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Ruth Richardson

Autor von Death, Dissection and the Destitute

6 Werke 330 Mitglieder 7 Rezensionen

Werke von Ruth Richardson

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An important work about the commodification of the corpse, outlining how the poor were not just the primary victims of burking and body snatching, but after the Anatomy Act was passed, it was their bodies that were taken from workhouses and hospitals for dissection. Commodification of the corpse also includes the funeral industry, and the desperate attempts to avoid a pauper's funeral.
 
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dylkit | 3 weitere Rezensionen | Jul 16, 2022 |
This is an absolutely splendid book examining the links between Dickens's works, especially Oliver Twist, and the operation of workhouses and the Poor Law regime in London, particularly the Cleveland Street workhouse which was a stone's throw from number 10 Norfolk Street where Dickens lived on two occasions with his family, as a very small boy and again in his late teens. The author shows how the proximity of the workhouse may have come to influence Dickens's early thinking and his reformist views, leading him to roundly condemn the operation of the New Poor Law in Oliver Twist. Through delving into architectural and commercial history, the author traces the history of No 10 Norfolk Street and the owners of the surrounding shops to trace possible influences on characters and their experiences in the novels. It's a fascinating slice of social and literary history, with some interesting photos and drawings. The Cleveland Street workhouse is still standing and was latterly a branch of the Middlesex Hospital which closed in 2006 and whose main building nearby has since been demolished. The author recounts many details of the horrible suffering that went on within the walls of this and other workhouses, especially after the Poor Law Reform of 1834, which made the regime much harsher and split up families, and also explores the link with the contemporary Anatomy Act, by which the corpses of those who died in workhouses were passed to medical schools for dissection, instead of a decent burial, a fate previously restricted only to the corpses of executed criminals. A powerful and fascinating read. 5/5… (mehr)
 
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john257hopper | 1 weitere Rezension | Jul 9, 2014 |
In 1817, Mary Shelley first thought of the story that would become “Frankenstein,” in which the eponymous doctor uses corpses to reanimate a dead man. And even as she wrote this classic, resurrection men across Britain were stealing dead bodies to sell to medical schools, which were legally permitted to use only the bodies of executed murderers for the study of anatomy. There weren’t that many murderers, and demand outstripped supply. The Anatomy Act of 1832 was intended to suppress the trade that resulted by legalizing the anatomization of the body of anyone who had died without being able to afford funeral expenses, but in so doing, it criminalized the poor merely for being poor. Ruth Richardson’s pioneering study of the Act, those who created it, and those who fought it, ranges from the “cholera riots” that broke out as the first great epidemic swept across the country to the political upheavals that produced the Reform Act, which some historians consider to be the start of modern democracy in Britain. Connecting all this disparate information creates a book that, in analyzing how a society treated its dead, shows us how it treated its living.… (mehr)
 
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Judith.Flanders | 3 weitere Rezensionen | Apr 28, 2014 |
An jaw-dropping eye-opening of the life of Dickens as seen from the configuration of walkable streets that Dickens inhabited. An intimate sympathetic account that inspires you to investigate further the history and law of that time.
 
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wonderperson | 1 weitere Rezension | Mar 31, 2013 |

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Werke
6
Mitglieder
330
Beliebtheit
#71,937
Bewertung
½ 4.4
Rezensionen
7
ISBNs
20

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