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This article deals with Pieter de Hooch's enigmatic painting Woman holding a basket with beans in a garden of 1661 (Kunstmuseum, Basel), and, more specifically, with the identity of the man depicted on the window shutter of the building in the foreground of the painting. The author argues that this portrait, which was hidden behind a layer of paint for a long time and only uncovered sometime between 1913-1927, represents the Emperor Charles V, whose portrait still decorates many buildings in the Netherlands. It is also argued that the building in the background of the painting can be typified as a 'hofje' or almshouse, and that its architecture resembles that of the Leiden Eva van Hoogeveenshofje, built by the architect Arent van 's-Gravesande in the 1650s. This suggests that De Hooch did not only paint locations in Delft and Amsterdam, but also in Leiden. The Dutch Republic's seventeenth-century 'hofjes' were renowned, eliciting praise from foreign visitors, not only because of the way the Dutch Calvinist elite took care of the needy but also because of their superb architecture that enhanced the beauty of the Republic's cities. Interestingly, De Hooch painted a servant girl in the garden of the almshouse, which at first may seem incongruous with an institution intended for the poor. However, as will be shown, residents of almshouses in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic were not as poor as is generally thought. Some were even quite well-off and did indeed keep servants. In fact, some contemporaries even likened the Dutch almshouses to palaces. The portrait of the emperor on the window shutter may thus have criticised this type of 'poor relief' and could well have been intended to bring out the resemblance between the 'hofje' and an emperor's palace. The word 'hofje ' after all means 'small court'. As such an overt criticism is unique in De Hooch's oeuvre, it may have been the artist himself who blotted the emperor's portrait out, thus changing the image into a straightforward genre scene. It was precisely this type of scene that was to bring De Hooch some success following his move to Amsterdam in 1660. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a microhistorical approach to investigate the "workhouse experience" of a single pauper in late nineteenth-century London. Its subject is Frank Burge, a remarkably prolific (though by no means unique) correspondent who wrote several lengthy letters of complaint from the Poplar workhouse to the Local Government Board (the central poor law authority) between 1884 and 1885. It places these letters, and the official responses they stimulated, alongside other public and official documents and uses a blended methodological approach to uncover a rich narrative of hardship, struggle, and personal agency. In doing so, it argues that, in contrast to more orthodox histories of welfare, it is only through this kind of painstaking and sensitive historical reconstruction that we truly can understand the nature, and the legacy, of poverty and the "workhouse experience" on the nineteenth-century poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As this article is less about charity per se than it is about the relationships between place and institutional policies of benevolence, my intention is to look at how practices and laws of public charity operated in a city whose economic and social geography was changing after 1700, when the streets were populated with vulnerable people driven into poverty and when the subjects of pauperism and poor laws "engaged the attention of the legislature with increasing frequency" (Purdy 287). This article looks at the modus operandi of private and public philanthropic societies in eighteenth-century London in order to observe how both religious- and secular-driven charitable societies were motivated by the same goal of social reform, whether prompted by the Enlightenment or religious values. While the notion of Pietas Londinensis indicated the existence of various operating charities and casual philanthropic acts in the London area, charitable institutions had not been set up until the eighteenth century. In late Stuart and Georgian Britain charitable, London was shaped both by economic forces and by the various cultural meanings people attached to its space, and this new paradigm transferred all matters concerning the poor from parochial obligation to civic responsibility. The article will focus on the mechanisms which made this transfer possible while considering acts of public charity and philanthropic societies that emerged in the long eighteenth century, from hospitals and infirmaries to almshouses and charity schools, with a view to observing the changes in English mentality as a result of charitable activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following poor law amendment in 1834, unions of parishes bought enormous quantities of goods to feed and clothe their paupers. As institutional poor relief grew dramatically during the nineteenth century, the role of poor law unions as customers in their local economies expanded. Suppliers were not subject to central government's rules, so the unions to whom they sold enjoyed some freedom in their contractual arrangements – in stark contrast to the restrictions surrounding almost every other aspect of unions' practices. This enabled a unique business atmosphere to develop. Poor law procurement was therefore embedded in social, as well as economic, geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Albert Bitzius (Jeremias Gotthelf), reformed parson in Lützelflüh, founded, together with colleagues, a local children's poorhouse in Sumiswald in 1835 that moved to a larger place in Trachselwald in 1839. Bitzius managed to convince the government in Berne that financial support of the Trachselwald poorhouse would be a good investment with regard to sustainability. He and his fellow members strove for economic independence and self-sufficiency, which implied that the pupils had to work hard and get used to parsimony and modesty as far as food, bedding, clothing and spare time were concerned. On this basis the school turned out to be more successful than competing endeavours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nineteenth-century Ireland saw the emergence of a campaign to have orphaned and abandoned children 'boarded out' from workhouses to live with families in return for payment. Despite growing anxiety about the unsuitability of workhouses for children, communities could show resistance to having these children, particularly those from urban workhouses, living in their own neighbourhood. Using the case of alleged abuse towards three children boarded out from Belfast workhouse to a family living in a remote rural townland, this paper explores the experience of, and attitudes towards, workhouse children boarded into rural communities. Using testimonies of neighbours and poor law officials at the resultant 1872 Poor Law inquiry, it examines the relationship between the children, their foster family, and the wider community and reveals the extent to which those families who took in workhouse children became subject to surveillance not just from welfare authorities but also from members of their community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The workhouse is the totemic symbol of our understandings about the harsh life faced by the poor of nineteenth-century England. Workhouse paupers provide the human embodiment of this symbol, characterized, according to well-established assumption, in the words of David Englander, as the victims rather than makers of history. This article argues that this assumption is, in fact, false. At the core of its research is the pauper perspective. This is used to understand the role played by gossip in pauper agency at Basford Union Workhouse. The basic premise here is that much can be learnt from social exchanges, including idle and aimless talk, about the formation of social relationships and the way in which the exercise of power was manifest. This study brings a rarely used perspective to the narrative surrounding paupers under the New Poor Law, a specific focus on workhouse gossip not previously attempted. Overall, the words and writings of Basford Union's pauper inmates, augmented by relevant testimony from people in the community, and from official sources, create a sense that Basford's indoor poor depended on each other. It was they, and not the Union's officers who 'powered' the workhouse machine, and this independency was forged through chatter. Inter-pauper conflict was not unusual and the fracture lines between officer and pauper, and between pauper and pauper, were intertwined. These paupers' participation in the gossip of the workhouse, allowed them, however, to negotiate their own circumstances in a way that has often been under-estimated in the historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Christian benevolent and missionary social reform attitude in the Morgan County poor farm in Illinois. Topics discussed include the poorhouse's role as health care provider for the poor and pregnant mothers and as a nursing home for the elderly, the poorhouse as a long-term residential facility, and the Illinois poor law of 1819.

As the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws noted in 1909, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and the Poor Law (Scotland) Act of 1845 sprang from rather different motives. Whereas the first Act aimed to restrict the provision of poor relief, the second was designed to enhance it. However, despite these aims, it is generally accepted that Scotland's Poor Law continued to relieve a smaller proportion of its population and to spend less money on them. This paper revisits the evidence on which these claims are based. Although the gap between the two Poor Laws was less than previously supposed, it was nevertheless substantial. The paper also explores the links between the size of Scottish parishes and welfare spending, and demonstrates that the main reasons for the persistence of the spending gap were related to different levels of investment in poorhouses and workhouses, and support for the elderly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the place of The Asylum or House of refuge for orphan and deserted girls amongst other mid eighteenth-century London charitable institutions. It was established in 1758 amid concerns about London's working population not keeping pace with the demands for labour and while campaigners were fighting for the moral wellbeing of the metropolis. The article highlights the role played by some female subscribers who, through a Visiting Ladies committee, provided practical advice to the Guardians for improvements to the running of the institution and the quality of the girls' training. Throughout the century, there was a demand for hand-spun yarn to supply the British textile industry. Poorer girls were taught spinning to meet this demand and so emphasise the perceived female characteristics of diligence and industry. However, needlework, not spinning, was the key component of the girls' daily routine and training at the Asylum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a b o ttom -u p perspective to the research on inclusion processes in p oor relief in general and elderly care and almshouses in specific at th e end o f the Ancien Régime. By means o f an extensive study o f the application letters sent to the Brussels Tw a a lf A po s te le n 'almshouse between 1750 and 1800, th e article examines how deservingness is anticipated by th e elderly applicants and how it is argued in th e ir discourses. In addition, th e article offers insight in to th e mental framework o f these elderly men surrounding coping strategies and channels th ro u g h which care should or could be obtained. By doing this, the article examines to which e x tent p ro cesses o f formalization during previous centuries influenced the mental framework o f the elderly d u rin g th e second half o f th e eighteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The two Greek Orthodox communities in Vienna, St George and Holy Trinity, administered several foundations and endowments from the 18th century onwards. This paper aims to reconstruct the communities' role as administrators for those foundations whose capital was invested in immovable property. The focus lies on three Stiftungshäuser and on nine mortgage-backed buildings located in today's first and second district of Vienna. The history of these buildings -- from the purchase to the benefactors' death, and from the establishment of the foundations to the buildings' sale -- will be reconstructed by taking into account Vienna's urban development and housing situation in the 19th-century. Furthermore, the benefactors' identities as homeowners and their relationship to the buildings and their residents will be examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 1866, journalist James Greenwood entered the Lambeth Workhouse disguised as a vagrant. Greenwood's account of his experience inspired a host of imitators, and inaugurated a mania for slum journalism. Critics have noted the voyeurism and the homoerotic subtext of Greenwood's ‘A Night in a Workhouse', but the impact of Victorian popular theatre on his narrative has received scant attention. This essay recuperates the links between workhouse and theatre: examining paupers' reception, criticism, and appropriation of popular forms of entertainment such as the pantomime and the music hall song, analysing the representation of the workhouse on the Victorian stage, and finally proposing the concept of the workhouse itself as a performance space. Greenwood provides a valuable source of information about the theatregoing habits of the houseless poor, the most marginalised demographic within audiences at the Victorian theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poor relief has received less attention from historians of southern Europe compared with northern Europe. This article seeks to challenge the frequent assumption that the strength of family ties in southern Europe mitigated the need for welfare provision. It provides new data for men and boys entering the Barcelona workhouse in the period 1780-1803, and compares these with data from an earlier study of women and girls who entered the same institution over the period 1762-1805. We establish the characteristics of those who sought relief in terms of age, place of origin, marital status, and occupation. We use the information on reasons for entry and exit to ascertain family circumstances. We show that there were significant differences between males and females in terms of why they entered and left, and length of stay, particularly among the elderly. The bulk of the population of the workhouse, however, was comprised of children and adolescents. For this group, entry into the workhouse represented not just a temporary solution to life cycle poverty and periodic unemployment, but also a longer-term strategy aimed at smoothing entry into the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sheremetev's Almshouse was the first private institution of social welfare in Russia which openly proclaimed that not all the poor deserved relief and exposed the applicants to inspections by the administrators. The study demonstrates that the recipients of the Almshouse relief did not belong to the lowest tiers of Moscow population but originated from its middle stratum. They were clerks and ranked officials, the military of middle ranks, and priests, or their families. Considerable number of them had additional sources of income before they obtained allowances from the Almshouse, only for a few of them the relief was crucial for survival. This paradox can be explained by examining the reports on the recipients written by an administrator of the Almshouse. The document reveals that the Almshouse supported those Moscow dwellers who were involved in the network of patronage or were connected by the relations of military or civil service with the administration of the Almshouse and with Moscow aristocracy. The support from the patrons served a better guarantee for the Almshouse's administration than the evidences of the neighbours or relatives. On the basis of the unearthed archival documents, the study brings out that the Almshouse was an institution deeply rooted in the Moscow patronage and protective network which connected people of middle stratum and the aristocracy. Selecting recipients of relief, the administration of the Almshouse was guided by the logic of privilege and assertion of status opposed to economic definitions of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1984, the Monroe County Parks Department in the Highland Park section of Rochester, New York, accidentally unearthed part of an unmarked cemetery while landscaping. The cemetery was in use from approximately 1826 to 1863 and was associated with the Monroe County Almshouse. Anthropological examination of dental and skeletal pathology revealed a high incidence of dental infection, known to occasionally be a causal agent of maxillary sinus infection. Therefore, maxillary sinus infections in this sample were studied to ascertain their relationship with dental infections, sex, and age at death. The maxillary sinuses of 99 skeletons were examined for evidence of infection. The presence, location, type and extent of dental infections in the posterior teeth were also recorded. Half the sample exhibited bone remodelling in the maxillary sinus (54 individuals). Dental infections were observed in 82 individuals. Forty-eight demonstrated signs of dental infection and maxillary sinusitis. Statistical analysis revealed that dental infection and maxillary sinus infection were not statistically related. Rather, a rhinogenic method of infection seems likely, which would appear related to the squalid air quality the 19th-century poor were exposed to in the almshouse and city tenements. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay responds to current scholarship as it explains the poor person's horror of dissection in the Victorian period as part of a long and complex process of deprivation. Working with the Anatomy Act (1832) and the New Poor Law (1834) as its backdrop, this essay examines three anxieties that were inseparable from the pauper's existence: the social embarrassment attendant on the loss of personal belongings, especially clothes; the humiliation forced upon workhouse inmates by the New Poor Law diet; and the existential foreboding triggered by the prospect of postmortem dissection. It culminates in a consideration of the early works of Charles Dickens, who found in fiction a set of strategies that allowed early Victorians simultaneously to register and to compensate for these anxieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poor farms were important rural institutions that cared for a wide range of poor and dependent people in the 19th and 20th centuries. Yet today they are little remembered. This manuscript discusses these poor farms, their function, operation, who they served, and how they relate to modern day social welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines attempts made by the Commons in the parliaments of April 1414 and 1512 to address the corruption, neglect and poor administrative standards deemed endemic in the nation's hospitals and almshouses, and to remedy a perceived lack of facilities for the care of sick paupers. Despite early (but short-lived) support from the crown, the first initiative failed, partly because of its association with heretical demands for the disestablishment of the English Church. Although the underlying reasons for institutional decline were often more complex than the reformers cared to suggest, their campaign did inspire a number of hospitals and their patrons to rectify abuses. At the same time, individuals and organisations throughout society invested in new foundations, generally under lay management, for the residential accommodation of the elderly and reputable poor. These measures sufficed until the arrival of endemic pox, along with mounting concerns about vagrancy and disorder, prompted another parliamentary petition for the investigation and reform of charitable institutions. Notable for its emphasis upon the sanitary imperative for removing diseased beggars from the streets, and thus eliminating infection, the bill of 1512 also attacked the proliferation of fraudulent indulgences, which raised money under false pretences for houses that were hospitals in name only. This undertaking also failed, almost certainly because the lords spiritual had, again, drawn the line at the prospect of lay intervention in overwhelmingly ecclesiastical foundations. Both bills are reproduced in full in an appendix, that of 1512 appearing in print for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London's workhouses bought vast quantities of provisions to feed and clothe their pauper populations. This article explores the business of supplying these institutions. Several large suppliers dominated the markets for goods required in bulk. These businesses also sold to other institutions such as hospitals, barracks and prisons. But poor law unions were also keen to buy from smaller local suppliers such as high-street retailers. This can be seen in the provisioning arrangements of a central London union, St Saviour Southwark, and a peripheral parish, St John Hampstead. Guardians wanted to keep rates low by buying from large dealers, but also liked to keep the poor rates circulating within the local economy if possible. There was not a significant geographical variation in pricing across London, but some suppliers charged different amounts to different unions. Possible reasons for these disparities include transport costs, sizes of orders, the quality of goods and anti-competitive behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Matrons were often powerful figures in the daily workings of benevolent asylums and other institutions of refuge. Responsible for hygiene, subsistence and the moral oversight of inmates, matrons occupied a strategic point in the relationship between institutions and wider society; they embodied notions of institutional care, refuge and reform. Matron Lucy Hicks was typical of this pattern. As matron of the Hyde Park Asylum for Infirm and Destitute Women in Sydney, Australia, from 1862 to 1886, she exercised enormous influence over the inmates and the daily operation of the institution. Archaeological and documentary evidence reveals important aspects of the life of Matron Hicks and her family, and her role as intermediary between governing authorities and pauper inmates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconsiders one aspect of Christopher Haigh's influential article 'Anticlericalism and the English Reformation'. His article argued that anticlericalism in early 16th-century England had been exaggerated, mislabelled and (in effect) invented as a scholarly construct. Dr Haigh proceeded to dismantle the foundations of anticlericalism in literature, in litigation, and in legislation. Evidence of anticlericalism in parliament, he maintained, was discontinuous, opportunistic and unrepresentative. This article suggests, however, that Haigh's claim makes insufficient allowance for the scarcity of the sources, underestimates the degree of continuity before and after 1529, and fails to take into account the inherently public character of parliamentary petitioning. It proposes, instead, that the challenging of the Church's wealth, the criticizing of clerical abuses, and the questioning of ecclesiastical jurisdiction recurred in early Tudor parliaments, and that the significance of such thwarted attempts at legislative reform crossed sessions and became cumulative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the exhibition "The House of the Soul" which featured the custom of the alms house with the help of a book "Inverted Worlds" and a documentary film.

This article examines the extent and nature of hospital and almshouse provision in early modern Scotland. It suggests that in order to understand early modern poor relief more fully, more attention needs to be paid to the variety of possible sources of welfare, not all necessarily associated with Poor Laws and compulsory or statutory provision. Hospital provision was an important component of welfare, and indeed was closely related to the wider apparatus of relief. The article argues in particular that the Protestant Reformation of 1560 was an important factor in improving both the provision of funding for hospitals, and the effectiveness of their administration. Although it initially posed a potential threat to the network of late-medieval hospitals and caused some disruption, the Reformation's creation of a network of local church courts, and in particular the kirk session, was crucial to the operation of both surviving pre-Reformation hospitals and the new foundations which emerged in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The article also assesses the limitations of the church's achievements, and notes that rural areas enjoyed much less secure hospital provision. Finally, the article offers a case-study of life in Glasgow hospitals, moving beyond the institutional mechanisms involved in hospital fundraising and administration to explore the experiences of inmates themselves. Future studies of early modern poverty will need to take much greater account of hospitals' role in the ecology of relief, and of the church's ongoing role in welfare provision, narratives of secularisation notwithstanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a recognition that Welsh poor law authorities were less than welcoming to many of the strictures of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834, historians have tended to downplay the importance of their resistance in the context of the wider anti-poor law 'movement' across England and Wales. Instead, a general consensus has arisen that Welsh boards of guardians tended to resist the New Poor Law on the grounds of financial expediency or provincial insularity, rather than because of any ideological or humanitarian hostility towards its provisions. This article presents compelling evidence that this consensus is quite wrong, and demonstrates in turn that, not only were Welsh guardians far more successful in their resistance to the new workhouse regime even the most recalcitrant English unions, but that that resistance was founded upon a long-standing and coherent antipathy to the punitive nature of the workhouse as an institution, rather than simply being founded on short-term financial or practical considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the ownership of the manuscript "The Myrour of Recluses" during the 15th century, focusing on connecting the man John Trus, named in the manuscript as the owner, with John Taylor, the clerk of Stamford, England. Other topics include the building of an almshouse in Stamford by William Browne, a merchant, John Taylor's work as warden of the Stamford almshouse, and methods used to connect John Trus with John Taylor including handwriting comparison and career comparison.

Over the past decade, a growing number of older Americans have sought reverse mortgages as a means of converting home equity to cash. Although this model of using one’s home as a resource may benefit seniors experiencing financial crises, recent advertisements have portrayed mortgage reversion as a free cash-generating machine, dispensing large sums of money to all senior homeowners with no strings attached. This media analysis provides an historical backdrop against which 10 recent advertisements are reviewed, finding that most ads fail to provide a complete picture of mortgage reversion, thus preying upon older adults, especially those living in poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aimed to alleviate pauperism in nineteenth-century England, the New Poor Law of 1834 resulted in the creation of hundreds of workhouses across the English landscape. Through the workhouses' continuing use and adaptation over nearly a 100 years, these buildings illustrate the complexities of attitudes towards, and the treatment of, the poor. In its use of the built form to understand the human experience, this research identifies the variable implementation of the policies of segregation, surveillance, and specialization to promote care and/or control. Ultimately, this multifaceted approach to the workhouse reveals how workhouse architecture reflected, and sometimes contradicted, contemporaneous attitudes towards poverty, structuring, yet not defining, a pauper's identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1617/1618, Cornelis van der Voort painted the regents of three institutions in Amsterdam. Nearly all of them have documents, either in their hands or within hand's reach. On the table are registers, charters, and other archival documents. This new way of depicting regents emphasized the efficiency and effectiveness of their handling the business of the charitable institutions. The new format became very popular: thirty-three portraits of regents' boards of charitable institutions in Amsterdam have been preserved from the 70 years between 1617 and 1686. The popularity of the genre decreases in Amsterdam during the last quarter of the seventeenth century and increases again some 50 years later. I argue that this was because of changing notions about accountability and governance. Van der Voort's format was followed in Haarlem, but there the documents on the regents' group portraits served as mere props, reflecting a culture of accountability that was different from that in Amsterdam in the first decades of the seventeenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The eighteenth century saw a development of a stratified system of institutions for the poor in different social classes in Norwegian cities. This paper analyses its foundation through a cooperation of private donations and city authorities' management and it argues that donations to private almshouses aimed at safeguarding the social position of special groups in the city, while the city's poorhouse was responsible for the paupers from the lower classes. While charity to please God and secure a place in the afterlife was an old motive, the wish to protect the social group, relatives or personal servants is a striking phenomenon at the end of the eighteenth century. Citizens with burgher rights by virtue of their craft or commerce defended their position against non-skilled workers. Private gifts to supplement the public poorhouses helped securing this aim. The paper shows that donations to institutions in Trondheim fall into a general picture of social stratification, not only in society at large, but among the poorer parts of the population as well. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]