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Material Setting and Reform Experience in English Institutions for Fallen Women, 1838-1910

Inside the ‘Homes of Mercy’

  • Book
  • © 2023

Overview

Authors:
  1. Susan Woodall

    1. The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

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  • Animates the case studies through images of spaces and objects, taking us closer to the inmates
  • Shows how women challenged institutional spaces, for example by defying wooden partitions in sleeping cubicles
  • Explores how literacy classes provided essential skills, and how texts and pastimes triggered a range of emotions

Part of the book series: Genders and Sexualities in History (GSX)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxiii
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  2. Introduction

    • Susan Woodall
    Pages 1-26

  3. Mission, Critique and Development

    • Susan Woodall
    Pages 27-64

  4. ‘A Chaste and Pleasing Elevation’: Making Moral Spaces

    • Susan Woodall
    Pages 65-105

  5. Crossing the Threshold

    • Susan Woodall
    Pages 107-146

  6. Too Bad for Anything Better?

    • Susan Woodall
    Pages 147-188

  7. Material Religion

    • Susan Woodall
    Pages 189-229

  8. ‘Short’ Homes, Afterlives and Material Continuities

    • Susan Woodall
    Pages 231-269

  9. Conclusion

    • Susan Woodall
    Pages 271-282

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 283-313
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Keywords

About this book

Tracing the history of four English case studies, this book explores how, from outward appearance to interior furnishings, the material worlds of reform institutions for ‘fallen’ women reflected their moral purpose and shaped the lived experience of their inmates. Variously known as asylums, refuges, magdalens, penitentiaries, Houses or Homes of Mercy, the goal of such institutions was the moral ‘rehabilitation’ of unmarried but sexually experienced ‘fallen’ women. Largely from the working-classes, such women – some of whom had been sex workers – were represented in contradictory terms. Morally tainted and a potential threat to respectable family life, they were also worthy of pity and in need of ‘saving’ from further sin. Fuelled by rising prostitution rates, from the early decades of the nineteenth century the number of moral reform institutions for ‘fallen’ women expanded across Britain and Ireland. Through a programme of laundry, sewing work and regular religious instruction, the period of institutionalisation and moral re-education of around two years was designed to bring about a change in behaviour, readying inmates for economic self-sufficiency and re-entry into society in respectable domestic service. To achieve their goal, institutional authorities deployed an array of ritual, material, religious and disciplinary tools, with mixed results.


Authors and Affiliations

  • The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    Susan Woodall

About the author

Susan Woodall is a Staff Tutor and Lecturer in History at the Open University, UK.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Material Setting and Reform Experience in English Institutions for Fallen Women, 1838-1910

  • Book Subtitle: Inside the ‘Homes of Mercy’

  • Authors: Susan Woodall

  • Series Title: Genders and Sexualities in History

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40571-6

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-40570-9Published: 26 September 2023

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-40573-0Due: 27 October 2023

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-40571-6Published: 25 September 2023

  • Series ISSN: 2730-9479

  • Series E-ISSN: 2730-9487

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXIII, 313

  • Number of Illustrations: 64 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: History, general, History of Britain and Ireland, Social History

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