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Zusatztext Jessica Sheetz-Nguyen’s examination of perhaps the most well-known of these institutions is a welcome addition to a growing body of work on unwed mothers . . . Sheetz-Nguyen offers a worthwhile analysis of mothers’ petitions to the Foundling Hospital which provides insights into society’s somewhat ambivalent attitudes towards unwed maternity, and the reformability of youth, working-class courtship and sexual practices, and the employability and character of female domestic servants. Informationen zum Autor Jessica Sheetz-Nguyen is Associate Professor of History at the University of Central Oklahoma, US. She teaches Women's History from a European and international perspective. Vorwort Sex, gender, charity and class in Victorian Britain. Zusammenfassung This volume seeks to address the questions of poverty, charity, and public welfare, taking the nineteenth-century London Foundling Hospital as its focus. It delineates the social rules that constructed the gendered world of the Victorian age, and uses ‘respectability' as a factor for analysis: the women who successfully petitioned the Foundling Hospital for admission of their infants were not East End prostitutes, but rather unmarried women, often domestic servants, determined to maintain social respectability. The administrators of the Foundling Hospital reviewed over two hundred petitions annually; deliberated on about one hundred cases; and accepted not more than 25 per cent of all cases. Using primary material from the Foundling Hospital's extensive archives, this study moves methodically from the broad social and geographical context of London and the Foundling Hospital itself, to the micro-historical case data of individual mothers and infants. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction / 1. 'There Can Be No Reason For Giving to Vice Privileges Which We Deny Misfortune': Legal Constraints for Victorian Mothers / 2. 'Ornament of the Metropolis': Victorian Representation and Reality / 3. Circumventing Social Geography: The Unwed Mother's Search for Respectability / 4. 'When First Acquainted with Father I Was': Foundling Hospital Mothers and Fathers / 5. 'Is My Own Name Really Required, For On That Everything Depends' / 6. 'If You Will Kindly Take Her from Me, You Will Save My Character': Framing Respectability / 7. 'Dear Mr Brownlow Will You Please Tell Me' / Conclusion / Appendices / Bibliography / Index. ...
