Creating the slum: Representations of poverty in the Hungate and Walmgate districts of York, 1875-1914

Harrison, Laura

Abstract

Using a range of sources, this article addresses the ways in which the press, social investigators and middle-class commentators constructed an image and reputation for the working-class districts of Walmgate and Hungate in York; a reputation which made the area ‘a byword for all that was thought evil among the respectable people’ of the city. It considers how this reputation was established and reproduced, and examines the ways various groups and individuals began ‘mapping’ the slums of Victorian and Edwardian York. However, doing so is not to ignore the ‘reality’ of the slums, but rather to consider how both the social construction and physical attributes of these poor working-class districts operated in a continuous process of negotiation.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 1, 2015
• Publication Date: Apr 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Aug 16, 2018
• Journal: Ex Historia
• Electronic ISSN: 2041-0824
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 7
• Pages: 61-89
• Keywords: working class, slum, poverty
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/836122
• Publisher URL: https://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/history/research/publications/exhistoria/archive/archive7/
• Related Public URLs: https://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/collegeofhumanities/history/exhistoria/volume7/Creating_the_slum-_representations_of_poverty_in_the_Hungate_and_Walmgate_districts_of_York,_1875-1914.pdf
• Contract Date: Aug 16, 2018