Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxfo... more Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. This book is dedicated to the future, our children. In O'Rourke's case,
and a Fellow at New Hall, Cambridge. She has worked on issues relating to women's work and househ... more and a Fellow at New Hall, Cambridge. She has worked on issues relating to women's work and household welfare in historical and contemporary contexts. David Meredith is an Associate Professor in Economics at the University of New South wales, Australia. He has written several books, on economic development of Britain's tropical colonies and on the economic history of Australia. Deborah Oxley is a University Lecturer in the Faculty of Modern History, University of Oxford and Fellow at All Souls, Oxford. She works on convict Australia and on nineteenth-century living standards in Britain, Ireland and Scotland.
This paper investigates the proposition made by contemporaries that women and children disproport... more This paper investigates the proposition made by contemporaries that women and children disproportionately bore the brunt of industrialisation and urbanisation by examining how poor working-class families in mid-Victorian London shared their resources. Allocation is inferred from independently pooled cross-sectional data on the height, weight and body mass of 32,584 prisoners from a London House of Correction. As boys and girls moved into adulthood, they made some biological gains consistent with 'catch up' on earlier deprivation. The body masses of women and men then diverged. When families grew, women shrank. When children left home taking their wages with them, when age reduced the earning capacities of herself and her husband, women suffered even more, becoming dangerously underweight in older age. Ageing was a gendered experience.
The place of penal transportation in Australia's economic history has always been controversial. ... more The place of penal transportation in Australia's economic history has always been controversial. Convict workers were frequently denigrated as worse than useless, yet without convicts the settlements would have lacked sufficient labour for development. In Van Diemen's Land in the 1840s, convicts constituted more than half the labour supply, and if emancipists are included it was more like threequarters. After transportation to New South Wales was halted in 1840, amidst claims that the assignment of convict labour was akin to slavery, Van Diemen's Land continued to receive transportees but adopted a new form of labour management: the so-called 'probation system'. To distinguish the new probation system from the 'slavery' of assignment, wages were paid to convict workers. This study uses 17,997 convict employment contracts to explore the labour market for convict passholders at the probation period. Actions speak louder than words, and irrespective of what might have been said about convict quality, by the end of transportation in 1853 convict workers were eagerly engaged at rising wages by employers desperate for labour.
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