I began my career at the UK Data Archive in 2006, working on the Online Historical Population Reports project and it was whilst working on this project that I became interested in the history of violent death, in particular household accidents. It is from this I began my PhD in 2007 on 'Dangerous Spaces: Working-Class Homes and Fatal Household Accidents in Suffolk, 1840-1900'. Since the completion of my PhD in 2012, as well as undertaking and publishing my own research on 19th-century working-class (domestic life, bedrooms, lodgers, and domestic safety legislation), I have been employed on a number of research projects.
I am currently writing a monograph on the sleeping spaces in the 19th-century working-class home.
In 1898, responding to the death of a 50-year-old spinster who ‘was burnt to death through the up... more In 1898, responding to the death of a 50-year-old spinster who ‘was burnt to death through the upsetting of a paraffin lamp’, The Illustrated Police News ran an article entitled: ‘A TERRIBLE DEATH TOLL THROUGH CHEAP LAMPS AND COMMON PARAFFIN OIL’. It stated that ‘during the past two years there had been 639 lamp accidents in the county of London [...] Out of the number mentioned, seventy-three had proved fatal, which made a total of 115 deaths in three years’. After returning their verdict on the woman’s death, the jury commented, ‘We are of opinion that oil should not be sold under a flashing-point of 105 degrees [32 degrees above the legal sale limit], and that legislation preventing the sale of common lamps is desirable’.
In the early-nineteenth century, the age of the candle began to give way to the oil lamp as the primary source of domestic lighting. These new lamps provided a hitherto unobtainable amount of light, but, as O’Dea observes, ‘the relatively good light from these lamps was not obtained without a relatively high expenditure of oil’. Therefore, oil lamps, for the time being, remained the reserve of the wealthy. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century, oil lamps began to replace the candle as a source of light in the homes of the poorer classes. With a drop in the price of petroleum oil and the production of the affordable (and the aptly named) ‘penny’ paraffin lamp, such lighting was now within reach of many poorer households. However, as these lamps increased in popularity among the poorer classes, so did the media panic over the safety of these ‘PENNY DEATH TRAPS’.
Anxiety over the safety of ‘cheap lamps’ used in the homes of the poor overflowed into the medical and lay press of the late 1880s and 1890s. Drawing on coroners’ inquests, journalists detailed the gruesome deaths caused by paraffin lamps (The Illustrated Police News further adding sensational images to titillate their readers) and the provincial, popular, and medical press called for legislation to regulate the sale of these lamps and to raise the flash point of paraffin oil to a safer level. In response, the Government commissioned an investigation into the risk posed by oil lamps. However, this did not lead to the passing of legislation. The investigating committee found that accidents with lamps were not as common as had been publicised, while Government ministers argued that any regulation on the manufacture and sale of ‘cheap’ lamps or raising the flashpoint of petroleum would put this new form of lighting out of the reach of poorer households - as well as being a ‘vexatious interference’ to industry.
Recent research using coroners' inquests (both the original records and ensuing newspaper reports... more Recent research using coroners' inquests (both the original records and ensuing newspaper reports) has opened the door on the domestic arrangements of the Victorian working classes and the lives of the inhabitants therein, including that of the lodger. It is widely acknowledged that the majority of lodgers in Victorian England's towns and cities resided in private working-class dwellings and, while the census reveals the types of households that took in lodgers, we know little of these lodgers – beyond their age and occupation – or how they were accommodated. This article begins to address this lacuna by bringing the lodger to the forefront of the household. Drawing upon a number of coroners' inquest reports, it explores the lodger and the domestic arrangements of lodgers accommodated in working-class dwellings in the town of Ipswich, asking: (1) What were individuals' reasons for taking up lodgings? (2) What length of time did they spend in lodgings? (3) How and what did they pay for? (4) What was their relationship to those with whom they lodged and what were their daily interactions? and, crucially, (5) How were they accommodated? The findings reveal that the domestic arrangements of lodgers, including where they slept, varied widely. The article demonstrates that we need to reappraise our understanding of the lodger and their place in the home.
The homes of the urban working class and rural laborers were the most hazardous dwellings of the ... more The homes of the urban working class and rural laborers were the most hazardous dwellings of the Victorian period, resulting in numerous domestic deaths warranting a coroner's inquest. This article demonstrates how, through coroners' meticulous investigations into fatal household accidents and the provincial press' eagerness in the reporting of such inquests, we are able to open up these homes and explore the domestic practices within. This article reveals how this frequently overlooked source provides unprecedented access to domestic practice in the homes of the Victorian urban working class and the often forgotten homes of the rural laboring class. It will show how these inquests can be used quantitatively to explore trends, patterns, and changes in the spatial organization and domestic practice of these homes, providing minute and detailed descriptions of rooms, in addition to domestic objects, and domestic practices. In summary, this article aims to highlight the potential of coroners' inquests (either the actual documents or accounts of them in the provincial press) to a wider audience and encourage their further use in the study of past domestic practice.
Drawing on over 500 coroners’ inquest reported in The Ipswich Journal, 1840-1900, plus surviving ... more Drawing on over 500 coroners’ inquest reported in The Ipswich Journal, 1840-1900, plus surviving coroners’ reports, this thesis utilises this hitherto overlooked source to explore daily life in the homes of the working-classes and the domestic dangers that lurked within them.
Part one examines daytime risks: the lower/back room harboured the working-class home’s most dangerous feature. Essential for warmth and also for cooking/heating water, the unguarded fire represented danger for both young and old. Outdoors, rural labourers’ unprotected ponds and wells endangered inquisitive youngsters whilst the elderly slipped on icy paths.
Part two: Night-time concealed other hazards: artificial lighting exercised the minds of Parliamentarians. Yet, as this thesis reveals, candles or gaslight caused few fatal accidents. The thesis undermines the notion of supposedly dangerous penny lamps – the main source of lighting for the poor in the late nineteenth-century. Whilst agonising over lights Parliamentarians overlooked hazardous staircases - hitherto largely unexplored domestic features. Upstairs, the bedroom was one of the home’s safest spaces, except for infants whose demise whilst at their mothers’ side was apparently caused by suffocation.
Part three: The thesis then discusses middle-class/Government reactions to accidents in the homes of the poor and their attempts to intrude in the name of safety. A common middle-class perception was that domestic accidents were preventable – were it not for working-class mothers’ ignorance, carelessness, and negligence. Initially hand-tied, coroners could merely admonish the seemingly culpable. However, middle-class pressure and growing Government concern finally brought the issue of household accidents to Parliamentary debate, culminating in clauses aimed more at prevention than punishment.
The idea of the nineteenth-century urban working-class home as a “thoroughfare” has recently begu... more The idea of the nineteenth-century urban working-class home as a “thoroughfare” has recently begun to be turned on its head through a reinterpretation of contemporary accounts. Yet, this re-imagining of boundaries is still heavily reliant on middle-class accounts of working-class homes. My work addresses this issue by establishing the thresholds of the nineteenth-century urban working-class home through the words of the inhabitants themselves. Specifically, this paper (and my wider research on the working-class home) draws on coroners’ inquests in order to gain access to these homes and the testimonies of daily practices from the inhabitants therein, in order to show that their thresholds—while not necessarily physically strong—were clearly delineated by inhabitants and there were well defined practices among the working-class community when it came to entering each other’s homes. I will argue that these boundaries were far from fluid or non-existent, as frequently described by social commentators of the time. In conclusion, this paper, by drawing on the testimonies of actual inhabitants, further refutes the idea of the home as a “thoroughfare” and suggests that perhaps the nineteenth-century urban working-class home is better defined as “An Englishman’s Castle.”
The bedtimes and bedfellows in 19th century working-class homes has been a much neglected area in... more The bedtimes and bedfellows in 19th century working-class homes has been a much neglected area in historical research.
Historians have struggled to gain access to the bedrooms of the 19th century working class, peeking only round the bedroom door through the use of pauper inventories. Therefore, much of our current understanding of the sleeping arrangements of the working classes has generally been drawn from highly charged ideological middle-class accounts. Struggling to gain access to private dwellings, they instead drew their observations from where they could gain access; that is, the urban lodging-house. Unquestionably, such accounts do not represent the sleeping experience across the wide range of working-class homes in this period.
My current research on the 19th century urban working-class home at night has begun to address this gap in the history of sleeping spaces and sleeping arrangements by exploring the bedtimes and bedfellows of the home’s various inhabitants. My work explores the experiences of the nocturnal home throughout the life-cycle, examining when, where, and with whom infants, children, single young adults (including the lodger), married couples, and the elderly slept. Furthermore, I examine the impact that life events, such as birth and death, had on the dynamics of the household’s sleeping arrangements.
In order to access these homes, I use coroners’ inquests, a source that has until now remained curiously overlooked in the study of homes past. In the course of its investigation, the coroner’s court was permitted unprecedented access to homes where a sudden or unnatural death had occurred. In the cases of supposed accidental overlaying, for example, the coroner and his court were able to view the infant’s body lying in situ. Their visit and remarks, not just on the deceased’s appearance, but also on the physical space of the home, was carefully recorded. While witness testimonies reveal, in detail, the household’s nocturnal arrangements. As a result, the coroner’s court has bequeathed to historians an extant record of the bedrooms features, objects, and lives of the inhabitants in those homes where a typical night was rendered atypical through the event of a death.
This paper will reveal how my research, through the use of this underutilised source, has begun to overturn long held assumptions when it came to where infants slept and the bedtimes of young children, located the sleeping lodger in the home, explored the dynamics of the marital bed, and revealed how for the bereaved elderly it could mean a bed (and even a bedroom) of their own for the first time in their lives; albeit shared with a favourite pet.
In summary, this paper will throw open the door to the bedrooms of the 19th century working-class home and reveal much on bedtimes and bedfellows that have hitherto been hidden from the historian’s view.
In 1896, a coroner’s inquest was held on an Ipswich widower, Henry Peck, found dead at the foot o... more In 1896, a coroner’s inquest was held on an Ipswich widower, Henry Peck, found dead at the foot of the stairs in the home where he resided alone. The Ipswich Journal, covering the inquest, went with the tagline: ‘A Lonely Man’s End’. Yet, was this really an accurate representation of Henry Peck’s life in this urban working-class community? Examining the coverage further, it seems that Henry was undoubtedly not a lonely man. The evening prior to his death, Henry had been drinking at the Handford Rose near to his home. While the following morning, it was his sister, Tamar Balaam, residing on a neighbouring street, who noticed his ‘shutters […] were closed beyond the usual hour’ and, being concerned, had her husband break down the door.
Coroners’ inquests (whether the original records or the ensuing newspaper reports) are a rich source on Victorian working-class life and everyday transactions. It is those pertaining to accidental death, as revealed in this paper, from which we can glean the most information. Significantly, in terms of the elderly, these reports reveal the everyday informal care provided to the elderly within the evidently far from anonymous urban working-class communities. Furthermore, the inquests reveal those vital familial ties within urban communities generally untraceable in the census: married daughters (or, as is the case with Henry Peck, married sisters). Taking the example of the Suffolk town of Ipswich, I will explore how the elderly were cared for and were able to survive within urban working-class communities. In particular, I will examine the informal support (thus far assumed to have gone largely undocumented) provided to the elderly by both kin and neighbours preceding the event of an accident. As much of the historical focus has hitherto been on those who resided with kin, this paper will focus on those who resided alone in widowhood, as was common at this time. I will then move on to explore the care provided after the event of an accident, finding both familial and neighbourly care had its limitations in the town’s poorest communities and for some, therefore, the workhouse beckoned.
In November 1867, The Ipswich Journal reported how an Ipswich coroner's jury, visiting the scene ... more In November 1867, The Ipswich Journal reported how an Ipswich coroner's jury, visiting the scene of death of an infant supposedly suffocated in an impoverished corner of the town, ‘found considerable difficulty in viewing the body, as the bedroom was so small as to allow of a few of the Jury members going up at a time’. Coroners’ inquests (a hitherto largely overlooked source), whether the original records or the ensuing newspaper reports, provide unprecedented access to the Victorian ‘working-class’ home, from the public space of the front doorstep to the private space of the bedroom. Beginning with a discussion on the source and its methodological issues, by taking the example of the Suffolk town of Ipswich and surrounding rural area this paper then moves on to demonstrate how the researcher can utilise the inquests. Walking you through these homes room-by-room during the day-time, this paper explores the features, objects and domestic and non-domestic activities within each space.
Coroners’ inquests provide a minutia of detail on the day-to-day experience of the working-class ... more Coroners’ inquests provide a minutia of detail on the day-to-day experience of the working-class child in the Victorian period. With a few exceptions, historians have overlooked this source for the study of childhood. This paper examines how coroners' inquests (either the actual documents themselves or accounts of them in the provincial press) provide a new insight into the experiences of working-class children in urban areas and opens up the relatively underexplored experiences of rural children. They detail a plethora of information on children’s play, mealtimes, interactions, clothing, hygiene, participation in daily domestic routines, bedtimes, and sleeping arrangements. In the case of children’s play, for example, the coroner’s inquests reveal that the home was as much a playground for urban children as the street. This paper also explores how the coroners' inquests shed light on the wider issues of childcare, child welfare, and of government intrusion into home and family life in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, by examining the outcry of coroners in the late nineteenth-century regarding the supposed increase of children being burnt to death in their homes and of infants being overlaid whilst they slept in the parental bed. In summary, therefore, this paper intends to bring the potential of coroners' inquests to a wider audience and encourage their further use in the study of the history of childhood.
In 1898, responding to the death of a 50-year-old spinster who ‘was burnt to death through the up... more In 1898, responding to the death of a 50-year-old spinster who ‘was burnt to death through the upsetting of a paraffin lamp’, The Illustrated Police News ran an article entitled: ‘A TERRIBLE DEATH TOLL THROUGH CHEAP LAMPS AND COMMON PARAFFIN OIL’. It stated that ‘during the past two years there had been 639 lamp accidents in the county of London [...] Out of the number mentioned, seventy-three had proved fatal, which made a total of 115 deaths in three years’. After returning their verdict on the woman’s death, the jury commented, ‘We are of opinion that oil should not be sold under a flashing-point of 105 degrees [32 degrees above the legal sale limit], and that legislation preventing the sale of common lamps is desirable’.
In the early-nineteenth century, the age of the candle began to give way to the oil lamp as the primary source of domestic lighting. These new lamps provided a hitherto unobtainable amount of light, but, as O’Dea observes, ‘the relatively good light from these lamps was not obtained without a relatively high expenditure of oil’. Therefore, oil lamps, for the time being, remained the reserve of the wealthy. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century, oil lamps began to replace the candle as a source of light in the homes of the poorer classes. With a drop in the price of petroleum oil and the production of the affordable (and the aptly named) ‘penny’ paraffin lamp, such lighting was now within reach of many poorer households. However, as these lamps increased in popularity among the poorer classes, so did the media panic over the safety of these ‘PENNY DEATH TRAPS’.
Anxiety over the safety of ‘cheap lamps’ used in the homes of the poor overflowed into the medical and lay press of the late 1880s and 1890s. Drawing on coroners’ inquests, journalists detailed the gruesome deaths caused by paraffin lamps (The Illustrated Police News further adding sensational images to titillate their readers) and the provincial, popular, and medical press called for legislation to regulate the sale of these lamps and to raise the flash point of paraffin oil to a safer level. In response, the Government commissioned an investigation into the risk posed by oil lamps. However, this did not lead to the passing of legislation. The investigating committee found that accidents with lamps were not as common as had been publicised, while Government ministers argued that any regulation on the manufacture and sale of ‘cheap’ lamps or raising the flashpoint of petroleum would put this new form of lighting out of the reach of poorer households - as well as being a ‘vexatious interference’ to industry.
Recent research using coroners' inquests (both the original records and ensuing newspaper reports... more Recent research using coroners' inquests (both the original records and ensuing newspaper reports) has opened the door on the domestic arrangements of the Victorian working classes and the lives of the inhabitants therein, including that of the lodger. It is widely acknowledged that the majority of lodgers in Victorian England's towns and cities resided in private working-class dwellings and, while the census reveals the types of households that took in lodgers, we know little of these lodgers – beyond their age and occupation – or how they were accommodated. This article begins to address this lacuna by bringing the lodger to the forefront of the household. Drawing upon a number of coroners' inquest reports, it explores the lodger and the domestic arrangements of lodgers accommodated in working-class dwellings in the town of Ipswich, asking: (1) What were individuals' reasons for taking up lodgings? (2) What length of time did they spend in lodgings? (3) How and what did they pay for? (4) What was their relationship to those with whom they lodged and what were their daily interactions? and, crucially, (5) How were they accommodated? The findings reveal that the domestic arrangements of lodgers, including where they slept, varied widely. The article demonstrates that we need to reappraise our understanding of the lodger and their place in the home.
The homes of the urban working class and rural laborers were the most hazardous dwellings of the ... more The homes of the urban working class and rural laborers were the most hazardous dwellings of the Victorian period, resulting in numerous domestic deaths warranting a coroner's inquest. This article demonstrates how, through coroners' meticulous investigations into fatal household accidents and the provincial press' eagerness in the reporting of such inquests, we are able to open up these homes and explore the domestic practices within. This article reveals how this frequently overlooked source provides unprecedented access to domestic practice in the homes of the Victorian urban working class and the often forgotten homes of the rural laboring class. It will show how these inquests can be used quantitatively to explore trends, patterns, and changes in the spatial organization and domestic practice of these homes, providing minute and detailed descriptions of rooms, in addition to domestic objects, and domestic practices. In summary, this article aims to highlight the potential of coroners' inquests (either the actual documents or accounts of them in the provincial press) to a wider audience and encourage their further use in the study of past domestic practice.
Drawing on over 500 coroners’ inquest reported in The Ipswich Journal, 1840-1900, plus surviving ... more Drawing on over 500 coroners’ inquest reported in The Ipswich Journal, 1840-1900, plus surviving coroners’ reports, this thesis utilises this hitherto overlooked source to explore daily life in the homes of the working-classes and the domestic dangers that lurked within them.
Part one examines daytime risks: the lower/back room harboured the working-class home’s most dangerous feature. Essential for warmth and also for cooking/heating water, the unguarded fire represented danger for both young and old. Outdoors, rural labourers’ unprotected ponds and wells endangered inquisitive youngsters whilst the elderly slipped on icy paths.
Part two: Night-time concealed other hazards: artificial lighting exercised the minds of Parliamentarians. Yet, as this thesis reveals, candles or gaslight caused few fatal accidents. The thesis undermines the notion of supposedly dangerous penny lamps – the main source of lighting for the poor in the late nineteenth-century. Whilst agonising over lights Parliamentarians overlooked hazardous staircases - hitherto largely unexplored domestic features. Upstairs, the bedroom was one of the home’s safest spaces, except for infants whose demise whilst at their mothers’ side was apparently caused by suffocation.
Part three: The thesis then discusses middle-class/Government reactions to accidents in the homes of the poor and their attempts to intrude in the name of safety. A common middle-class perception was that domestic accidents were preventable – were it not for working-class mothers’ ignorance, carelessness, and negligence. Initially hand-tied, coroners could merely admonish the seemingly culpable. However, middle-class pressure and growing Government concern finally brought the issue of household accidents to Parliamentary debate, culminating in clauses aimed more at prevention than punishment.
The idea of the nineteenth-century urban working-class home as a “thoroughfare” has recently begu... more The idea of the nineteenth-century urban working-class home as a “thoroughfare” has recently begun to be turned on its head through a reinterpretation of contemporary accounts. Yet, this re-imagining of boundaries is still heavily reliant on middle-class accounts of working-class homes. My work addresses this issue by establishing the thresholds of the nineteenth-century urban working-class home through the words of the inhabitants themselves. Specifically, this paper (and my wider research on the working-class home) draws on coroners’ inquests in order to gain access to these homes and the testimonies of daily practices from the inhabitants therein, in order to show that their thresholds—while not necessarily physically strong—were clearly delineated by inhabitants and there were well defined practices among the working-class community when it came to entering each other’s homes. I will argue that these boundaries were far from fluid or non-existent, as frequently described by social commentators of the time. In conclusion, this paper, by drawing on the testimonies of actual inhabitants, further refutes the idea of the home as a “thoroughfare” and suggests that perhaps the nineteenth-century urban working-class home is better defined as “An Englishman’s Castle.”
The bedtimes and bedfellows in 19th century working-class homes has been a much neglected area in... more The bedtimes and bedfellows in 19th century working-class homes has been a much neglected area in historical research.
Historians have struggled to gain access to the bedrooms of the 19th century working class, peeking only round the bedroom door through the use of pauper inventories. Therefore, much of our current understanding of the sleeping arrangements of the working classes has generally been drawn from highly charged ideological middle-class accounts. Struggling to gain access to private dwellings, they instead drew their observations from where they could gain access; that is, the urban lodging-house. Unquestionably, such accounts do not represent the sleeping experience across the wide range of working-class homes in this period.
My current research on the 19th century urban working-class home at night has begun to address this gap in the history of sleeping spaces and sleeping arrangements by exploring the bedtimes and bedfellows of the home’s various inhabitants. My work explores the experiences of the nocturnal home throughout the life-cycle, examining when, where, and with whom infants, children, single young adults (including the lodger), married couples, and the elderly slept. Furthermore, I examine the impact that life events, such as birth and death, had on the dynamics of the household’s sleeping arrangements.
In order to access these homes, I use coroners’ inquests, a source that has until now remained curiously overlooked in the study of homes past. In the course of its investigation, the coroner’s court was permitted unprecedented access to homes where a sudden or unnatural death had occurred. In the cases of supposed accidental overlaying, for example, the coroner and his court were able to view the infant’s body lying in situ. Their visit and remarks, not just on the deceased’s appearance, but also on the physical space of the home, was carefully recorded. While witness testimonies reveal, in detail, the household’s nocturnal arrangements. As a result, the coroner’s court has bequeathed to historians an extant record of the bedrooms features, objects, and lives of the inhabitants in those homes where a typical night was rendered atypical through the event of a death.
This paper will reveal how my research, through the use of this underutilised source, has begun to overturn long held assumptions when it came to where infants slept and the bedtimes of young children, located the sleeping lodger in the home, explored the dynamics of the marital bed, and revealed how for the bereaved elderly it could mean a bed (and even a bedroom) of their own for the first time in their lives; albeit shared with a favourite pet.
In summary, this paper will throw open the door to the bedrooms of the 19th century working-class home and reveal much on bedtimes and bedfellows that have hitherto been hidden from the historian’s view.
In 1896, a coroner’s inquest was held on an Ipswich widower, Henry Peck, found dead at the foot o... more In 1896, a coroner’s inquest was held on an Ipswich widower, Henry Peck, found dead at the foot of the stairs in the home where he resided alone. The Ipswich Journal, covering the inquest, went with the tagline: ‘A Lonely Man’s End’. Yet, was this really an accurate representation of Henry Peck’s life in this urban working-class community? Examining the coverage further, it seems that Henry was undoubtedly not a lonely man. The evening prior to his death, Henry had been drinking at the Handford Rose near to his home. While the following morning, it was his sister, Tamar Balaam, residing on a neighbouring street, who noticed his ‘shutters […] were closed beyond the usual hour’ and, being concerned, had her husband break down the door.
Coroners’ inquests (whether the original records or the ensuing newspaper reports) are a rich source on Victorian working-class life and everyday transactions. It is those pertaining to accidental death, as revealed in this paper, from which we can glean the most information. Significantly, in terms of the elderly, these reports reveal the everyday informal care provided to the elderly within the evidently far from anonymous urban working-class communities. Furthermore, the inquests reveal those vital familial ties within urban communities generally untraceable in the census: married daughters (or, as is the case with Henry Peck, married sisters). Taking the example of the Suffolk town of Ipswich, I will explore how the elderly were cared for and were able to survive within urban working-class communities. In particular, I will examine the informal support (thus far assumed to have gone largely undocumented) provided to the elderly by both kin and neighbours preceding the event of an accident. As much of the historical focus has hitherto been on those who resided with kin, this paper will focus on those who resided alone in widowhood, as was common at this time. I will then move on to explore the care provided after the event of an accident, finding both familial and neighbourly care had its limitations in the town’s poorest communities and for some, therefore, the workhouse beckoned.
In November 1867, The Ipswich Journal reported how an Ipswich coroner's jury, visiting the scene ... more In November 1867, The Ipswich Journal reported how an Ipswich coroner's jury, visiting the scene of death of an infant supposedly suffocated in an impoverished corner of the town, ‘found considerable difficulty in viewing the body, as the bedroom was so small as to allow of a few of the Jury members going up at a time’. Coroners’ inquests (a hitherto largely overlooked source), whether the original records or the ensuing newspaper reports, provide unprecedented access to the Victorian ‘working-class’ home, from the public space of the front doorstep to the private space of the bedroom. Beginning with a discussion on the source and its methodological issues, by taking the example of the Suffolk town of Ipswich and surrounding rural area this paper then moves on to demonstrate how the researcher can utilise the inquests. Walking you through these homes room-by-room during the day-time, this paper explores the features, objects and domestic and non-domestic activities within each space.
Coroners’ inquests provide a minutia of detail on the day-to-day experience of the working-class ... more Coroners’ inquests provide a minutia of detail on the day-to-day experience of the working-class child in the Victorian period. With a few exceptions, historians have overlooked this source for the study of childhood. This paper examines how coroners' inquests (either the actual documents themselves or accounts of them in the provincial press) provide a new insight into the experiences of working-class children in urban areas and opens up the relatively underexplored experiences of rural children. They detail a plethora of information on children’s play, mealtimes, interactions, clothing, hygiene, participation in daily domestic routines, bedtimes, and sleeping arrangements. In the case of children’s play, for example, the coroner’s inquests reveal that the home was as much a playground for urban children as the street. This paper also explores how the coroners' inquests shed light on the wider issues of childcare, child welfare, and of government intrusion into home and family life in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, by examining the outcry of coroners in the late nineteenth-century regarding the supposed increase of children being burnt to death in their homes and of infants being overlaid whilst they slept in the parental bed. In summary, therefore, this paper intends to bring the potential of coroners' inquests to a wider audience and encourage their further use in the study of the history of childhood.
Uploads
In the early-nineteenth century, the age of the candle began to give way to the oil lamp as the primary source of domestic lighting. These new lamps provided a hitherto unobtainable amount of light, but, as O’Dea observes, ‘the relatively good light from these lamps was not obtained without a relatively high expenditure of oil’. Therefore, oil lamps, for the time being, remained the reserve of the wealthy. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century, oil lamps began to replace the candle as a source of light in the homes of the poorer classes. With a drop in the price of petroleum oil and the production of the affordable (and the aptly named) ‘penny’ paraffin lamp, such lighting was now within reach of many poorer households. However, as these lamps increased in popularity among the poorer classes, so did the media panic over the safety of these ‘PENNY DEATH TRAPS’.
Anxiety over the safety of ‘cheap lamps’ used in the homes of the poor overflowed into the medical and lay press of the late 1880s and 1890s. Drawing on coroners’ inquests, journalists detailed the gruesome deaths caused by paraffin lamps (The Illustrated Police News further adding sensational images to titillate their readers) and the provincial, popular, and medical press called for legislation to regulate the sale of these lamps and to raise the flash point of paraffin oil to a safer level. In response, the Government commissioned an investigation into the risk posed by oil lamps. However, this did not lead to the passing of legislation. The investigating committee found that accidents with lamps were not as common as had been publicised, while Government ministers argued that any regulation on the manufacture and sale of ‘cheap’ lamps or raising the flashpoint of petroleum would put this new form of lighting out of the reach of poorer households - as well as being a ‘vexatious interference’ to industry.
Part one examines daytime risks: the lower/back room harboured the working-class home’s most dangerous feature. Essential for warmth and also for cooking/heating water, the unguarded fire represented danger for both young and old. Outdoors, rural labourers’ unprotected ponds and wells endangered inquisitive youngsters whilst the elderly slipped on icy paths.
Part two: Night-time concealed other hazards: artificial lighting exercised the minds of Parliamentarians. Yet, as this thesis reveals, candles or gaslight caused few fatal accidents. The thesis undermines the notion of supposedly dangerous penny lamps – the main source of lighting for the poor in the late nineteenth-century. Whilst agonising over lights Parliamentarians overlooked hazardous staircases - hitherto largely unexplored domestic features. Upstairs, the bedroom was one of the home’s safest spaces, except for infants whose demise whilst at their mothers’ side was apparently caused by suffocation.
Part three: The thesis then discusses middle-class/Government reactions to accidents in the homes of the poor and their attempts to intrude in the name of safety. A common middle-class perception was that domestic accidents were preventable – were it not for working-class mothers’ ignorance, carelessness, and negligence. Initially hand-tied, coroners could merely admonish the seemingly culpable. However, middle-class pressure and growing Government concern finally brought the issue of household accidents to Parliamentary debate, culminating in clauses aimed more at prevention than punishment.
Historians have struggled to gain access to the bedrooms of the 19th century working class, peeking only round the bedroom door through the use of pauper inventories. Therefore, much of our current understanding of the sleeping arrangements of the working classes has generally been drawn from highly charged ideological middle-class accounts. Struggling to gain access to private dwellings, they instead drew their observations from where they could gain access; that is, the urban lodging-house. Unquestionably, such accounts do not represent the sleeping experience across the wide range of working-class homes in this period.
My current research on the 19th century urban working-class home at night has begun to address this gap in the history of sleeping spaces and sleeping arrangements by exploring the bedtimes and bedfellows of the home’s various inhabitants. My work explores the experiences of the nocturnal home throughout the life-cycle, examining when, where, and with whom infants, children, single young adults (including the lodger), married couples, and the elderly slept. Furthermore, I examine the impact that life events, such as birth and death, had on the dynamics of the household’s sleeping arrangements.
In order to access these homes, I use coroners’ inquests, a source that has until now remained curiously overlooked in the study of homes past. In the course of its investigation, the coroner’s court was permitted unprecedented access to homes where a sudden or unnatural death had occurred. In the cases of supposed accidental overlaying, for example, the coroner and his court were able to view the infant’s body lying in situ. Their visit and remarks, not just on the deceased’s appearance, but also on the physical space of the home, was carefully recorded. While witness testimonies reveal, in detail, the household’s nocturnal arrangements. As a result, the coroner’s court has bequeathed to historians an extant record of the bedrooms features, objects, and lives of the inhabitants in those homes where a typical night was rendered atypical through the event of a death.
This paper will reveal how my research, through the use of this underutilised source, has begun to overturn long held assumptions when it came to where infants slept and the bedtimes of young children, located the sleeping lodger in the home, explored the dynamics of the marital bed, and revealed how for the bereaved elderly it could mean a bed (and even a bedroom) of their own for the first time in their lives; albeit shared with a favourite pet.
In summary, this paper will throw open the door to the bedrooms of the 19th century working-class home and reveal much on bedtimes and bedfellows that have hitherto been hidden from the historian’s view.
Coroners’ inquests (whether the original records or the ensuing newspaper reports) are a rich source on Victorian working-class life and everyday transactions. It is those pertaining to accidental death, as revealed in this paper, from which we can glean the most information. Significantly, in terms of the elderly, these reports reveal the everyday informal care provided to the elderly within the evidently far from anonymous urban working-class communities. Furthermore, the inquests reveal those vital familial ties within urban communities generally untraceable in the census: married daughters (or, as is the case with Henry Peck, married sisters). Taking the example of the Suffolk town of Ipswich, I will explore how the elderly were cared for and were able to survive within urban working-class communities. In particular, I will examine the informal support (thus far assumed to have gone largely undocumented) provided to the elderly by both kin and neighbours preceding the event of an accident. As much of the historical focus has hitherto been on those who resided with kin, this paper will focus on those who resided alone in widowhood, as was common at this time. I will then move on to explore the care provided after the event of an accident, finding both familial and neighbourly care had its limitations in the town’s poorest communities and for some, therefore, the workhouse beckoned.
In the early-nineteenth century, the age of the candle began to give way to the oil lamp as the primary source of domestic lighting. These new lamps provided a hitherto unobtainable amount of light, but, as O’Dea observes, ‘the relatively good light from these lamps was not obtained without a relatively high expenditure of oil’. Therefore, oil lamps, for the time being, remained the reserve of the wealthy. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century, oil lamps began to replace the candle as a source of light in the homes of the poorer classes. With a drop in the price of petroleum oil and the production of the affordable (and the aptly named) ‘penny’ paraffin lamp, such lighting was now within reach of many poorer households. However, as these lamps increased in popularity among the poorer classes, so did the media panic over the safety of these ‘PENNY DEATH TRAPS’.
Anxiety over the safety of ‘cheap lamps’ used in the homes of the poor overflowed into the medical and lay press of the late 1880s and 1890s. Drawing on coroners’ inquests, journalists detailed the gruesome deaths caused by paraffin lamps (The Illustrated Police News further adding sensational images to titillate their readers) and the provincial, popular, and medical press called for legislation to regulate the sale of these lamps and to raise the flash point of paraffin oil to a safer level. In response, the Government commissioned an investigation into the risk posed by oil lamps. However, this did not lead to the passing of legislation. The investigating committee found that accidents with lamps were not as common as had been publicised, while Government ministers argued that any regulation on the manufacture and sale of ‘cheap’ lamps or raising the flashpoint of petroleum would put this new form of lighting out of the reach of poorer households - as well as being a ‘vexatious interference’ to industry.
Part one examines daytime risks: the lower/back room harboured the working-class home’s most dangerous feature. Essential for warmth and also for cooking/heating water, the unguarded fire represented danger for both young and old. Outdoors, rural labourers’ unprotected ponds and wells endangered inquisitive youngsters whilst the elderly slipped on icy paths.
Part two: Night-time concealed other hazards: artificial lighting exercised the minds of Parliamentarians. Yet, as this thesis reveals, candles or gaslight caused few fatal accidents. The thesis undermines the notion of supposedly dangerous penny lamps – the main source of lighting for the poor in the late nineteenth-century. Whilst agonising over lights Parliamentarians overlooked hazardous staircases - hitherto largely unexplored domestic features. Upstairs, the bedroom was one of the home’s safest spaces, except for infants whose demise whilst at their mothers’ side was apparently caused by suffocation.
Part three: The thesis then discusses middle-class/Government reactions to accidents in the homes of the poor and their attempts to intrude in the name of safety. A common middle-class perception was that domestic accidents were preventable – were it not for working-class mothers’ ignorance, carelessness, and negligence. Initially hand-tied, coroners could merely admonish the seemingly culpable. However, middle-class pressure and growing Government concern finally brought the issue of household accidents to Parliamentary debate, culminating in clauses aimed more at prevention than punishment.
Historians have struggled to gain access to the bedrooms of the 19th century working class, peeking only round the bedroom door through the use of pauper inventories. Therefore, much of our current understanding of the sleeping arrangements of the working classes has generally been drawn from highly charged ideological middle-class accounts. Struggling to gain access to private dwellings, they instead drew their observations from where they could gain access; that is, the urban lodging-house. Unquestionably, such accounts do not represent the sleeping experience across the wide range of working-class homes in this period.
My current research on the 19th century urban working-class home at night has begun to address this gap in the history of sleeping spaces and sleeping arrangements by exploring the bedtimes and bedfellows of the home’s various inhabitants. My work explores the experiences of the nocturnal home throughout the life-cycle, examining when, where, and with whom infants, children, single young adults (including the lodger), married couples, and the elderly slept. Furthermore, I examine the impact that life events, such as birth and death, had on the dynamics of the household’s sleeping arrangements.
In order to access these homes, I use coroners’ inquests, a source that has until now remained curiously overlooked in the study of homes past. In the course of its investigation, the coroner’s court was permitted unprecedented access to homes where a sudden or unnatural death had occurred. In the cases of supposed accidental overlaying, for example, the coroner and his court were able to view the infant’s body lying in situ. Their visit and remarks, not just on the deceased’s appearance, but also on the physical space of the home, was carefully recorded. While witness testimonies reveal, in detail, the household’s nocturnal arrangements. As a result, the coroner’s court has bequeathed to historians an extant record of the bedrooms features, objects, and lives of the inhabitants in those homes where a typical night was rendered atypical through the event of a death.
This paper will reveal how my research, through the use of this underutilised source, has begun to overturn long held assumptions when it came to where infants slept and the bedtimes of young children, located the sleeping lodger in the home, explored the dynamics of the marital bed, and revealed how for the bereaved elderly it could mean a bed (and even a bedroom) of their own for the first time in their lives; albeit shared with a favourite pet.
In summary, this paper will throw open the door to the bedrooms of the 19th century working-class home and reveal much on bedtimes and bedfellows that have hitherto been hidden from the historian’s view.
Coroners’ inquests (whether the original records or the ensuing newspaper reports) are a rich source on Victorian working-class life and everyday transactions. It is those pertaining to accidental death, as revealed in this paper, from which we can glean the most information. Significantly, in terms of the elderly, these reports reveal the everyday informal care provided to the elderly within the evidently far from anonymous urban working-class communities. Furthermore, the inquests reveal those vital familial ties within urban communities generally untraceable in the census: married daughters (or, as is the case with Henry Peck, married sisters). Taking the example of the Suffolk town of Ipswich, I will explore how the elderly were cared for and were able to survive within urban working-class communities. In particular, I will examine the informal support (thus far assumed to have gone largely undocumented) provided to the elderly by both kin and neighbours preceding the event of an accident. As much of the historical focus has hitherto been on those who resided with kin, this paper will focus on those who resided alone in widowhood, as was common at this time. I will then move on to explore the care provided after the event of an accident, finding both familial and neighbourly care had its limitations in the town’s poorest communities and for some, therefore, the workhouse beckoned.