THE VICTORIAN SLUM: AN ENDURING MYTH?

ABSTRACT

The term slum is a loose definition of the environs and behavior of the poor. Isolated from the remainder of society, slum residents are presumed to live a deviant life either by preference or cultural predisposition, or as a consequence of their deprivation. This synthesis of spatial isolation and social deviance was an inextricable element of changes in attitudes to poverty in the early nineteenth century, and has been remarkably persistent. The concept of the “Victorian Slum'’has been questioned in relation to modern cities, but the concept also appears to lack validity in Victorian cities.

Notes

1 R. Bendix, Work and Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the Course of Industrialization (New York: John Wiley, 1956), p. 70; W. L. Burn, The Age of Equipoise: A Study of the Mid-Victorian Generation (New York: Norton, 1965), pp. 225–92 and 296; and H. Perkins, The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780–1880 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), pp. 173–83.

2 B. I. Coleman, ed., The Idea of the City in Nineteenth Century Britain (London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), contains excerpts from Disraeli, Engels, Chalmers, and many other contemporary observers. For the United States: T. Bender, Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth Century America (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1975), pp. 97–128.

3 C. Tilly, “The Chaos of the Living World,” in C. Tilly, ed., An Urban World (Boston: Little Brown, 1974), pp. 86–108; C. Tilly, L. Tilly, and R. Tilly, The Rebellious Century, 1830–1930 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 268–88; and W. Fischer, “Social Tensions at Early Stages of Industrialization,”Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 9 (1966), pp. 64 77.

4 D. Rothman, The Discovery of Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston: Little Brown, 1971), pp. 155–79 and 237–64; R. Mohl, Poverty in New York, 1783–1825 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 63–65 and 159–66; R. Pinker, Social Theory and Social Policy (London, England: Heinemann, 1971), pp. 59–84; N. Huggins, Protestants Against Poverty (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1971), pp. 3–82 and 163–201; and Bender, op. cit., footnote 2, pp. 189–94.

5 H. W. Pfautz, ed., Charles Booth on the City: Physical Pattern and Social Structure (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 3–46; G. Stedman-Jones, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (Oxford, England: The Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 127–51; and R. Lubove, The Progressives and the Slums: Tenement House Reform in New York City, 1890–1917 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962), pp. 217–56.

6 H. J. Gans, The Urban Villagers: Group and Class Life of Italian-Americans (New York: The Free Press, 1962), pp. 45–73; M. Fried, The World of the Urban Working Class (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 13–14; and C. Rosser and C. C. Harris, The Family and Social Change (London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), p. 24.

7 D. Ward, “The Internal Spatial Structure of Immigrant Residential Districts in the Late Nineteenth Century,”Geographical Analysis, Vol. 1 (1969), pp. 337 53.

8 W. F. Whyte, Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), pp. 255–76; and R. F. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1957), pp. 161–94.

9 The term “urban village” will be used in this paper to embrace all efforts to capture the distinctive social arrangements of those slums which are organized, and it is not restricted to Gans' definition in The Urban Villagers.

10 O. Lewis, “The Culture of Poverty,”Trans-Action, Vol. 1 (1963), pp. 17 19; M. Clinard, Slums and Community Development: Experiments in Self-Help (New York: The Free Press, 1970), pp. 1–23; and W. B. Miller, “Lower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency,”Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 14 (1958), pp. 5 19.

11 C. Jayawardena, “Ideology and Conflict in Lower Class Communities,”Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 10 (1967–68), pp. 413 46.

12 A. Portes, “Rationality in the Slum: An Essay in Interpretative Sociology,”Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 14 (1971–72), pp. 268 86; and Jayawardena, op. cit., footnote 11.

13 Clinard, op. cit., footnote 10, pp. 24–48.

14 C. A. Valentine, Culture and Poverty: Critique and Counter Proposals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 98–140.

15 H. Rodman, “The Lower Class Value Stretch,”Social Forces, Vol. 42 (1963), pp. 205 15; and E. Liebow, Tally's Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men (Boston: Little Brown, 1967), pp. 208–31.

16 D. Ley, The Black Inner City as Frontier Outpost: Images and Behavior of a Philadelphia Neighborhood, Monograph No. 7 (Washington, D.C.: Association of American Geographers, 1974), pp. 121–78.

17 S. B. and J. van Til, “The Lower Class and the Future of Inequality,”Growth and Change, Vol. 4 (1973), pp. 10 16.

18 Ley, op. cit., footnote 16; and W. Bunge, Fitzgerald: Geography of A Revolution (Cambridge: Schenkman, 1971).

19 Jayawardena, op. cit., footnote 11.

20 J. R. Feagin and H. Hahn, Ghetto Revolts: The Politics of Violence in American Cities (New York: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 47–55.

21 G. D. Suttles, The Social Order of the Slum: Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 45–67.

22 Ley, op. cit., footnote 16, pp. 43–55; and J. Adams, “The Geography of Riots and Civil Disorders in the 1960's,”Economic Geography, Vol. 48 (1972), pp. 24 42.

23 P. Craven and B. Wellman, “Formal Voluntary Organizations: Participation, Correlates and Interrelationships,”Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 43 (1975), pp. 89 122; and J. R. Feagin, “Community Disorganization: Some Critical Notes,” op. cit., footnote 23, pp. 123–46.

24 P. Wilmott and M. Young, Family and Kinship in East London (London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), pp. 76–118; E. Bott, Family and Social Network (London, England: Tavistock Publications, 1957), pp. 112–26; and E. C. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1958), p. 85.

25 Especially several articles republished in E. Shanas and G. F. Streib, eds., Social Structure and the Family: Generational Relations (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1965), pp. 62–112; Rosser and Harris, op. cit., footnote 6, p. 233; and M. Aiken and D. Goldberg, “Social Mobility and Kinship: A Reexamination of the Hypothesis,”American Anthropologist, Vol. 71 (1969), pp. 261 70.

26 E. Litwak, “Extended Family Relations in a Democratic-Industrial Society,” in Shanas and Streib, op. cit., footnote 25, pp. 290–323; and C. Tilly and C. H. Brown, “On Uprooting, Kinship and the Auspices of Migration,”International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Vol. 7 (1967), pp. 139 64.

27 Fried, op. cit., footnote 6, pp. 106–20.

28 Gans, op. cit., footnote 6, pp. 74–103.

29 R. Sennett, The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life (New York: Vintage, 1970), pp. 50–84.

30 C. Tilly, “Communities,” in Tilly, op. cit., footnote 3, p. 187; R. Williams, The Country and The City (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 231; and Sennett, op. cit., footnote 29, pp. 227–49.

31 R. Breton, “Institutional Completeness of Ethnic Communities and the Personal Relations of Immigrants,”American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 70 (1964), pp. 193 205; J. F. Barton, Peasants and Strangers: Italians, Rumanians and Slovaks in an American City 1890–1915 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 64–90; H. Nelli, The Italians of Chicago: 1880–1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 156–200; and Craven and Weller, op. cit., footnote 23, pp. 89–122.

32 Clinard, op. cit., footnote 10, pp. 43–48; and S. M. Miller and F. Reissman, “The Working Class Subculture: A New View,”Social Problems, Vol. 9 (1961), pp. 86 97.

33 Ley, op. cit., footnote 16, pp. 211–38; and Bunge, op. cit., footnote 18, p. 120.

34 E. Wolpert and J. Wolpert, “From Asylum to Ghetto,”Antipode, Vol. 6 (1974), pp. 63 76.

35 Miller and Reissman, op. cit., footnote 32, pp. 86–97.

36 C. Tilly, “Collective Violence in European Perspective,” in H. D. Graham and T. R. Gurr, eds., The History of Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (New York: Praeger, 1969), pp. 4–45; and R. M. Brown, “Historical Patterns of Violence in America,” ibid., pp. 45–84.

37 W. E. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), p. 1; and P. Laslett, The World We Have Lost (London, England: Methuen, 1965), pp. 228–40.

38 Williams, op. cit., footnote 30, pp. 60–67 and 96–107.

39 D. Ward, “Victorian Cities: How Modern?”Journal of Historical Geography, Vol. 1 (1975), pp. 135–51.

40 Ward, op. cit., footnote 39, pp. 143–51.

41 M. G. Himmelfarb, “Mayhew's Poor: A Problem of Identity,”Victorian Studies, Vol. 14 (1971), pp. 308 20; and R. S. Neale, “Class and Class Consciousness in Early Nineteenth Century England: Three Classes or Five?”Victorian Studies, Vol. 12 (1968), pp. 24–42.

42 J. Foster, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution: Early Industrial Capitalism in Three English Towns (London, England: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1974), pp. 125–60; and S. B. Warner, Jr., The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of its Growth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968), pp. 49–78.

43 Tilly, op. cit., footnote 3, pp. 86–108; and E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1968), pp. 491–780.

44 Tilly, op. cit., footnote 3, pp. 50–51.

45 Rothman, op. cit., footnote 4; Mohl, op. cit., footnote 4; Pinker, op. cit., footnote 4; Huggins, op. cit., footnote 4; and Tilly, op. cit., footnote 3, pp. 86–108.

46 W. J. Courtenay, “Token Coinage and the Administration of Poor Relief During the Late Middle Ages,”Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 3 (1972), pp. 275 95; R. M. Kingdon, “Social Welfare in Calvin's Geneva,”American Historical Review, Vol. 76 (1971), pp. 50 69; N. Z. Davis, “Poor Relief, Humanism and Heresy: The Case of Lyon,”Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, Vol. 5 (1968), pp. 217 75.

47 Rothman, op. cit., footnote 4, pp. 3–56; and P. Clark, “The Migrant in Kentish Towns, 1580–1640,” in P. Clark and P. Slack, Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500–1700 (London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 149.

48 Huggins, op. cit., footnote 4, pp. 177–80; and Pinker, op. cit., footnote 4, p. 19.

49 Rothman, op. cit., footnote 4.

50 Pinker, op. cit., footnote 4, p. 19.

51 R. Sennett, Families Against the City: Middle Class Homes of Industrial Chicago, 1872–1890 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 22–23.

52 A. F. Davis, Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914 (New York: Oxford University Press), especially pp. 17–19 and 244–45; R. H. Bremner, From the Depths: The Discovery of Poverty in America (New York: New York University Press, 1956), pp. 70–129; and Stedman-Jones, op. cit., footnote 5, pp. 286–313.

53 Bendix, op. cit., footnote 1, pp. 99–116.

54 Foster, op. cit., footnote 42, pp. 201–50; R. Q. Gray, “Styles of Life, the Labour Aristocracy and Class Relations in Later Nineteenth Century Edinburgh,”International Review of Social History, Vol. 18 (1973), pp. 428 52; Nelli, op. cit., footnote 31, pp. 156–200; and S. B. Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 167–68.

55 A. S. Wohl, “Introduction,” in A. Mearns, Bitter Cry of Outcast London (New York: Humanities Press, 1970), pp. 9–50.

56 W. T. Elsing, “Life in New York Tenement Houses as seen by a City Missionary,” in R. A. Woods, ed., The Poor in Great Cities (New York: Scribners, 1895), pp. 42–85.

57 Bott, op. cit., footnote 24, pp. 99–126.

58 Laslett, op. cit., footnote 37, p. 21.

59 Rosser and Harris, op. cit., footnote 6, pp. 24–25.

60 Foster, op. cit., footnote 42, pp. 201–50.

61 Thernstrom, op. cit., footnote 53, pp. 243–46.

62 M. Anderson, Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 136–79.

63 Sennett, op. cit., footnote 51, pp. 59–70.

64 Sennett, op. cit., footnote 29, pp. 50–84; R. E. Pahl, Patterns of Urban Life (London, England: Longmans, 1970), p. 34; and R. Roberts, The Classic Slum (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1971), pp. 10–33.