"The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844" by Frederick Engels is a powerful indictment of the Industrial Revolution's detrimental impact on workers. Engels meticulously demonstrates how industrial cities like Manchester and Liverpool experienced alarmingly high mortality rates due to diseases, with workers being four times more likely to succumb to illnesses like smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, and whooping cough compared to their rural counterparts. The overall death rate in these cities far surpassed the national average, painting a grim picture of the workers' plight. Engels goes beyond mortality statistics to shed light on the dire living conditions endured by industrial workers. He argues that their wages were lower than those of pre-industrial workers, and they were forced to inhabit unhealthy and unpleasant environments. Addressing a German audience, Engels' work is considered a classic account of the universal struggles faced by the industrial working class. It reveals his transformation into a radical thinker after witnessing the harsh realities in England. "The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844" remains an essential resource for understanding the hardships endured by workers during the Industrial Revolution. Engels' meticulous research and impassioned arguments continue to shape discussions on labor rights, social inequality, and the historical agency of the working class.

Most historians portray 19th-century county asylums as the exclusive realm of the asylum doctor, but Bartlett (law, U. of Nottingham) argues that they should be thought of as an aspect of English poor law, in which the medical superintendent had remarkably little power. He examines the place of the county asylum movement in the midcentury poor law debates and its legal and administrative regimes. Taking the Leicestershire asylum as a case study, he explores the role of poor law officers in admission processes, and relations between them and the staff and inspectors.

This work will be essential reading for social and political historians of nineteenth-century Ireland. It is the first academic study to explore the meanings of poverty, destitution and respectability in post-famine Ireland through the institution of the poor law, and is an original in content and interpretation. Previous works have focussed either on the relief system or on political developments. This book analyses poor law administration from a social and a political perspective. There is currently renewed interest in the English poor law of 1834, on which the Irish poor law was modelled. This book will provide historians of poverty and welfare, with an important comparative dimension