Managing Sickness in Coastal Communities. (360G-Wellcome-080652_Z_06_Z)

This project will examine the health and ill health of the poor in Dorset coastal communities during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Using overseers' accounts. vestry minutes, charity records, friendly society records, the diaries and letters of middling and aristocratic families, and the records of doctors, it will: Seek to quantify the extent of ill-health amongst the poor between 1750 and 1835 Seek to reconstruct the nature of self-help within and between poor families Examine the relationship between the sickness of the poor and the activities of the Old Poor Law and contrast this with other (non-seaside) communities in Dorset. Examine the role of doctors in seaside towns versus other types of community in Dorset. Examine access to institutional provision for the alleviation of sickness in seaside communities. Examine the particular role of middling and aristocratic families and medical charities in addressing the health needs of poor people in coastal communities. Examine the nature of medical practice in seaside communities with particular reference to the relationship between mobile populations and medical practice.