Medicine and the Workhouse

• Introduction - Jonathan Reinarz and Leonard SchwarzContagion, Exclusion, and the Unique Medical World of the Eighteenth-Century Workhouse: London Infirmaries in Their Widest Relief - Kevin SienaThe Elderly in the Eighteenth-Century Workhouse - Susannah Ottoway"These ANTE-CHAMBERS OF THE GRAVE"? Mortality, Medicine, and the Workhouse in Georgian London, 1725-1824 - Jeremy Boulton"These ANTE-CHAMBERS OF THE GRAVE"? Mortality, Medicine, and the Workhouse in Georgian London, 1725-1824 - Romola Davenport"These ANTE-CHAMBERS OF THE GRAVE"? Mortality, Medicine, and the Workhouse in Georgian London, 1725-1824 - Leonard SchwarzWorkhouse Medical Care from Working-Class Autobiographies, 1750-1834 - Alannah Tomkins"A Sad Spectacle of Hopeless Mental Degradation": The Management of the Insane in West Midlands Workhouses, 1815-60 - Leonard SmithWorkhouse Medicine in Ireland: A Preliminary Analysis, 1850-1914 - Virginia CrossmanExploring Medical Care in the Nineteenth-Century Provincial Workhouse: A View from Birmingham - Jonathan ReinarzExploring Medical Care in the Nineteenth-Century Provincial Workhouse: A View from Birmingham - Alistair Ritch"Immediate Death or a Life of Torture Are the Consequences of the System": The Bridgwater Union Scandal and Policy Change - Samantha ShavePractitioners and Paupers: Medicine at the Leicester Union Workhouse, 1867-1905 - Angela NegrineWorkhouse Medicine in the British Caribbean, 1834-38 - Rita PembertonPoverty, Medicine, and the Workhouse in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: An Afterword - K80169 KingSelected BibliographyList of ContributorsIndex

This long overdue volume of essays moves beyond accounts of exclusively metropolitan experiences, drawing attention to the diverse experiences and policies that shaped medical relief at the regional or local levels and showing how, in words of one contributor, the workhouses were 'reluctant saviors at best.' The volume offers a coherent, up-to-date edited collection that will inform further research and appeal to a large audience of medical and welfare historians.