ABSTRACT

This article uses two of the largest children’s residential welfare institutions operating in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a lens through which to explore the significance of animals and pets in the domestic and familial life of poor children. Using institutional periodicals, the article examines how institutions employed animals as pedagogical and politicised tools to shape children’s emotions and behaviours and to construct idealised notions about family life and childhood. Examination of institutional photographs and children’s correspondence highlights how animals featured in the everyday lives of institutionalised children, and the meanings that young people invested in their relationships with these animals. By examining working-class children’s engagement with animals, the article makes an important contribution to the rapidly expanding scholarship exploring inter-species relationships in nineteenth-century Britain, which has hitherto largely focused on middle-class pet keeping. Meanwhile, consideration of the use of pets as pedagogical tools for poor children in the institutional setting has further implications for and makes new contributions to the history of emotions and the history of the family, providing new insight into the social, emotional and material experiences of childhood in the out-of-home and alternative ‘family’ setting.

摘要

本文以 19 世纪和 20 世纪初运营的两家最大的儿童寄宿福利机构为镜头，探讨动物和宠物在贫困儿童家庭和家庭生活中的意义。文章使用机构期刊研究了机构如何利用动物作为教育和政治工具来塑造儿童的情绪和行为，并构建关于家庭生活和童年的理想化观念。对机构照片和儿童信件的检查突出了动物在机构儿童日常生活中的特征，以及年轻人在与这些动物的关系中投入的意义。通过检查工人阶级儿童与动物的接触，这篇文章为探索 19 世纪英国物种间关系的迅速扩大的学术做出了重要贡献，该学术迄今为止主要集中在中产阶级饲养宠物上。同时，考虑在机构环境中使用宠物作为贫困儿童的教育工具，对情感史和家庭史有进一步的影响并做出新的贡献，为他们的社会、情感和物质体验提供了新的视角。在户外和另类“家庭”环境中的童年。