Prize: Fellowship awarded competitively
File: application/pdf, 456 KB
Type: Text
Who held the hand of a plague patient as they lay dying? Who wiped their brow and comforted them? This project focuses on those who were employed in infected houses during preindustrial epidemics as paid cleaners. It reconstructs their lives and assesses the impact on the households where they served. Did this element of the “epidemic economy” offer disadvantaged people new financial opportunities and avenues for social mobility, or did it instead impose burdens and coercive obligations on those already most vulnerable?
Press/Media: Expert comment › Popular
Research output: Book/Report/Inaugural speech/Farewell speech › Book › Academic