Abstract
Much of the excitement generated in Britain since 2007 by the York Archaeological Trust’s excavations of the city’s Hungate neighborhood, which Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree characterized as a “slum” in his pioneering poverty survey of 1901, derives from the unexpected volume and variety of material evidence uncovered about life in a poor community within a modern industrial city. Such material evidence and its often uncertain relationships to other historical data can enhance analysis by complicating understanding of the past, rather than echoing conventional wisdom. Findings from Hungate can thus contribute to nuanced understandings of urban social disadvantage not only at the neighborhood level in this one particular British city, but at the larger scales of analysis that encompass the growth of cities and interacting urban regions in Britain and around the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These understandings have contemporary relevance for a world in which over half of humanity now lives in urban areas, as misconceptions about “slums” continue to undermine efforts to reduce urban inequality.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Booth, C. (1903). Life and Labour of the People in London, 5 vols, Macmillan, London.
Chen, S., and Ravallion, M. (2008). The Developing World is Poorer Than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight Against Poverty, Policy Research Working Paper 4703, World Bank, Washington DC.
Darnton, R. (1985). The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, Vintage, New York.
Dyos, H. J. (1967). The slums of Victorian London. Victorian Studies 11: 5–40.
Gilbert, A. (2007). The return of the slum: Does language matter? International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31: 697–713.
Gilbert, A. (2009). Extreme thinking about slums and slum dwellers: A critique. SAIS Review 29: 35–48.
Glassie, H. (1982). Passing the Time in Ballymenone, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Geertz, C. (1983). Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, Basic, New York.
Hall, M. (2000). Archaeology and the Modern World, Routledge, London.
Hall, M., and Silliman, S. W. (eds.) (2006). Historical Archaeology, Blackwell, Oxford.
Lampard, E. E. (1973). The urbanizing world. In Dyos, H. J., and Wolff, M. (eds.), The Victorian City: Images and Realities, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, pp. 3–57.
Mayne, A. (1993). The Imagined Slum: Newspaper Representation in Three Cities, 1870–1914, Leicester University Press, Leicester.
Mayne, A. (2008). On the edges of history: Reflections on historical archaeology. American Historical Review 113: 93–118.
Mayne, A. (2009). Strange entanglements: Landscapes and historical imagination. In Somerville, M., Power, K., and de Carteret, P. (eds.), Landscapes and Learning: Place Studies for a Global World, Sense, Rotterdam, pp. 175–194.
Mayne, A., and Lawrence, S. (1999). Ethnographies of place: A new urban history research agenda. Urban History 26: 325–348.
Mayne, A., and Murray, T. (eds.) (2001). The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Mayne, A., Murray, T., and Lawrence, S. (2000). Historic sites: Melbourne’s “Little Lon. Australian Historical Studies 31: 131–151.
Murray, T. (2006). Integrating archaeology and history at the “Commonwealth Block”: “Little Lon” and Casselden Place. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 10: 395–413.
Murray, T., and Crook, P. (2005). Exploring the archaeology of the modern city: Issues of scale, integration and complexity. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 9: 89–109.
Murray, T., and Mayne, A. (2001). Imaginary landscapes: Reading Melbourne’s “Little Lon. In Mayne, A., and Murray, T. (eds.), The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 89–105.
Praetzellis, M., and Praetzellis, A. (eds.) (2009). South of the Market: Historical Archaeology of 3 San Francisco Neighborhoods, The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge West Approach Project, vol. 2, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA.
Public Record Office Victoria. (1880). Inward Registered Correspondence to the Chief Commissioner of Police, VPRS 937, Unit 303, Bundle 3. October 19.
Roberts, R. (1990). The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century, Penguin, London.
Rowntree, B. S. (1902). Poverty: A Study of Town Life, Macmillan, London.
Symonds, J. (2009). The poverty trap? Abject and object perspectives on the lives of slum dogs and other down-and-outs. Presentation given at the “Poverty in Depth: New International Perspectives” Symposium in York, July.
Turner, V. (1985). On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience, University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Wilson, V. (2007). Rich in All but Money: Life in Hungate 1900–1938, York Archaeological Trust, York.
Yamin, R. (ed.) (2002). Tales of Five Points: Working-Class Life in Nineteenth-Century New York, 6 vols., John Milner and Associates, West Chester, PA.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mayne, A. Beyond Metrics: Reappraising York’s Hungate “Slum”. Int J Histor Archaeol 15, 553–562 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-011-0155-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-011-0155-9