From ‘Relief’ to ‘Justice and Protection’: The Maintenance of Deserted Wives, British Masculinity and Imperial Citizenship, 1870–1920

Abstract

In the early twentieth century, local British poor law guardians’ concerns with the maintenance of deserted and neglected families were transformed into imperial, and later transnational, policy promoting justice for abandoned wives and children. Both local court cases concerning maintenance and policy debates at the national and imperial levels reveal the ways in which a breadwinner model of masculinity shaped maintenance policy and practice. Although the maintenance problem was framed differently by local welfare providers and imperial heads of state, concerns about welfare costs and human rights intersected in the figure of the irresponsible male citizen, who challenged the dominant model of British/imperial masculinity by refusing to maintain his wife.

‘A Pest to Society’: The Charity Organisation Society's Domiciliary Assessments into the Circumstances of Poor Families and Children

“…Lifestyles of deserted wives were also under scrutiny to ascertain whether they were ‘irresponsible’ or ‘immoral’ (Levine‐Clark, ). Any indication of possible immorality would result in the COS suspending help.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2010

“…Crossman looks at Irish moves in the 1860s to reduce reliance on the workhouse and to instead encourage out‐relief, and the contestations around this, while Gray investigates poverty in Ireland between 1847 and 1880. In both Cultural and Social History and Gender and History Levine‐Clark considers the gendered nature of receiving relief from the state: in the former exploring the impact of masculinity and perceptions of ‘breadwinning’ on access to unemployment relief; and, in the latter, how men's breadwinning duty to support wives and children reflected concerns about Britain's imperial role. Gledhill argues that early experience of institutional life by children often led to choosing life in other institutions after release, through a case study of the Foundling Hospital and the British Army band regiments.…”