{"id":352,"date":"2020-05-14T17:19:13","date_gmt":"2020-05-14T15:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/lalp\/?p=352"},"modified":"2020-05-14T17:19:14","modified_gmt":"2020-05-14T15:19:14","slug":"anonymous-denunciation-and-defamation-at-the-time-of-the-poor-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/lalp\/2020\/05\/anonymous-denunciation-and-defamation-at-the-time-of-the-poor-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Anonymous denunciation and defamation at the time of the Poor Law"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Blog post written by\u00a0Lucile Berset<\/a>\u00a0(14 May 2020)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have been reading our previous weekly blog posts, you are aware that not all the letters in the LALP corpus are relief applications. Some of them are related correspondence giving an external perspective on cases of financial assistance. Today\u2019s post presents and discusses two letters related to the situation of Elizabeth Davis, a widow and mother of four children who lived in Derby around the 1830\u2019s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first letter is written by the neighbours of Elizabeth Davis on \u201cfebuary 4th 1833\u201d. It reports her supposedly immoral behaviour, the poor condition of her children, and it questions therefore her legitimacy for financial support from her parish. Her conduct seems to strongly bother the anonymous author(s) of the letter who basically accuse her of prostitution. In their description of the \u201cCarrictor of Elizabeth Daves the Widdow of Frances Daves\u201d, they argue that \u201cher porseeaidings are so bad that she is quite a disgrace to our Neighbourhood her ways with men are quite Disgusting she keeps a very Bad House\u201d. On top of this, \u201cthe Lodgers in her House [\u2026] Lead a strange life\u201d, they are described as being \u201cSoldiers and all sorts of men\u201d. As for her children, they are \u201calmost Naked and half Clemed to death\u201d despite the fact that Mrs. Davis receives \u201c8 shillings Pr week to keep 3 of them\u201d. The neighbours were apparently well informed about the financial situation of Elizabeth, who they described as \u201ca very Idle Durtey Wheman\u201d. They think \u201cit a shame that a Parish should soport such a Whoman\u201d. Paradoxically and despite the strong accusations held against Mrs. Davis, the last line states \u201cwee are not Illwishers to hers\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The neighbours\u2019 complaint was apparently successful as we learn in a second letter written just over a month later that Mrs. Davis\u2019 allowances have stopped. An overseer of the Parish of All Saints in Derby explains that she was the victim of \u201csome slanderous reports of her neighbours\u201d and believes \u201cthem to be without foundation\u201d. A note at the bottom of the letter suggests that Mrs. Davis was granted assistance again as \u201cthe widow to have in future 7\/- per week in lieu\u201d. Unfortunately for her, she would have lost one shilling per week in the story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two letters are highly relevant on several levels. Historically, they show a tricky case of denunciation for prostitution that turns out to be defamation. Such practices were common in 19th-century England (Waddams 2000). From a linguistics point of view, it is clear that the author(s) of the first letter were not taught how to write in school but rather learnt independently. The spelling highly varies in words such as \u201cwhoman\u201d and \u201cwheman\u201d. In addition, the same group of words \u201cif she was to work Like a Nother Whoman\u201d is repeated twice in the exact same way. Obviously, the repetition strengthens the point made by the neighbours who are insisting on the faults of Mrs. Davis. However, it also shows that the sentence was likely copied from what was previously written and not produced freely. The handwriting of the first letter is also typical of mechanical writing with random capitalisation and a complete lack of punctuation. The second letter does not show much variation since the author was an overseer, more likely to have had received education. It is for now impossible to say anything about his handwriting as only a transcription of it made by Tony Fairman is available to us. One of the aims of the LALP project is to access the archives of the missing letters in order to complete the collection of facsimiles already available. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

WADDAMS, S.M. Sexual Slander in Nineteenth-Century England: Defamation in The Ecclesiastical Courts, 1815-1855<\/em>. University of Toronto Press, 2000. JSTOR<\/em>, www.jstor.org\/stable\/10.3138\/9781442679856. Accessed 13 May 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blog post written by\u00a0Lucile Berset\u00a0(14 May 2020) If you have been reading our previous weekly blog posts, you are aware that not all the letters in the LALP corpus are … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001230,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/lalp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/lalp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/lalp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/lalp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001230"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/lalp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/lalp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/lalp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/lalp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/lalp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}