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| Titre : | Poverty and power : the Irish Poor Law in a north Antrim town, 1861-1921 (2011) |
| Auteurs : | Olwen PURDUE, Auteur |
| Type de document : | Article |
| Dans : | Irish Historical Studies (vol. 37 n 148 2011) |
| Article en page(s) : | p. 567-583 |
| Langues: | Anglais |
| Mots-clés : | |
| Résumé : | The workhouse was a fundamental element of the Irish Poor Law, passed in 1838 and based closely on the New English Poor Law of 1834. Under this system, only the truly destitute would receive relief, and then only through admission to the workhouses that were to be built in the principal town of each union. They were constructed to accommodate hundreds of paupers, the maximum capacity of each depending on the size of the union's population, and were design to enforce strict segregation of various classes of pauper while also facilitating supervision by workhouse officials. Conditions were to be austere there. Even the reputation of the workhouse acted as a deterrent: for many, entry into the workhouse represented the ultimate degradation, associated as it was with the destitute and degenerate, the indigent and the immoral. Not surprisingly, then, the workhouse was effectively demonized not only by contemporary society but up to the present in local memory and in popular historiography. In order to explore this idea further, this article takes as a case study the workhouse in the north Antrim town of Ballymoney |
| Pays de publication : | Irlande |
| Lieu de publication : | Dublin |
| Mention de responsabilité : | Olwen Purdue |
| Fonds : | Médiathèque |
