The Pauper Body in England and Wales 1750 to 1914 Histories of Nobody

The Pauper Body in England and Wales 1750 to 1914 is based on a unique collection of 8 million words of pauper letters. It features fascinating body biographies of ordinary people living in deepest poverty who used their voices to secure welfare support. The Old and New Poor Law authorities often tried, and frequently failed, to label the poorest of people 'Nobodies'.

The bodies of paupers were branded as the contaminated body; those who experienced regular sexual abuse; and people medically certified as mentally ill. Paupers in writing resisted being characterised as a nameless broken body, campaigning for official recognition. In three parts, Elizabeth T. Hurren reveals a surprising range of relatable human stories and explores how pauper bodies retain trauma, weathered by poverty and stress. The chapters contain a mosaic of welfare lessons that endure, despite their historical distance. A striking feature of the millions of body biographies are their familiar physical symptoms and psychological predicaments. Hurren also traces the historic migration of unwanted immigrants who travelled thousands of nautical miles to try to re-create community and belonging.

Elizabeth T. Hurren, Chair in Modern History, University of Leicester

Elizabeth T. Hurren, is an international expert on histories of poverty and welfare. Over the last 25 years, she has rediscovered millions of stories about ordinary people's histories of the body, from the early modern period to the present-day. Hurren has published both chronologically and thematically from Leonardo da Vinci to the Human Genome. Her pioneering book, Hidden Histories of the Dead (2021), featured hidden histories of the dead that underpinned the expansion of research in the medical sciences from 1930 to 2000. In her work, Hurren has given voice to millions of 'nobodies' determined to be 'somebodies'.

Part One: Constructing the Broken1. Broken Voices? Re-Imagining Paupers Letters2. Re-Performing the Corpus, Re-Writing the Pauper BodyPart Two: Becoming Broken3. The Contaminated Body - Diseased and Objectionable Bodies4. The Abused Body - Surviving Assault, Rape and Punishment5. The Mad Body - Confused and Deranged by Life's DramasPart Three: Being Broken6. The Disabled Body - Permanent and Transient Impairment7. The Immigrant Body - Ethnicity, Discrimination & Xenophobia8. The Scarred Body - Bodies Keeping Score?Part Four: New Nobody Histories9. Conclusion - Contesting Pauper Bodies