{"product_id":"imagined-orphans-poor-families-child-welfare-and-contested-citizenship-in-london-rutgers-series-in-childhood-studies-9780813537221","title":"Imagined Orphans Poor Families Child Welfare and","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith his dirty, tattered clothes and hollowed-out face, Oliver Twist is the enduring symbol of the young indigent spilling out of orphanages and haunting the streets of late-nineteenth-century London. Although poor children were often portrayed as real-life Oliver Twists—either orphaned or abandoned by unworthy parents—they in fact frequently maintained contact and were eventually reunited with their families.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eImagined Orphans\u003c\/i\u003e, Lydia Murdoch focuses on this discrepancy between the representation and the reality of children’s experiences within welfare institutions—a discrepancy that she argues stems from conflicts over middle- and working-class notions of citizenship that arose in the 1870s and persisted until the First World War. Reformers’ efforts to depict poor children as either orphaned or endangered by abusive or “no-good” parents fed upon the poor’s increasing exclusion from the Victorian social body. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLydia Murdoch's engaging study complements scholarship on childcare and offers the first book-length scholarly treatment of institutional care provided by agencies such as Barnardo's. -- Susan L. Tananbaum * Department of History, Bowdoin College *\u003cbr\u003eMurdoch explores the ways in which melodramatic incitement of pity for allegedly orphaned children worked to demonize the poor in Victorian England. This insight flies in the face of much current scholarship. Written with refreshing clarity, this historical study will illuminate public policy discussions of child welfare and poverty even in the present day. -- Susan Thorne * Associate Professor of History, Duke University *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eImagined Oftens\u003c\/i\u003e makes many useful connections among the developing starnds of Victorian social history. ... Murdoch's work could mark an important milestone in the history of official willingness to remove poor children from parents depicted as incapable of raising them properly, a policy that has been detected as early as the seventeenth century. -- John D. Ramsbottom * Journal of Modern History *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A little waif of London, rescued from the streets\": melodrama and popular representations of poor children\u003cbr\u003e From barrack schools to family cottages: creating domestic space and civic identity for poor children\u003cbr\u003e The parents of \"nobody's children\": family backgrounds and the causes of poverty\u003cbr\u003e \"That most delicate of all questions in an Englishman's mind\": the rights of parents and their continued contact with institutionalized children\u003cbr\u003e Training \"Street Arabs\" into British citizens: making artisans and members of empire\u003cbr\u003e \"Their charge and ours\": changing notions of child welfare and citizenship\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Rutgers University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51038412996951,"sku":"9780813537221","price":48.6,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780813537221.jpg?v=1750940258","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/imagined-orphans-poor-families-child-welfare-and-contested-citizenship-in-london-rutgers-series-in-childhood-studies-9780813537221","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}