Robert Humphreys
Published: 2005-11-29
Total Pages: 2850
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Nineteenth-century Britain offers the social and economic historian extreme examples of industrial expansion and wealth alongside wretched working conditions in the fast-growing manufacturing towns, unsanitary living conditions and the expectation that the lot of many would be pauperism and ill health from childhood to old age. At a time of European revolutions, the imperative for action was more than a question of the liberal conscience. In this collection, contemporary, real-life description is given in the context of competing views of philanthropists, manufacturers, politicians and social activists of nineteenth-century Britain. The workings of the Poor Law, the vigorous debate about the reliance on charitable, voluntary action as opposed to state provision, and ideas for reform including pensions, self-help societies, education, and public health measures foreshadow the reforms of the following century and tentative steps toward a welfare state.