Ordinary People: In and Out of Poverty in the Gilded Age

by Wagner,David

• ISBN13: 9781594514609
• ISBN10: 1594514607
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-11-30
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

David Wagner explores the lives of poor people during the three decades after the Civil War, using a unique treasure of biographies of people who were (at one point in time) inmates in a large almshouse, combined with genealogical and other official records to follow their later lives. Ordinary Peopledevelops a more fluid picture of 'œpoverty' as people's lives change over the course of time. The voices of the inmates of the infamous Massachusetts State Almshouse at Tewksbury resonate in remarkable ways today, helping us to understand that many individuals living in poverty make inventive, bold moves to escape it.

Table of Contents

List of Boxes and Tables	p. iv
Acknowledgments	p. v
Photo Section	p. vii
Ordinary People	p. 1
The Context: The Massachusetts State Almshouse at Tewksbury, Immigration, and Industrialization	p. 19
Mobility: Geographic and Economic	p. 47
The "Uprooted": Immigrants and Migrants	p. 51
Falling Down: Yet a Surprising Resilience	p. 73
The "Crisis" in the Family	p. 97
"Criminal Intimacies": Out-of-Wedlock Births	p. 101
Family Conflict and Desertion	p. 127
Age and Poverty: Children and the Elderly	p. 149
Being "Put Out": Children in and out of the Almshouse	p. 153
"We Can Do Nothing for Him": The Fate of the Elderly	p. 173
From History's Shadows: Partial Views of the Poor	p. 189
Statistical Profile of Tewksbury Inmates, 1865-1895	p. 203
Notes	p. 211
Bibliography	p. 241
Index	p. 247
About the Author	p. 252
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