Search Results for: poorhouse

Poorhouse Horrors

All too often, babies in 18th-century poorhouses were given gin to quiet them. In 1751, nine thousand English children died of alcohol poisoning.… Read More

Poorhouses

On Monday I blogged about debtors’ prisons, which people often confuse with poorhouses, the subject of today’s cheery blog. Debtors’ prisons and poorhouses were not the same thing, but were equally dismal places. Poorhouses, or almshouses, existed in England from… Read More

Let Them Eat Jiggly Soup

Back in the early nineteenth century, with populations in cities swelling, feeding the poor cheaply in poorhouses and public hospitals became a growing concern. In her fascinating book, Gulp, Mary Roach describes the efforts of a French chemist named Jean… Read More

Randalls’ Ragamuffins

Up around 103rd Street on the east side of Manhattan, you can cross a bridge over the East River to Randall’s Island. It used to be separate from Wards Island, but in the 1960s the channel between them was filled… Read More

The Gin Craze

I’m sure most families have standard phrases they use with one another, inside jokes that others might not necessarily get. One of my family’s is from the 1968 musical version of Oliver Twist. There’s a scene, in Fagin’s lair, where… Read More