scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question

Showing papers in "Journal of Social History in 1993"






Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For instance, this paper pointed out that women instrumentalists could succeed as public performers only on certain musical instruments; they were not likely to be accepted in most symphony orchestras; and very few women have held major posts as conductors.
Abstract: At the turn of the century, women's roles moved from the domestic to the pub, lic sphere. Historians of the Progressive Era have documented this emergence, describing the suffragists' fight for political rights and the college,educated "new women," who eschewed or postponed marriage to forge careers and play leading roles as social scientists and reformers. They have also described the clubwoman's application of a more cautious "domestic feminism" to problems of women, fam­ ilies and workers, as well as the activities of Progressive Era women who gained new prominence as patrons and "apostles of culture."! Developments in music followed similar patterns as performers moved from the parlor to the concert halI,2 but the accomplishments of women instrumental musicians are not widely known.' This is unfortunate, since their achievements were considerable. At the turn of the century, violinist Maud Powell toured the country and was widely recognized as one of the preeminent violinists of her day. Julie Rive-King and Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler were similarly accepted as pianists worthy of comparison with Anton Rubinstein and Ignace Paderewski. Women's orchestras flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, and in 1925 Ethel Leginska made her American conducting debut with the New York Symphony Orchestra, a group comprised almost exclusively of men. 4 But the acclaim for these individuals and groups obscures the fact that in music, as in other fields of endeavor, success was shaped and defined by gen­ der expectations. As we shall see, for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, women instrumentalists could succeed as public performers only on certain musical instruments; they were not likely to be accepted in most sym­ phony orchestras; and very few women have held major posts as conductors. Even though music programs expanded rapidly in the public schools after 1900, women rarely achieved prominence as instrumental music teachers; and the discomfort of male music teachers with girls in the marching band has often shunted girls into baton'twirling and flag-waving. The likelihood that women would play particular musical instruments did not change significantly between the late nineteenth century and the 1980s. In short, the gender expectations that defined and limited women's musical participation at the tum of the century are, for the most part, still in place one hundred years later. When the young ladies of Madison Female College gave a concert in 1853, John Dwight ofDwight'sJournal of Music was there to document the novel event. He took pianists, guitarists and harpists in stride, but expressed shock at "13 young lady violinistst l ), 1 young lady violisti l l ), 4 violoncellistsl l! !) and 1 young lady contrabassistl !!!!).,,5 As the rising chorus ofexclamation marks shows, Dwight's tolerance was in inverse proportion to the size of the instrument. Dwight's reac­ tion was characteristic of his time. The fact that the young ladies were playing music was not the problem. His discomfort arose because these women went beyond the narrow range of what was considered their proper musical place by

31 citations







Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In Canada a social historian from the University of Victoria uses legal records from inquests and trials of 100 women who tried to induce a miscarriage to examine the decision-making process of women who chose to terminate a pregnancy in the late 1800s and early 1900s in British Columbia.
Abstract: In Canada a social historian from the University of Victoria uses legal records from inquests and trials of 100 women who tried to induce a miscarriage to examine the decision-making process of women who chose to terminate a pregnancy in the late 1800s and early 1900s in British Columbia. During this period the government and medical professionals became interested in fertility control decisions of both women and men. The law which made abortions illegal placed the welfare of women encumbered with unwanted pregnancies at risk. The law did not hold physicians liable for performing an abortion needed to protect the life of the mother. The study has uncovered law induced biases inherent in court records. First the courts tended to only hear cases of unsuccessful abortion attempts. Further these women generally represented the most unfortunate and desperate cases of abortion attempts. 75% of these women died. Second court records minimized the role of the men involved. Third physiciand usually ignored an abortion case which jeopardized the standing of their hospital or their colleagues so medical testimony was rarely found in court records. Finally lawyers wrote legal records for other lawyers so they knew or were soon told what they had to say; therefore the truth was not recorded. They used ritualized assertions. Physicians used the abortion law to preserve their professions monopolization of the provision of medical services. For example convicted abortionists were almost always midwives masseuses and herbalists. The law also helped the courts through the press warn women of the terrible abortion deaths and police the morality of both sexes. Abortion trials exhibiting conspicuous evidence of class and gender inequities defended the social and sexual status quo.




Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The United States brought a harsh, two-caste system of slavery with rigid racial dimensions to the new Florida territory as discussed by the authors, which viewed African Americans as degraded members of a despised race, and which erected institutional and social barriers between whites and all persons of African descent.
Abstract: With a history of multi-national colonial experiences, Florida presents unique opportunities for students of comparative slavery and race relations. Under Spanish rule from 1565 until 1763, Florida became British for two decades, an interlude highlighted by African slave importation, plantation development, and warfare spilling south into loyalist Florida from the rebellious colonies to the north. In 1784 Spain resumed control, using its vast unoccupied lands to attract foreign planters with African slaves. Also attracted were American adventurers who fomented rebellions and invasions, prompting Spain to cede the province to the United States in 1821. This essay examines northeast Florida after Spain departed in 1821. It argues that Americans replaced a mild and flexible system of race relations with a severe definition of slavery which viewed African Americans as degraded members of a despised race, and which erected institutional and social barriers between whites and all persons of African descent. African American slaves were seen as inferior beings incapable of existing independently in a civilized society. Free blacks were thought of as aberrations: inherently inferior like their slave brethren, according to the dogma, yet feared as threatening contradictions to pro-slavery theory and incendiary inspirations for slave insurrections. Social control laws passed to regulate slaves were generally applied to free blacks as well. The United States brought a harsh, two-caste system of slavery with rigid racial dimensions to the new Florida territory.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: McGregor et al. as discussed by the authors reported that the rioters initially focused their attacks on the former soldiers of the Third United-States Colored Heavy Artillery regiment, which had disbanded April 30-the last of three black regiments to be mustered out of United States service at Memphis.
Abstract: Between May 1 and May 3, 1866, racial conflict erupted violently in Memphis, Tennessee. Irish policemen and firemen, together with white laborers and small businessmen, rioted in the southern part of the city. For three days they attacked the black residents living in the shanty settlement surrounding Fort Pickering, a Union military installation on the outskirts of the city. The rioters initially focused their attacks on the former soldiers of the Third United-States Colored Heavy Artillery regiment, which had disbanded April 30-the last of three black regiments to be mustered out of United States service at Memphis. On May 2 and 3, however, the rioters increasingly targeted the civic institutions and property of the black community of south Memphis, including schools, churches, and black-owned houses. By May 4, when federal military authorities declared martial law and detachments of white troops enforced order in the city, two whites and at-least forty-six blacks had been killed, between seventy and eighty others had been wounded, at least five black women raped, more than one hundred people (mostly black) robbed, and four churches, twelve schools and ninety-one houses burned.2 Contemporary observers attributed the violence to the unruly conduct of black soldiers in Memphis and to the longstanding animosity between blacks and the Irish, who competed for work as manual laborers. The Memphis Daily Avalarlche, for example, argued, "it is only with the negro soldiers that trouble has ever existed.... With their departure, will come order, confidence, and the good will of old days. Had we had [white troops] instead of negro troops, neither this riot, nor the many lawless acts preceding it during the past six months, would have occurred." The superintendent of the Memphis Freedmen's Bureau, Major General Benjamin P. Runkle, stressed that "there was also a conflict of labor between the Irish hackSdrivers, dray-drivers, porters, laborers, c there was a good deal of bitterness felt upon the part of the Irish, from the fact that these southern gentlemen preferred to hire negro servants." Another observer, Ewing O. Tade, a representative of the American Missionary Association, stated succinctly that "the late Memphis Riot was beyond a reasonable doubt instigated by the Irish Police of this city."3 The rioters, however, were a diverse lot, and their ethnic and occupational background does not support such a narrow, socio-economic interpretation of the









Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the relative number of foster-children in the county of Arnessysla in southern Iceland and the percentage of households including such members were investigated. And the authors tried to determine the question why children were fostered by persons other than their parents in nineteenth-century Iceland.
Abstract: Parent-child relations in the European past have attracted considerable aca demic interest since the 1960s. During the 1970s and early 1980s historical research into the subject was largely concerned with questions relating to attitudes towards children and the treatment of children in former times.1 During the 1970s and 1980s various scholars explored other issues closely related to the history of childhood. Thus, during the 1970s Peter Laslett published on parental deprivation in the English past, to mention but one example.2 Judging by the relative scarcity of publications on orphans and stepparenthood during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the subject he raised does not seem to have attracted much attention internationally.3 This changed during the latter part of the 1980s when historians increasingly began to address problems such as child abandonment, the position of orphans and relations between stepparents and stepchildren in the past.4 John Boswell has directed some attention to child abandonment in medieval Iceland,5 whereas hardly anything has been written on the subject of child abandonment, fostering and orphans in the country during the early modem and modern periods. This is somewhat surprising since during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a considerable percentage of households in the country included children other than offspring of the head of household. An investigation into family and household structures in seven Icelandic parishes between 1801 and 1816 revealed that the proportion of foster-children ranged between 2.5 per cent and 18.3 per cent of all children residing in the individual parishes.6 The position of foster-children within the family in nineteenth-century Iceland is liable to have varied considerably.7 Hypothetically it has been argued that some of them probably had the same, or a similar, status within the family as blood descendants of the couple heading it. Other may have been "private paupers" of the family, i.e. children who resided with the family (for various reasons) for a certain period of time, without the commune or their parents (or other relatives) paying for their maintenance.8 The ambition here is to shed some light on the question why children were fostered by persons other than their parents in nineteenth-century Iceland. By analyzing sources such as censuses, parish registers and catechetical registers, I shall attempt to determine the relative number of foster-children in the county of Arnessysla in southern Iceland and the percentage of households including such members. Furthermore, by investigating two groups of foster-children randomly chosen from the censuses of 1845 and 1870, I shall try to establish whether or