Arts and Humanities Commons^™

‘The Healing Hand Laid On A Great Wound:’ The Elberfeld System And The Transformation Of Poverty In Germany, Britain, And The United States, Rebekah O'Zell Mcmillan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation employs a transnational analysis to focus on historical perceptions of poverty and the development of private and public welfare in the modern era. This research places the emergence of early poverty relief schemes within a broader transatlantic context by studying the relationships among social reformers in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. This work has two primary objectives. First, it focuses on the Elberfeld Poor Relief System a nineteenth and early twentieth century German innovation emphasizing local poor relief and community responsibility, which transformed poor relief into an efficient structure. Second, the Elberfeld System was instrumental in …