Charlotte Wildman is Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Manchester, UK. This blog is part of an AHRC-funded project titled, ‘Reconsidering Crime in Urban Working-Class Homes and Family Life, 1918-1979.’ This project aims to forge a new historical account of working-class experiences of social and economic inequities through the first study of non-violent offences undertaken by women and children in urban communities in England and N. Ireland, 1918-1979. Moving the analytical focus away from public spaces and towards the home and family life as a site of crime, state intervention and surveillance, it seeks to understand the range of ‘everyday’ minor illegal activities committed by women and children that became designated criminal through local and national processes. Memoirs and life-writing are central to this research, along with crime records, social surveys, policies and reports from national and local government.

Poverty in Great Britain shortly before the First World War. Image via: http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//8/media-8763/large.jpg