Author Archive: admin-poor
Songs and recitations in the workhouse (2) – ‘Home Sweet Home’
Here is another post on songs and recitations in the workhouse (relating to the performance of the Orpheus glee club at the opening of Dearnley workhouse in Rochdale in 1877 – see ‘Songs and recitations in the workhouse – ‘A Fine Old English Gentleman’ blog post below). Given that we […]
Songs and recitations in the workhouse – ‘A Fine Old English Gentleman’
Post by Jenny Hughes As noted in ‘The only way is Rochdale 3’ (blog post below) – the Orpheus Glee club performed at the opening of Dearnley workhouse in Rochdale and at the Christmas treat for paupers that followed a week or so later, and their repertoire may have included […]
The (neo)liberal politics of applied and social theatre – critiquing ‘self-help’ and ‘self-entrepreneurship’
Post by Jenny Hughes I’m putting a health warning on this post – it’s more relevant to readers interested in applied and social theatre, rather than theatre and poverty more generally – it comes out of some research I’m doing for a chapter in a book called Critical Perspectives in […]
Training the pauper child – musical performance
Post by Jenny Hughes Musical performance – singing, playing an instrument, performing in an orchestral or brass band – was a core part of the educational curriculum for the poor child in the 19th century. Musical performance was seen as a means of personal and social education and a disciplinary […]
The only way is Rochdale (3)
Post by Jenny Hughes To return to the records of entertainments taking place in Dearnley workhouse in Rochdale during the final third of the 19th century (see previous posts – The only way is Rochdale 1 and 2). I found at least one entertainment for each month of the years […]
The only way is Rochdale (2)
Post by Jenny Hughes I’ve been looking at records of entertainments in Dearnley workhouse in Rochdale, from its opening in 1877. This has meant looking at huge, heavy, dusty, crumbling minute books kept by the Board of Guardians and various workhouse committees – minute books are full of beautiful handwritten […]
The ethical value of theatre
Post by Jenny Hughes The editorial page of the Guardian newspaper on 31st January 1890 gave a brief account of a debate amongst the Poor Law Guardians of Bolton on ‘the ethical value of theatre – especially, of course, in its relation to the future welfare of pauper children’. Mr […]
Love on the workhouse stage
Post by Jenny Hughes The Pall Mall Gazette on 6 June 1900 included a slightly ‘arched’ report on the extraordinary care for the ‘aged poor’ in a workhouse in Copenhagen, who are provided with ‘a theatre of their own to which they may go in the evening’. To ensure readers […]
The only way is Rochdale (1) …
Post by Jenny Hughes One of the ways I am taking this research forward is to focus on a specific locality – Rochdale in Lancashire, home of the Rochdale Pioneers and the cooperative movement, and a centre of Chartist fervour leading up to and around the period of the Reform […]
Amateur performers in the workhouse
Post by Jenny Hughes This is a follow up to the post below … another debate about the ethical value of theatre in the workhouse, this time from 1894. It also provides a nice antidote to the Marylebone Guardians’ snubbing of amateur dramatics below! Here, the writer is concerned to […]