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Chapter 3 - Casual Paupers

from Part II - The City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2021

Alistair Robinson
Affiliation:
Birkbeck, University of London
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Summary

London was a centre of vagrancy in the Victorian period. Its refuges, lodging-houses and workhouses ensured that large numbers of vagrants travelled to the capital, especially during the winter months when travelling on the open road could be difficult and dangerous. The first half of this chapter examines how these forms of relief structured the vagrants’ movement and resulted in what I call ‘metropolitan vagrancy’. This was a constrained form of movement, typically limited to the winter months, that was contoured by the resources that the vagrant poor were able to access and the mounting restrictions that were placed on them by the Poor Law. The second half examines an understudied depiction of homelessness that was, in part, a product of these restrictions: the queue outside the ‘casual’ or vagrant ward of the workhouse. This became an image that articulated anxieties about the difficult distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor, and also conveyed fears about the illiberality of the Poor Law and the potentially revolutionary response that it might provoke. This chapter examines works by Charles Dickens, Charles Kingsley and the painter Luke Fildes.

Type
Chapter
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Vagrancy in the Victorian Age
Representing the Wandering Poor in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
, pp. 91 - 129
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Casual Paupers
  • Alistair Robinson, Birkbeck, University of London
  • Book: Vagrancy in the Victorian Age
  • Online publication: 02 November 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009019392.006
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  • Casual Paupers
  • Alistair Robinson, Birkbeck, University of London
  • Book: Vagrancy in the Victorian Age
  • Online publication: 02 November 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009019392.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Casual Paupers
  • Alistair Robinson, Birkbeck, University of London
  • Book: Vagrancy in the Victorian Age
  • Online publication: 02 November 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009019392.006
Available formats
×