Böcker av Alannah Tomkins

Nursing the English analyses the reputations and experiences of women and men who nursed the sick in the period before any calls for nursing reform. It begins in 1660, since the separation of sick nursing from childcare nursing can be dated to the final third of the seventeenth century, and to include the final epidemic of plague. It concludes in 1820, the year of Florence Nightingale's birth. This was coincidentally the same year which saw the first European publication calling for the founding of a Protestant nursing sisterhood, a movement which eventually propelled the drive for nurse training. Chapters focus on domestic nursing by women, the long history of nursing at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, the careers of women recruited to nurse in provincial infirmaries, and the lives of 'matrons' who nursed old soldiers at the Royal Hospital Chelsea. The final two chapters pull together the evidence for nursing by men, the conflicts with normative masculinity that lay in wait for male carers, and the plethora of intentional and ad hoc nursing by both women and men as a result of Britain's wars with France, 1793-1815. The purpose of this volume is to make a decisive statement in contradiction to the stereotype of the pre-reform nurse as ignorant, illiterate and drunk, to characterise her (and also him) as working well in context. Gender, status, and proximity to 'dirty work' are offered here as an essential framework for understanding the challenges of nursing before reform.

This is the first book to examine the history of the medical services provided by workhouses, both in Britain and its former colonies, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries workhouses were a key provider of medical care to the poor. Workhouse beds in Britain far outnumbered beds provided by charitable hospitals, and a high percentage of inmates wereelderly and infirm, needing not only accommodation and work but also medical relief. Historians of welfare, the English poor laws, and medicine have been aware of the importance of workhouse-based medicine, but the topic hasnot been studied in depth. This volume is the first to examine the history of the medical services provided by these institutions both in Britain and its former colonies, over the period covered by the Old and New Poor Laws. Written by prominent historians of medicine, welfare, and social policy, the essays document the experiences of those who received care or died in these houses, and form the critical foundation for a new historiography of workhouse medicine. Contributors: Jeremy Boulton, Virginia Crossman, Romola Davenport, Steven King, Angela Negrine, Susannah Ottaway, Rita Pemberton, Jonathan Reinarz, Alistair Ritch, Leonard Schwarz, Samantha Shave, Kevin Siena, Leonard Smith, Alannah Tomkins. Jonathan Reinarz is director of the History of Medicine Unit at the University of Birmingham, UK. He has published extensively on the history of English medical institutions, 1750-1950. Leonard Schwarz has recently retired as a reader in Urban History at the University of Birmingham, where he founded the Birmingham Eighteenth Century Centre.

Medical Misadventure considers the doctors whose careers were disrupted or entirely derailed by misfortune, ineptitude, or temptation to crime. Conflicts with colleagues, and threats to medical masculinity, gave rise to extraordinary stories of loss, distress, and occasional recovery. -- .

This comparative study of urban poverty is the first to chart the irregular pulse of poverty¿s encounters with officialdom. It exploits an unusual methodology to secure new perspectives from familiar sources. The highly localised characteristics of the welfare economy generated a peculiarly urban environment for the poor. Separate chapters examine the parameters of workhouse life when the preconceptions of contemporaries have been stripped away; the reach of institutional charities such as almshouses, schools and infirmaries; and the surprisingly broad clientele of urban pawnbrokers. Detailed analysis of the poor is achieved via meticulous matching of individuals who fell within the purview of two or more authorities. The result is a unique insight into the survival economics of urban poverty, arising not from a tidy network of welfare but from a loose assembly of options, where the impoverished positioned themselves repeatedly to fit official, philanthropic, or casual templates of the ¿deserving¿.This book will be essential reading for historians of English poverty and welfare, and eighteenth-century social and economic life.