Growing up in a Carolingian monastery: Magister Hildemar and his oblates

The monastic Rules of the early middle ages make it quite clear that the monasteries of this period were populated by a mixed community of adults and children. The Carolingian commentaries, and especially the so-called Hildemar commentary on the Rule of St Benedict, provide detailed information on the education and upbringing of the children who lived in the monasteries. We learn from Hildemar that they were subjected to constant supervision and diligent care. For this reason they were set apart from the adult monks. However, in spite of their separation, they were still full members of the community, who participated in all the activities of monastic life. Apparently Hildemar preferred to recruit new members for his community when they were very young. This was the result of a new development in monastic life: in the Carolingian period a growing number of monks were admitted to the priesthood. Hildemar considered the children who were raised in the monasteries to be eminently suitable for ordination. They were trained to be the future intellectual and moral elite of the community.     

‘NOW WALKS LIKE OTHERS’: A PRELIMINARY ENQUIRY INTO THE NORTHAMPTON CRIPPLED CHILDREN’S FUND

Abstract

Over recent years scholarly interest in the history of childhood, child health and disability has developed and intensified. However, there are still considerable areas which have not been subjected to extensive historical enquiry, such as the treatment and management of ‘crippled’ children in the UK during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A key opinion in this study is that of Borsay who has stated that the care of poor ‘crippled children’ and their families in Victorian England were ‘subjected to moral condemnation through a surveillance network funded and managed through the voluntary sector’ (). On-going research using a small case series based on material from Northampton Crippled Children’s Fund (NCCF, 1893–1928), Annual Reports dated from 1905 to 1925 and ledgers of surgical records, compared with the monthly contemporary Northampton Neuromuscular Clinic, will challenge this view as being insufficiently nuanced.     

Belonging to Bad: Ambiguity,Parramatta Girls and the Parramatta Girls Home

From 1887 to 1974, ‘corrupt’ adolescent girls were incarcerated in Parramatta Girls Home, a New South Wales state government facility charged with their ‘care and protection’. This paper examines the experiences of former inmates of Parramatta Girls Home (PGH) and explores their ongoing connections to the Home. Using the narratives of former inmates and submissions to public inquiries, the relationship that these women have with the Home and each other is explored. There is a strong thread of connection to place amongst former inmates, with their identity as ‘Parra girls’ shaping aspects of their post‐incarceration lives. For those women who were incarcerated at PGH, the connection to people and place focuses on the Home and is a powerful influence on their subsequent experiences of security and belonging.     

Ladies of Legend: The First Generation of American Women Attorneys1

In 1893, Chicago attorney Ellen Martin sent an invitation to her sisters in law to attend a first ever Congress of Women Lawyers, a convention to be held in conjunction with the Chicago World's Fair. Her announcement went out to “All women in the United States and elsewhere who have been admitted to the bar of a court of record or graduated from a law school.” Martin and Fredrika Perry, her law partner, had chronicled the rise of the woman lawyer in an 1887 article titled “Admission of Women to the Bar.” ² Thanks to their survey and the 1890 national census, Martin knew there were more than 200 female attorneys in the United States—what we may think of as the first generation of U.S. women lawyers. ³ Speculating that many of them would come to a meeting that coincided with the World's Fair, Martin made the argument that her sisters needed to form a professional association for the purpose of learning from each other and binding themselves more closely together.     

Growing up in the shadow of the Second World War: European perspectives

In this Special Issue, the authors explore the various ways in which the Second World War shaped children's experiences in the post-war period. They map the multifaceted interest or non-interest of states all over Europe for children in the years after the war, filter out groups of children who recall that the consequences of the Second World War significantly influenced their childhood, and investigate the childhood policies directed towards them, as well as their childhood experiences and the memories they foster about their childhood. In addition, they have included case studies from Western, Central and Eastern Europe with the aim of sparking a debate as to whether it was only a similar lifecycle that war children in early post-war Europe shared, or if they also had some life experiences in common.     

Releasing mother's burdens: child abandonment and retrieval in Madrid, 1890-1935

In nineteenth-century Europe, the foundling hospital grew beyond its traditional purpose of mitigating the shame of unwed mothers by also permitting widows, widowers, and poor married couples to abandon their children there temporarily. In the Foundling Hospital of Madrid (FHM), this new short-term abandonment could be completely anonymous due to the implementation of a wheel—a device on the outside wall of the institution that could be turned to place a child inside—which remained open until 1929. The use of survival-analysis techniques to disentangle the determinants of retrieval in a discrete framework reveals important differences in the situations of the women who abandoned their children at the FHM, partly depending on whether they accessed it through the Maternity Hospital after giving birth or they accessed it directly. The evidence suggests that those who abandoned their children through the Maternity Hospital retrieved them only when they had attained a certain degree of economic stability, whereas those who abandoned otherwise did so just as soon as the immediate condition prompting the abandonment had improved.     

Old and cared for: place of residence for elderly women in eighteenth-century Toulouse

Although they lacked the ideological and economic advantages of patriarchal authority, women in eighteenth-century France were no less likely than men to receive support in their old age from friends and family. Elderly women rarely lived on their own, and when they could not rely on their children for support, they found care in more distant kin and friends. This support was not derived from economic coercion but from a vague sense of moral duty. Informal networks of care sufficed for both the rich and the poor except in cases of extreme illness.     

Changelings: transformative perceptions of San José's street children, 1965-1981

Between 1965 and 1981, Costa Ricans changed their perceptions of which characteristics they thought defined appropriate urban childhoods. By 1981, the model of a modern, urban Costa Rican child was that of a child who attended school, did not work on the streets, and played in specifically designated places. Children who did not fit this mold began, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, to be viewed as dangerous to society and as evidencing social pathology. Whereas children who worked on the streets during the 1960s were considered part of the urban landscape, and their childhoods, though difficult, were not perceived as deviant, these same children, two decades later, were viewed as marginal and problematic. To trace this change, this article focuses on the changing perceptions about children on the streets that writers for and public contributors to La Nación, one of the preeminent Costa Rican newspapers, show during the sixteen-year period under analysis.     

The contested meanings of home for women caring for children with long-term care needs in Ontario,Canada

Home as a place of caring is theorized using the literature from geography, sociology, housing and feminist studies. To support our theorization, grounded theory is used to capture and interpret the experiences of women caring for children with long-term care needs in the home. Eleven semi-structured interviews conducted with women in Ontario, Canada uncovered differences in the way the women perceived their homes and highlighted their multiple and complex experiences. The findings revealed three key issues. First, women do not want their homes to be completely defined by long-term care activities as many other types of activities are situated in their homes. Second, long-term care activities and schedules are not segregated but become deeply embedded and enmeshed within the spatial and temporal practices and processes of family life. Third, the meanings, characteristics and ideal of ‘home’ portrayed in popular culture and the academic literature often clashed with what the women experienced on a daily basis. Analysis revealed the tensions surrounding ‘reconstructing spaces in the home’ and ‘the home as a private and public place’ which are indicative of the women's struggles with the disjuncture between the ideal and lived home. The women's experiences challenge us to consider new ways of theorizing the home, and the home when it is a place where long-term care is provided.     

Transnational family networks in the Somali diaspora in Egypt: women's roles and differentiated experiences

Diasporic Somalis are increasingly leading a transnational life in which family members are sustained through networks of relations, obligations and resources that are located in different nation-states. These networks and relations enable diasporic Somalis to seek safety for themselves and their relatives, minimize risks and maximize family resources. In this article, I examine three key dimensions of such a way of life, namely: migration; remittances; and transnational family care. I focus on the roles that women play in this family-based support system. For instance, women move and facilitate the movement of other family members; they remit to family members; and they provide care for children and sick relatives. But these transnational households are not free from tensions. Family members are placed in hierarchical relations shaped by age; parental authority; possession of western citizenship; financial resources; and bonds of familial reciprocity and gratitude. Women gain appreciation from relatives and a sense of self-respect for their new roles. Some of the women also make use of the family network to arrange for the care of their children and sick relatives, while they engage in transnational trading activities. However, young and single female relatives often sacrifice or delay their individual dreams because of their familial obligations. I conclude that transnationalism – as a way of organizing and sustaining livelihood, resources and relations of Somali families – is not always emancipating or marginalizing for Somali women. Rather the benefits and challenges of such a way of life for women are different, mixed and uneven.     

Medizinische Expertise – zionistische Visionen: Ärztinnen und Ärzte als Immigranten in Palästina / Israel

In National Socialist Germany Jewish academicians and professional staff were initially deprived of their rights and marginalised, later they were chased down and murdered. With regard to those, who were able to escape the National Socialist realm of power, one can speak of a forced migration of academicians that reached a dimension which until now was unknown. A greater number of different academic as well as non‐academic occupational groups have been examined in the past few years in connection with their influence on scientific as well as social developments within the context of immigration. In this context Palestine, later Israel, occupies a special position. There exists a deficiency in research for the occupational group of physicians with regard to overindividual studies, which will be the focus of this analysis. There is no question about their part not only in the establishment of medical care structures in Palestine as well as the design and diversification of the Israeli health care system, but also in the international significance of Israeli developments in medicine and life sciences in the second half of the twentieth century. This study will examine members of a Zionist grouping that had exhibited Zionist engagement already before their flight from Europe. The objective of this examination is to determine the substantial contribution of Zionist physicians in designing the medical structures in the country.     

Sukli: uneven exchanges of care work of children left behind in Filipino transnational families

ABSTRACT

This article explores the complicated affective realities of children in the Philippines who engage in the labour of caring from the place of being ‘left behind’. I explore how children demonstrate care for their migrant mothers through various schooling tasks, undergirded by emotional dissonance, and often not through an idealized notion of love or tenderness. These acts demonstrate children allocate care work in transnational families in spite of complex emotional underpinnings I argue that the emotionality in those acts may be anger or frustration but children left behind are making sense of their labour through a culturally localized concept called sukli that connotes uneven exchange in care work to maintain the operations of a transnational family. The paper adds to our understanding of children’s affective experiences of migration within an Asian context.     

The Qawa incident in 1968 and other cases of ‘spirit possession’: Religious Syncretism in Fiji

Abstract

Government medical officers investigating an outbreak among adolescent Indian schoolgirls in Fiji diagnosed mass hysteria and identified the trigger girl. Their school was temporarily closed and parents were advised to keep their daughters quietly at home. The Hindu parents were not satisfied with reassurances, since they believed that their children had been possessed by hostile Fijian spirits of a sacred pool on the edge of the school playground that had been damaged by an Indian bulldozer operator who later died. The girls were taken to Hindu healers and to a Muslim healer with Fijian‐derived powers. The local Fijian chief performed a Fijian ceremony of appeasement at the pool. A Hindu pujari prayed to the Hindu elephant god and, following Fijian ritual, poured yaqona (kava) into the pool and asked the spirits for forgiveness. Finally a Hindu pandit prayed to Hindu gods to exorcise the evil spirits, conducting the public Om Shanti ceremony. All the girls who attended the final ceremony recovered. The Indian and Fijian communities combined their beliefs and rituals to appease the spirits and, as far as they were concerned, to cause the girls to recover and to remove the troubles from the school and to prevent further troubles from occurring.     

Czechoslovak–Liechtenstein relations in the shadow of the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia,February 1948

When in 1945 the Czechoslovak authorities confiscated the estate of the Princes von und zu Liechtenstein, the two countries became involved in a dispute which had not been resolved until recently, at least on a diplomatic level. For several decades, the 1948 Communist coup d'état in Czechoslovakia dashed the hopes of the Liechtenstein family for a restitution of their confiscated assets. However, officials responsible internally admitted that the property confiscation had been questionable in the case of the Liechtenstein family. The court had not confirmed the confiscation until after the Communist coup. However, the Liechtenstein family did not renounce their claims, and after the collapse of the Communist regime in 1989 they brought them up again.     

VARYING EFFECT OF FERTILITY DETERMINANTS AMONG MIGRANT AND INDIGENOUS FEMALES IN THE TRANSITIONAL AGRO-ECOLOGICAL ZONE OF GHANA

The transitional agro‐ecological zone of Ghana, located between the richly endowed south and the impoverished north, has attracted seasonal and permanent farm migrants, mainly from northern Ghana, who now live side by side with the indigenous people. While migrants have higher numbers of Muslims, indigenous people are mainly Christians. Although the majority of the migrants live in migrant quarters with less favourable socio‐economic conditions, they are more successful farmers and therefore wealthier. The objectives are to examine the varying effect of fertility determinants among migrants and indigenous females. This paper uses data collected in 2002 among 194 females aged 15 to 49 years. Multiple regression models are used to assess fertility determinants. Results show that although migrant households were wealthier, migrant females were more traditional. They had more children living in foster care, and a lower proportion of them approved of men participating in household activities. In addition, they were less well educated, recorded higher infant mortality, gave birth earlier and used less contraception. Furthermore, while a female's migration status is statistically significant so far as non‐proximate determinants of fertility are concerned, the same variable is not significant with respect to proximate determinants. In addition, a married female migrant would on average have almost one more child compared to her indigenous counterpart, and migrant females who had experienced the loss of a child would on average have 2.5 more children compared to their indigenous counterparts. Finally, more affluent migrant females have 0.08 fewer children compared to their indigenous counterpart.     

Evaluating marital stability in late-Victorian Camberwell

What was the extent of marital breakdown and separation in a society where divorce was unlikely to be an option? This article investigates the status and longevity of the marriages of a group of parents whose children were admitted to the care of the poor law authorities in Camberwell in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It finds that spousal death or misfortune, rather than marital breakdown, were the primary reasons for a parent to send a child to the poor law authorities, and that most of the marriages of the parents in the sample remained intact. It also explores whether those who separated formed new co-residential relationships.     

Jean Charlot and Classical Hawaiian Culture

A small group of Japanese civilian internees from the South Pacific were confined in New Zealand during World War II, with some being subsequently transferred to Australia in readiness for planned civilian exchanges with Japan. Most from Tonga had Japanese wives and children who were also detained in New Zealand. With one exception, all Japanese who had local wives and families were forced to leave them behind in either Tonga or Fiji. These families proved an anomaly to the Fijian authorities who had to provide care for some, even non-Fijians. In defining who was supported in their former island homes and who was ultimately deported to Japan or allowed to return to the islands, racial attitudes of the various administrations emerge, reflecting an antipathy towards Asians not found in regard to other enemy aliens of the time. New Zealand played the role of honest broker but it, too, did not offer any permanent home to displaced Japanese civilians after the war ended, and supported the expulsion of them from the South Pacific.     

The persistence of family: a study of a nineteenth-century Canadian family and their correspondence

Beginning in the 1850s, the struggling farming family of Elijah Dunham (1810-1893) and Anna Maria Briggs (1813-1899) ceased to function as a single economic and social unit. The children left the family home to establish lives and families of their own in various parts of Canada and the United States. As the family dispersed, however; they continued to maintain contact through letters. In the letters, the family shared news, sought advice, received comfort, and, at times, vented their frustrations and exposed internal family tensions. The letters provided a means of requesting and extending financial assistance, especially as it came to maintaining the elderly parents back in Ontario. Although the family would never again inhabit the same geographic location, they continued to function as a kinship network even though separated by time and space.     

Ribbonmen and radicals: the cultivation of Irishness and the promotion of active citizenship in mid-Victorian Glasgow

A secular, at times radical, tradition of organising and representing Irishness in Scotland had been moulded before 1861. However, in that year, local branches of a new Dublin-centred organisation, the National Brotherhood of St Patrick (NBSP), appeared, offering a new sense of purpose. As this article will argue, the Brotherhood probably had at its core local Ribbonmen (some of them in all probability with “advanced nationalist” views in that post-1848 period) and they were now keen to engage in an “open” subscriber association less obviously prone to the accusations of conspiracy which their previous clandestine solidarity had generated. The NBSP and a later association, the Irish National Association of Scotland, provided opportunities for a more public leadership to emerge and gave Irish-Scots workers important associational experience. In the longer term, this associational activity represents a key stage in the development of a social radical discourse, later so characteristic of Irish Home Rule politics in Scotland.     

A vision of Ireland, 1967: John Montague’s aisling ghéar

More than fifty years after its publication as a broadsheet ballad, John Montague’s “The Rape of the Aisling” (1967) retains its satirical force. Whilst not the first instance in Irish writing to acknowledge sexual abuse of young people by priests (two years earlier John McGahern’s The Dark had been banned partly on the grounds of its rendering of clerical malfeasance), Montague’s rough ballad nonetheless places sexual abuse at the very heart of its assault on the Catholic Church’s baleful influence on a society on the cusp of dramatic social change. By adopting, and radically adapting, that most malleable of literary forms – the aisling or dream-vision poem – Montague seems to suggest that in mid-twentieth-century Ireland it is not the “Saxon occupier” who poses a risk to Republican ideals. Now, it is members of a home-grown patriarchy, the “access-all-areas men in black” who abuse and rape children and young people in their care, who seek to compromise the Proclamation’s promise to cherish “all of the children of the nation equally”.