Coping With Destitution: Poverty and Relief in Western Europe

by Rosalind Mitchison

Food banks, welfare cheques, and shelters for the homeless are the modern face of a timeless problem. Rosalind Michison explores the historical context of poverty and relief in a study that covers four centuries of European history. During the sixteenth century, authorities (both lay and ecclesiastical) and individuals alike showed a marked concern over the state of the poor in Western Europe. Mitchison analyses the nature of this concern and its possible causes. She then examines relief system as set up in various countries, comparing the approach of Catholic and Protestant states, and assessing what they had achieved by the mid-eighteenth century. Among the issues she discusses are the problems of funding and different possible bases for this, the issue of church or state control of poor relief, and the role of military developments in changing attitudes towards poverty and destitution. The last section of the book concentrates on developments within Britain and Ireland and examines the influence of social theories on the quality of provision. The chapters carry notes containing references to particular studies on various countries. These are supplemented by a further bibliography. In all, this is a thoughtful and timely overview of an important segment of European social history.

91 pages, Hardcover

First published October 28, 1991

About the author

Rosalind Mary Mitchison FRSE) was a 20th-century English historian and academic who specialised in Scottish social history. She was affectionately known as "Rowy" Mitchison.

She was educated at Dragon School in Oxford then studied history at Lady Margaret Hall and went to the University of Manchester as an assistant lecturer, working under Sir Lewis Namier, in 1943.

In 1953 her husband was appointed to a professorship at the University of Edinburgh and they moved to Scotland. Mitchison taught history, initially part-time, at Edinburgh until 1957. In 1962 she began teaching at the University of Glasgow where she remained until 1967, latterly as a full-time lecturer. Her first work, Agricultural Sir John (1962), broke new ground in the history of 18th-century Scotland, hitherto mainly studied, when studied at all, from the perspective of the Acts of Union 1707 or the Scottish Enlightenment.

She returned to the University of Edinburgh in 1967 as a Reader, and was by 1981 Emeritus Professor of Social History, a post she held until 1986.