claim that one great cause of distress at the time was redundancy of population.It is evident in Dorking that emigration was seen as a way to alleviate the growing problem of rural unemployment. But was it just a scheme for ‘shovelling out paupers’, or are there other important factors that must be considered?     

Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century Catholic Charity: Categories of Difference in the Discourses and Practices of the Belgian Vincentians

During the nineteenth century, Catholic charity was an important source of poor relief in Belgium, as well as a means for Catholics to practice and express their devotion. Driven by a renewed religious fervour, men and women actively engaged in lay charitable organisations with the purpose of serving God through the poor and working towards self-sanctification. Historical research has especially noted women's charitable fervour, furthering the idea that the nineteenth century was characterised by a feminisation of religion. Recent studies have shown, however, that men did not become estranged from religion, and that multiple religious identities and practices existed at the same time across different contexts. Charity attracted both men and women, but the various masculinities and femininities that existed in the charitable space have seldom been explored. This study examines how gender roles were defined in the discourses of Catholic charities and the ways in which these roles structured social interactions among charitable actors, and between them and their recipients. To this end, two lay charities are taken as a case study: the Society and the Ladies of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, both committed to the practice of poor visits.     

The awkward years: defining and managing famines, 1944–1947

Abstract

Famines in the years immediately after World War II occurred during a period of global flux, as international famine response evolved from its ambitious, early twentieth century goals toward more modest, technocratic objectives during the second half of the century. For economists, social scientists and politicians immersed in the world of emergency food aid, these were uncertain, awkward years for famine relief. Herbert Hoover’s idealistic large-scale projects of famine relief that had dominated the first three decades of the century had been proven to be expensive and of limited efficacy, but Cold War loyalties had not yet taken over as the primary logic behind large-scale humanitarian assistance projects. Ultimately, when faced with famine conditions between 1944 and 1947, states and experts balanced a call to action against pragmatism that recognized famines were also politically expedient events that could weaken rural resistance to governance and simplify wartime and postwar administration. Ultimately, both science and humanitarian concerns learned to orient themselves toward economic expediency in these awkward years.     

Family,community and the Victorian asylum: a case study of the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum and its pauper lunatics

Abstract

This article explores how the medicalization of poverty in 19th-century aetiologies of insanity provided the basis for which the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum became an option for the relief and treatment of the poor. It is argued that the poor, their communities and poor law officials, by being key to the process of committal, were partially responsible for the asylum population and the role that the asylum played in the local community. The article explores how important poverty was in asylum admissions and, from an analysis of the length of stay of those entering the asylum, the number of patients for whom the asylum provided short-term respite. Using case histories of patients, the article argues for the asylum to be seen as part of the poor law process that discriminated between the deserving and undeserving poor.     

Richard Fishacre's Sentences Commentary,the Oxford Studium,and Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

For three years Oxford was the only Dominican foundation in England and so it was the place for novitiate formation, for a priory studium, and for further and higher studies in theology. When Robert Bacon, a regent master in theology, entered the Order, 1229–30, a chair of theology became attached to the Oxford School. Richard Fishacre (c. 1200–1248), who was apparently destined for the priesthood in Exeter, was the first Englishman educated in the Dominican Order to incept in theology at Oxford, under his friend and teacher, Robert Bacon, in about 1240. Some time approximately between 1241 and 1245 Fishacre produced his Sentences Commentary. The present article focuses on Fishacre, the production in the Oxford studium of his commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences and the way in which it subsequently came to the attention of no less a figure than Thomas Aquinas.     

LAST CALL BEFORE THE UNDERTAKER: A COMMUNITY’S PERCEPTION OF THE LOCAL WORKHOUSE AND OLD PEOPLE’S CARE BEFORE AND AFTER THE INCEPTION OF THE WELFARE STATE

Abstract

Workhouses were no doubt the first old people’s homes. Sick old people without social or financial resources had no alternative other than admission to one of these state institutions . These institutions instilled fear in local communities and admission represented a failure in society. Due to medical advances and improved social conditions, people lived for longer and during the 20th century the majority of the inmates were old people. After the inception of the welfare state institutional care for older people was mainly in buildings inherited from the poor law. Consequently, even after I948, for many old people admission to an institution still carried a stigma. By using oral histories of relatives and professionals who cared for old people during this time, alongside documentary sources, this article examines how the process of transition from poor law to welfare state affected families in Oxford. This first-hand perspective, missing from most studies on the history of ageing, explores how caring for old people at a time of great social change was influenced by the local workhouse.     

The caste system of India on the skids: Totaled by democracy and a dynamic economy?

Anand Chakravarti. Contradiction and Change: Emerging Patterns of Authority in a Rajasthan Village. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. xii + 234 pp. Tables, diagrams, maps, appendixes, references, and index. $9.00.

D. B. Miller. From Hierarchy to Stratification: Changing Patterns of Social Inequality in a North Indian Village. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. xviii + 229 pp. Diagrams, illustrations, tables, maps, bibliography, and index. $9.75.     

Intellectual property and the professionals

Scientific lecturing and the industrial revolution

Alan Q. Morton and Jane A. Wess, Public and Private Science: The King George III Colletion, (Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with the Science Museum, 1993), pp. x + 710

Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. xxxiv + 453     

Regional patterns in the experiences and treatment of the sick poor, 1800–40: rights,obligations and duties in the rhetoric of paupers

Abstract

This article focuses on three individual paupers who wrote a series of letters about sickness to their home towns in Essex, Northamptonshire and Lancashire. While it would be wrong to claim that the rhetoric and strategies employed by the three writers are representative of all pauper writers, they are representative of those who wrote multiple letters to their parish of settlement and a detailed exposition of their writing can tell us much about sickness and its relief by communities in the last decades of the Old Poor Law. While sick paupers have largely escaped historiographical attention in a literature that has tended to focus on the elderly, widows, children and the unemployed able-bodied man, more detailed study of the life- and dependency-cycles of poor people is beginning to show that sickness was the pivotal experience of people on the margins and that sickness relief swallowed up a very sizeable chunk of poor law resources in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The strategies, thoughts and experiences of the sick poor are thus not just important in their own right, but also for what they tell us about the sentiment of communities towards the poor and the experiences of paupers in those communities.     

‘A COMFORTABLE LODGING AND ONE SHILLING AND FOURPENCE A DAY’: THE MATERIAL BENEFITS OF AN ALMSHOUSE PLACE

Abstract

This paper examines the material benefits commonly received by almshouse residents from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and attempts to assess how well off alms-people were compared with other poor people in the community. It considers not only the stipends or financial allowances received by many almspeople, but also other benefits provided, such as the accommodation, food, fuel and practical help. The evidence points to the experience of almshouse life varying a great deal, and suggests that the standard of living for many almspeople did not differ greatly from that of the poor generally. Many almspeople received poor relief; some were so poorly off that even the workhouse offered greater comfort and security. Yet, for most, there were distinct advantages to an almshouse place. Free accommodation and a regular income, no matter how small, gave them a measure of security; while their position as almshouse residents gave them status, respectability and the opportunity to benefit from further donations.     

The impact of Russian food security policy on the performance of the food system

Abstract

Food security has guided Russia’s food policy since 2010. The article examines the impact of food security policy on the food system. The Russian model of food security combines government intervention in the form of assistance for domestic production while simultaneously restricting market access. Food security does not appear to have a deleterious impact on the food system. We measure impact on four dimensions. Financial support for agriculture continues to increase in nominal rubles. In food production, the beef and dairy branches continue to lag, but increased grain production has made Russia a global leader in grain exports. Average per capita food consumption improved, although the poor consume much less, and the decline of the ruble affects the way Russians shop. The largest impact of food security has been on food trade. Food security policy has brought food to the forefront as an instrument of foreign policy. Food trade is politicized, witnessed by the food embargo against the West and food import bans against Turkey and Ukraine.     

A Witness to the Early Reception of Bonaventure’s Collationes in Hexaëmeron: Nicholas of Ockham’s Leccio at Oxford (c. 1286) — Introduction and Text

Abstract

This essay presents a brief introduction to and an edition of Nicholas of Ockham’s Leccio at Oxford, which begins with the biblical verse, O altitudo diviciarum sapiencie et sciencie Dei (Romans 11. 33). This leccio may have been Nicholas’s inaugural sermon as a Master of Theology at Oxford and therefore dates to 1286. Whatever the precise genre of Nicholas’s leccio, the text is also important because much of it copies entire sections of St Bonaventure’s (d. 1274) Collationes in Hexaëmeron. Nicholas’s text is therefore a witness to Oxford University practices of the late thirteenth-century and to the late thirteenth-century reception of Bonaventure.     

JOSEPH BRAMLEY OF EAST STOKE,NOTTINGHAMSHIRE: A LATE VICTIM OF CRUSADE AGAINST OUTDOOR RELIEF

Abstract

Joseph Bramley, of East Stoke in Nottinghamshire, fell on hard times during the closing stages of the ‘crusade against outdoor relief’. The Crusade roughly spanned the last three decades of the 19^th century. In those poor law unions where the Crusade was adopted, a new and unforgiving environment was established in which pauperism was to be managed rigorously, ruthlessly and heartlessly. Moreover, the Crusade seriously affected the lives of many people who did not live in Crusading unions. This new ideology inspired and influenced a wider geographic as can be seen through a reading of the statistical returns of the time. This article seeks to explore the workings of the late 19^th century poor law through the death of Joseph Bramley. He died a pauper after living the vast majority of his fifty-two years outside of the poor law. He was a pauper for only five days.     

Book reviews

Leonard Blussé. Strange company: Chinese settlers, mestizo women, and the Dutch in VOC Batavia . xiii, 302 pp. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1986. (Verhandelingen van het Kononklijk Instituut voor Taal‐, Land‐ en Volkenkunde, 122.) Guilders 35.

John S. Guy. Oriental trade ceramics in South‐East Asia, ninth to sixteenth centuries. With a catalogue of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai wares in Australian collections, xiv, 161 pp. Singapore, etc: Oxford University Press, 1986. (Oxford in Asia Studies in Ceramics.) £47.50.     

Short notices

AGERON, C.‐R. and MICHEL, M. (eds), L'Ere des décolonisations, Karthala, 1996, 516 pp., 170F., ISBN 2 86537 579 X

BRIAN, E. and DEMEULENAERE‐DOUYERE, C. (eds), Histoire et mémoire de l'Académie des sciences. Guide de Recherches, TEC & DOC Lavoisier, 1996, 449 pp., no price indicated, ISBN 2 7430 0148

CORRÉARD, M.‐H. (ed.), The Pocket Oxford‐Hachette French Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1996, 784 pp., £7.99, ISBN 0 19 864534 1

CORRÉARD, M.‐H. and O'NEILL, M. (eds), Oxford Starter Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1997, 400 pp., £6.99, ISBN 0 19 864527 9

DURAND, P., Poésies de Stéphane Mallarmé, Gallimard, 1998, 252 pp., 54F., ISBN 2 07 038939 1 (collection ‘Folio')

HAFEN, L. (ed.), French Fur Traders and Voyageurs in the American West, (Selected with an Introduction by Janet Lecompte) University of Nebraska Press, 1997, 333 pp., £13.95, ISBN 0 8032 7302 9

SOULEZ‐LARIVIÈRE,, D. Grand Soir pour la justice, Seuil, 1997, 175 pp., 110F., ISBN 2 02 032215 3

STEINBERG, P., Chroniques d'ailleurs, Ramsay, 1996, 190 pp., 92F., ISBN 2 84114 133 0     

On food and fossils: natural philosophy,mathematics, and biblical history in the works of John Wallis

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses how John Wallis (1616–1703), Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, used biblical evidence to support his ideas about natural philosophy and mathematics. Examples from Wallis’s long career include his calculation of the age of the Earth, his critique of Robert Hooke’s theory concerning the origin of fossils, and his debate with Edward Tyson about whether humans are naturally herbivorous or carnivorous. My analysis shows that Wallis’s use of biblical history did not necessarily commit him to an intellectually conservative position, but neither did it always encourage him to embrace new ideas. In fact, the truth is somewhere in the middle: I argue that biblical history provided a useful way for Wallis to negotiate between tradition and innovation, to determine which new ideas represented important advances and which were unsubstantiated follies.