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    Housing the ‘decayed members’ of the middle classes: social class and St Scholastica’s Retreat, 1861-1901

    Mangion, Carmen M. (2014) Housing the ‘decayed members’ of the middle classes: social class and St Scholastica’s Retreat, 1861-1901. Continuity and Change 29 (3), pp. 373-398. ISSN 0268-4160.

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    Abstract

    This study of St Scholastica’s Retreat offers an opportunity to examine a charity for the middle classes and the horizontal relationship between middle-class benefactors and recipients that did not appear to stigmatise middle-class recipients of charity. Middle-class inhabitants accessed a mix of resources, from personal resources, kinship relationships, friendship and charitable networks, as part of a ‘mixed economy of welfare’ so often discussed by welfare historians in Britain. Their ‘choices’ were limited but their personal networks enabled them to maintain their middle-class identities. This research not also demonstrates the flexibility of almshouse accommodation but also the meanings inherent in the domestic space that emphasised middle-class respectability.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): almshouse, middle-class, poverty, Catholic, philanthropy
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies
    Depositing User: Carmen Mangion
    Date Deposited: 11 Dec 2014 14:21
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:13
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/10843

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