Dear All, 

There is still time to register for the next Voluntary Action History Society seminar, taking place on Monday at 6pm on zoom.

“There is scarcely a greater plague that can infest society than swarms of beggars”: the rise and fall of the mendicity society movement in Ireland, 1815–45 - Dr Ciarán McCabe
Monday 30 January, 6 till 7:30pm, on Zoom
https://www.history.ac.uk/events/there-scarcely-a-greater-plague-can-infest-society-swarms-beggars-rise-and-fall-mendicity

The emergence of mendicity societies throughout Ireland and Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century was symptomatic of the increased public concern towards the threat posed by street begging and street beggars. Mendicity societies were non-denominational, voluntarily-run charitable societies and reflected middle-class zeal to tackle the ‘evil’ of street begging, which threatened to spread disease, encourage immorality among the poorer classes, and undermine the incentive to be industrious. These societies were unique in that, while most other charities explicitly excluded common street beggars from their scope (not wanting to encourage the ‘undeserving’ poor), mendicity societies concentrated their energies and resources on those very same categories of mendicant poor. Mendicity societies in Ireland emerged on the welfare landscape in two bursts: firstly, in the aftermath of the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815), and secondly, during the British Isles-wide economic downturn of the mid-1820s. Those societies that survived into the late-1830s were almost universally dissolved upon the introduction of the Poor Law system into Ireland.

You can also register for our other seminars so far here - please note dates are subject to change in line with UCU strike action. https://www.history.ac.uk/seminars/voluntary-action-history 

Kind Regards,

Ellie Munro
VAHS Co-Chair.

**************************************************
Note: The material contained in this message comes to you via The
Campaign for Voluntary Sector Archives Discussion List. The list is
moderated by members of the Campaign for Voluntary Sector Archives,
(CVSA). It does not necessarily reflect the views of the CVSA.
If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this message please retain this
disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original
sources. List rules, signoff instructions, and list archives are available at:
VOLUNTARY-SECTOR-ARCHIVES web page

List Archives: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=VOLUNTARY-SECTOR-ARCHIVES
Subscribe/unsubscribe: http://bit.ly/XntRjM
RSS: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?RSS&L=VOLUNTARY-SECTOR-ARCHIVES&V=2.0
Follow the Campaign for Voluntary Sector Archives on Twitter: #VOLSECARCHIVES
Campaign for Voluntary Sector Archives website: http://www.voluntarysectorarchives.org.uk/

**************************************************