@article{1481423,
      recid = {1481423},
      author = {Woodall, Susan,},
      title = {Material setting and reform experience in English  institutions for fallen women, 1838-1910 : inside the  'Homes of Mercy' /},
      pages = {1 online resource (323 pages) :},
      note = {1. Introduction.2. Mission, Critique and Development.3. A  Chaste and Pleasing Elevation': Making Moral Spaces.4.  Crossing the Threshold.5. Too Bad for Anything Better?.6.  Material Religion.7. 'Short' Homes, Afterlives and Material  Continuities.8. Conclusion.},
      abstract = {Tracing the history of four English case studies, this  book explores how, from outward appearance to interior  furnishings, the material worlds of reform institutions for  fallen women reflected their moral purpose and shaped the  lived experience of their inmates. Variously known as  asylums, refuges, magdalens, penitentiaries, Houses or  Homes of Mercy, the goal of such institutions was the moral  rehabilitation of unmarried but sexually experienced fallen  women. Largely from the working-classes, such women some of  whom had been sex workers were represented in contradictory  terms. Morally tainted and a potential threat to  respectable family life, they were also worthy of pity and  in need of saving from further sin. Fuelled by rising  prostitution rates, from the early decades of the  nineteenth century the number of moral reform institutions  for fallen women expanded across Britain and Ireland.  Through a programme of laundry, sewing work and regular  religious instruction, the period of institutionalisation  and moral re-education of around two years was designed to  bring about a change in behaviour, readying inmates for  economic self-sufficiency and re-entry into society in  respectable domestic service. To achieve their goal,  institutional authorities deployed an array of ritual,  material, religious and disciplinary tools, with mixed  results. Susan Woodall is a Staff Tutor and Lecturer in  History at the Open University, UK.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1481423},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40571-6},
}