The boundary between definitions of ill health and disability becomes apparent in this chapter on children’s experiences in Glasgow in the Victorian period. Early efforts to establish a children’s hospital were resisted on purely financial grounds, as they were seen as a threat to the established institutions by taking away vital income. After Glasgow’s Hospital for Sick Children finally opened, it soon became apparent that many children who had been treated needed a longer time to recover but too-early discharge to poor housing conditions and diet could result in their recovery being arrested and reversed. As a result, a number of convalescent homes in the countryside were established to assist with children’s recovery and formal agreements were reached between the Royal Hospital for Sick Children and homes such as Ravenscraig and the East Park Home. This chapter traces continuity of the Victorian ethos when the children’s hospital and charity-run convalescent homes evolved in the aftermath of the Great War.

This chapter focuses on the over-arching methodology of a research project, which guides the work that is conducted in a museum, library or archive. Using examples of contemporary historical scholarship, the choices researchers make about their primary sources, methods of analysis and theoretical frameworks are unpacked case by case. This chapter also deals with the difficulties of working on material culture that no longer survives, a challenge common to historical studies.

The debates surrounding what constitutes ‘disability’ and what are considered appropriate reactions to disabling conditions are highlighted in this examination of the historical background to psychiatric, eugenic and wider societal responses to inebriation. The author explains how alcohol addiction became seen as what she terms a ‘borderland’ disability, a condition that should be recognised as both a cause and a symptom of disability, rather than an illness or a life-style choice. Furthermore, inebriation needs to be evaluated through the longer-term consequences of constitutional weakness or feeble-mindedness that might be detected in the offspring of inebriants. Discourses and policies that connected the concepts of alcoholism and degeneration were prominent sites at which disability was constructed in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The chapter emphasises the roles that gender and social class played in eliciting responses that demonstrated either compassion or prejudice towards the debilitating effects of alcohol addiction.

This chapter examines the concept and the function of theory. I argue that social theory is ‘good theory’, i.e. worth your while, only if it adds something to the perception of the social world that cannot be perceived otherwise: theory in this sense must be somewhat mysterious (and mystifying). If it is not, it is just the banal, wordy, laborious and often pompous restatement of the obvious.

‘Disability’ is a wide and multifaceted concept and Victorian elites drew heavily on a whole range of ways of classifying not only sections within society but also behaviours that they considered to be socially and morally deviant. Notably, through the application of Poor Laws in the United Kingdom and beyond, what Victorians were guided by their perceptions, on the one hand, of able-bodiedness and the ability to perform productive and self-supporting work and, on the other hand, of people who were disabled from working through a range of physical, sensory and mental impairments. They increasingly tried to differentiate between those whom they considered to be worthy of aid and those they deemed to be unworthy of assistance and support, through being unable or unwilling to find employment. The chapters presented in this collection represent some of the ways in which support was offered or withheld and how those deemed to be worthy of such support were identified.

The Jewish community was fundamentally a male society, patriarchal in nature, where every facet of life manifested male superiority and control. Nevertheless, the women of this community played an important and often central role in every group and social system. The change in the status of women may be viewed as the result of an overall social change in a Jewish society that was struggling for survival. From the tenth century and until their expulsion towards the end of the medieval period, the Jews of Europe lived mainly in communal settings in Christian towns. Throughout the eleventh century, the Jews were the only people living in northern Europe who did not accept Christianity. Christianity could not remain indifferent to Judaism and the Christians could not ignore the Jews dwelling in their midst. Both groups competed for the title of 'heir to the true religion'.

It was during the nineteenth century that specialist hospitals emerged, but medical specialisation was often ridiculed by general clinicians who took pride in having training and expertise that they felt equipped them to direct their skills at any kind of medical challenge. This chapter outlines the arguments put forward by those opposed to specialisation, tracing the evolution of the Royal Ear Hospital in London. It is a journey during which the scientific knowledge of the ear, and how to restore or improve its utility, made significant strides, but the hospital’s early battles evolved around establishing the medical credibility of its aural specialists. The chapter shows how specialist hospitals came to define the parameters of deafness as a disability or defect requiring a cure, how this perception has influenced wider societal views on the necessity of medical interventions ever since and how this is in stark contrast to counter views of deafness as a distinct cultural or linguistic identity.

John Howard, the prison reformer, was the first person to be consistently described as a ‘philanthropist’. He visited prisons throughout Britain and Europe, counting the steps down to ‘dungeons’, lambasting the sins of gaolers. In doing so he put his own life constantly at risk as gaol fever was endemic. The chapter centres on a proposal in 1786 to collect funds for a statue to Howard, even though the proposers knew that Howard would disapprove. From this point on philanthropy became a public, not simply a private, virtue. The aristocracy, William Pitt the prime minister, William Wilberforce and many other famous names contributed to the appeal for funds. Those raising money congratulated themselves on their own philanthropy: it was an expression of their own good feelings and above that of the nation. Howard put a stop to the proposal, but on his death in 1790 it was revived and in 1796 his statue, the first in the body of St Paul’s Cathedral, was unveiled. Howard was described as ‘the philanthropist’, his ‘god-like’ life celebrated. For a century future philanthropists were measured against Howard and found wanting. He himself counted the miles he travelled, not the considerable amount of money he gave.

The ‘Excursus on The Stranger’ is one of the most influential sections of Georg Simmel’s Sociology (1908) and is examined in this chapter. Simmel describes with ‘the stranger’ a person who has come from elsewhere but stays, and is thereby close and remote at the same time, detached and attached: the stranger belongs and has a function but could probably leave any moment if s/he chose to.

In this period philanthropy stood highest in esteem. The Times moderated its stance. Newspapers praised Britain as a philanthropic nation. People wrote of their government as philanthropic in its foreign policy. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert devoted time and resources to much-praised philanthropy. But there were worries. The Social Science Association, with which philanthropy was at first closely aligned, distanced itself from it and became the voice for social reform. The Charity Organisation Society promoted scientific charity; its secretary, C. S. Loch, did not disguise his mistrust of philanthropy. Criticism was still unrelenting: ‘practical philanthropy’ was admired, but too much of it, according to the critics, was ‘spurious’ or ‘pseudo’. In 5 per cent philanthropy there was an attempt to help resolve housing problems but it came to be seen as a failure. Philanthropy was associated with the multiplicity of voluntary organisations to help the needy but they had spawned a body of ‘professional philanthropists’, who ran these organisations and were subjected to ridicule and dislike. Effeminacy became even more linked to philanthropy. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, three books by the era’s most eminent novelists had philanthropy directly in their sights: Middlemarch, The Moonstone and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

This chapter focuses on the first legal case to pursue recognition of a same-sex marriage. The case was launched by Irish citizens Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan, who were married in British Columbia after the legislation was implemented there. This section details how this case moved from a request to the Revenue Commissioners to be assessed as a married couple to a High Court case.