This book investigates the treatment of children in the workhouses in the period 1780-1871. It examines the way in which children were treated, educated and trained, by whom they were cared for and the outcome of their treatment.

First published in 1981. Professor Crowther traces the history of the workhouse system from the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 to the Local Government Act of 1929. At their outset the large residential institutions were seen by the Poor Law Commissioners as a cure for nearly all social ills. In fact these formidable, impersonal, prison-like buildings – housing all paupers under one roof – became institutionalised: places where routine came to be an end in itself. In the early twentieth century some of the workhouses became hospitals or homes for the old or handicapped but many continued to form a residual service for those who needed long-term care. Crowther pays attention not only to the administrators but also to the inmates and their daily life. She illustrates that the workhouse system was not simply a nineteenth-century phenomenon but a forerunner of many of today’s social institutions.

This four-volume encyclopedia covers a wide range of themes and topics, including: Social constructions of childhood, Children's rights, Politics/representations/geographies, Child-specific research methods, Histories of childhood/Transnational childhoods, Sociology/anthropology of childhood theories and Theorists key concepts. This interdisciplinary encyclopedia will be of interest to students and researchers in: Childhood studies, Sociology/Anthropology, Psychology/Education, Social Welfare, Cultural studies/Gender studies/Disabilty studies.

Was there a notion of childhood for the labouring classes, and was it distinctive from that of the elite? Examining pauper childhood, family life and societal reform, Levene asks whether new models of childhood in the eighteenth century affected the treatment of the young poor, and reveals how they and their families were helped through hard times.

Childhood Transformed provides a pioneering study of the remarkable shift in the nature of working-class childhood in the nineteenth century from lives dominated by work to lives centered around school. The author argues that this change was accompanied by substantial improvements for many in the home environment, in health and nutrition, and in leisure opportunities. The book breaks new ground in providing a wide-ranging survey of different aspects of childhood in the Victorian period, the early chapters examining life at work in agriculture and industry, in the home and elsewhere, while the later chapters discuss the coming of compulsory education, together with changes in the home and in leisure activities. A separate section of the book is devoted to the treatment of deprived children, those in and out of the workhouse, on the streets, and also in prison, industrial schools and reformatories. Offering a fresh and more focused approach to the history of working-class children, this book should be of interest to all lecturers and students of nineteenth-century social history.