The Peoples of Philadelphia

by Davis, Allen F.; Haller, Mark H.

• ISBN13: 9780812216707
• ISBN10: 0812216709
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

Although much has been written about elite Philadelphians, only in recent decades have historians paid attention to the Jews and working-class blacks, the immigrant Irish, Italians, and Poles who settled in the city and gave such sections as Moyamensing, Southwark, South Philadelphia, and Kensington their vitality. In this classic of social and ethnic history, the authors draw on census schedules, court records, city directories, and tax records as well as newspaper files and other sources to give a picture of the ways in which these less-privileged groups of Philadelphians lived. What emerges is a picture of Philadelphia radically different from the conventional portrait of a staid old city.

Author Biography

Allen F. Davis has published many books, including The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society and Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890-1914. Mark Haller is the author of Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought. Both are professors of history at Temple University.

Table of Contents

Preface to the 1998 Edition	ix
Introduction	3	(10)
Allen F. Davis
1. Poverty, Fear, and Continuity: An Analysis of the Poor in Late Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia	13	(24)
John K. Alexander
2. Residential Mobility Within the Nineteenth-Century City	37	(16)
Stuart M. Blumin
3. Urbanization as a Cause of Violence: Philadelphia as a Test Case	53	(18)
Michael Feldberg
4. Fire Companies and Gangs in Southwark: The 1840s	71	(18)
Bruce Laurie
5. Crime Patterns in Philadelphia, 1840-70	89	(22)
David R. Johnson
6. Free Blacks in Antebellum Philadelphia	111	(24)
Theodore Hershberg
7. The Philadelphia Irish: Persistent Presence	135	(20)
Dennis J. Clark
8. "A Peaceful City": Public Order in Philadelphia from Consolidation Through the Civil War	155	(20)
Russell F. Weigley
9. Housing the Poor in the City of Homes: Philadelphia at the Turn of the Century	175	(28)
John F. Sutherland
10. The Immigrant and the City: Poles, Italians, and Jews in Philadelphia, 1870-1920	203	(28)
Caroline Golab
11. Philadelphia's Jewish Neighborhoods	231	(24)
Maxwell Whiteman
12. Philadelphia's South Italians in the 1920s	255	(22)
Richard A. Varbero
13. Recurring Themes	277	(14)
Mark H. Haller
Suggested Readings	291	(4)
Index	295