Chris Langley (Newman University Birmingham / IASH Fellow): Begging for an audience: Acts of kindness in early modern Scotland
[IASH work in progress talk]
The story of charity and welfare in the early modern and modern periods is one of institutions. Organisations dedicated to managing poverty have left behind extensive papers that prove useful in reconstructing what they thought about those who needed help and how much help they gave to them. They dominate our mental landscape of this period. There is another side to welfare that we talk about far less, even though we know it was there: handouts, acts of kindness and the myriad informal types of assistance that one might offer in times of hardship. Unfortunately, by their very nature, these ephemeral acts of kindness are difficult to reconstruct. They leave little trace in the record. This talk will assess how these largely hidden interactions operated in the context of early-modern Scotland. By understanding these networks, we reveal a far less institutional narrative of charity. Indeed, what emerges is a story in which the official mechanisms of charity and welfare actually co-opted and purposely imitated informal forms of aid.