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A Palace for the Poor: The Knox County Infirmary and Nineteenth Century Social Reform in Rural Ohio

Brown, Aubrey E.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ysu1369314525

Abstract Details

2013, Master of Arts in History, Youngstown State University, Department of Humanities.
During the nineteenth century, middle- and upper-class citizens often viewed poverty as a form of moral delinquency among members of the working class rather than as an economic imbalance influenced by the rise of industrialization. The poorhouse, sometimes called an almshouse, poor farm, poor asylum, and later infirmary or city/county home, is one among a small variety of formal, legal institutions of social reform created to manage those individuals who consciously or unconsciously digressed from the “normal” social order of the working class. The Knox County, Ohio welfare system of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries stands as an exemplary model of rural self-reliance and community preservation. The Knox County Infirmary served as a centralized location to provide relief and general care to the poor, physically disabled, elderly, widowed, orphaned, and even mentally ill of the county. What may have started as a means of separating the social classes, by the mid-nineteenth century it functioned more as a means of unifying citizens of Knox County in combatting the threat of industrialization to its traditional, agricultural roots. It was also a struggle between self and collective identities.
Martha Pallante, PhD (Advisor)
Donna DeBlasio, PhD (Committee Member)
Diane Barnes, PhD (Committee Member)
98 p.
American History; Architecture; Rehabilitation; Social Structure; Welfare
poorhouse; county infirmary; poor relief; social reform; institutional architecture; rural; Ohio; Knox County; Kirkbride; William Tinsley

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Brown, A. E. (2013). A Palace for the Poor: The Knox County Infirmary and Nineteenth Century Social Reform in Rural Ohio [Master's thesis, Youngstown State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ysu1369314525

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Brown, Aubrey. A Palace for the Poor: The Knox County Infirmary and Nineteenth Century Social Reform in Rural Ohio. 2013. Youngstown State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ysu1369314525.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Brown, Aubrey. "A Palace for the Poor: The Knox County Infirmary and Nineteenth Century Social Reform in Rural Ohio." Master's thesis, Youngstown State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ysu1369314525

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ysu1369314525
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© 2013, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Youngstown State University and OhioLINK.