Steven Thompson, Unemployment, poverty and health in interwar South Wales. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006.) Pp. xvii+296. £45.00
What are sometimes called the Matthew Hopkins trials would not have happened if community fears, heightened by the circumstances of the times, had not brought persons suspected as witches to the witchnders attention. [...]there are many good things in this book, and it raises both our knowledge of t...
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| Published in: | Continuity and Change 2007-05, Vol.22 (1), p.181-183 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
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| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | What are sometimes called the Matthew Hopkins trials would not have happened if community fears, heightened by the circumstances of the times, had not brought persons suspected as witches to the witchnders attention. [...]there are many good things in this book, and it raises both our knowledge of the hunt and our understanding of its signicance to a new level. [...]the devil played a more central role in the stories told by confessing witches in the Hopkins trials than in earlier English accounts of this type. The question of whether interwar unemployment exacted a direct, measurable health price in the depressed areas of South Wales animated debate between government ocials and health professionals in the 1930s and has continued to 181 B O O K R E V I E W S reverberate in the historiography. Thompsons other chapters oer much of interest on the regions diverse communities, its households coping strategies and the complications these 182 B O O K R E V I E W S introduce for understanding correlations (or lack of them) between demographic and economic indices. [...]Chapter I reminds us how families on unemployment benets could be better o than those who worked. |
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| ISSN: | 0268-4160 1469-218X |