Nottingham Trent University, in partnership with the AHRC project ‘A Century of Struggle: Pauperism and the New Poor Law in Wales, 1834-1930’, and The National Archives in the seventh annual online seminar series: ‘Workhouse Lives’.
In the seventh online series of workhouse lives seminars we focus on the concept, practice, utility and rhetoricisation of kinship amongst the poor and officials in the nineteenth century poor laws of England, Wales Ireland and Scotland. Historians largely neglect the sense that workhouse inmates left relatives behind and might go back to them when they then left the workhouse gate. In the same way, those on outdoor relief were likely to have relatives behind the workhouse walls. And many of the staff who people the workhouse estate were themselves local or became local through long residence, building up many kinship ties. How did the existence of kinship or kinship-like ties affect the way the poor law was navigated and experiences? How did kinship influence the running of workhouses? How did knowledge and resistance wash around kinship networks? Did officials and guardians worry about such networks? These and many other questions add up to the peopling of the workhouse and its locality, and we consider the theme largely for the first time here.
Seminars take place via Teams at 17:00 on the dates indicated. Papers generally last 45 minutes with time for questions thereafter. Please do sign up for some or all of the seminars, and a Teams link will be sent to you on the day before the paper is due to take place.
If you are interested in registering to other sessions of the Workhouse Lives series you can do so by clicking HERE.
The link to join the event will be sent to your email the day before the event. If you have any problems with the link please contact steven.king@ntu.ac.uk
