"Alan Kidd casts a searching light on the ideology, practices and outcomes of nineteenth-century welfare. As well as the ideas and policies of public welfare, equal space is given to the philosophy and patterns of private charity and the institutional and informal strategies of prevention and survival developed by the working classes. This study, based upon a wealth of scholarship, is essential reading for all students of poverty and welfare and the history of English society in the nineteenth century. It also contains much to interest a wider readership."--Jacket.