Navigating the Nineteenth-Century Institution

Book excerpt: This edited volume brings together a range of scholars working on both the New Poor Law and the history of asylums. At its core is the pauper voice and pauper experience which has, until recently, been underestimated. By using a wide variety of sources, this volume focuses on a number of themes, including the circulation of the poor and mad, blurred boundaries between the workhouse and asylum, pauper agency, dissent and defiance, the transfer of welfare ideas beyond the metropole, and personal or collective interpretations of the institution, either individually or by different groups. It locates the pauper voice through a range of lenses such as gender, illness, age, life-cycle, crisis, famine, vagrancy, dealings with local poor law officials, and mental health problems. In using this wide focus, it brings to the forefront of the discussion how the poor negotiated new legislation and a system that was fluid rather than fixed.