Professor Samantha Williams

Institute of Continuing Education (ICE)

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Biography

I am Professor of Social History and Academic Director for History. I oversee all history courses at PACE. I am also Course Director for the MSt in History and contribute to the Advanced Diploma in Research Theory and Practice and the Advanced Diploma in Research in the Arts/Sciences.

I am a member of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, the Economic History Society, and the Royal Historical Society.

Qualifications:

BA (Hons) History, University of Lancaster

MSc Economic and Social History, University of Oxford

PhD History, University of Cambridge

Research

My main research interest is the history of poverty and poor relief in England and Wales, 1601-1911. I have written two monographs: Poverty, gender and life-cycle under the English Poor Law, 1760-1834 (Royal Historical Society, Boydell and Brewer, 2011) and Unmarried motherhood in London, 1700-1850: pregnancy, the poor law and provision (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), and co-edited a collection of essays: A. Levene, T. Nutt, and S. K. Williams (eds.), Illegitimacy in Britain 1700-1920 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

I have also researched the history of poor law medical practitioners and nurses, cohabitation, the London Foundling Hospital, infanticide cases at the Old Bailey, and plague in Cambridge, in numerous articles and book chapters. I am currently working on two projects: one on early life assurance in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the other on the history of the workhouse, 1690-1834.

Selected Publications

JOURNAL ARTICLES

'Plague and poor relief in Cambridge, 1665–1666', Local Population Studies, 105, pp.47-55 , 2020
'Paupers behaving badly: punishment in the Victorian workhouse', Journal of British Studies, 59 , pp.764-792 , 2020
'The maintenance of bastard children in London, 1790–1834', Economic History Review, 69, 3, pp. 945–971 , 2016
S. Williams, ‘Unmarried mothers and the new poor law in Hertfordshire’, Local Population Studies, 91, 27-43. , 2013
'The Experience of Pregnancy and Childbirth for Unmarried Mothers in London, 1760-1866', Women's History Review, 20, 1, pp.55-72 , 2011
'Practitioners' Income and Provision for the Poor: parish doctors in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries', Social History of Medicine, 18: 2, pp.1-28 , 2005
'Earnings, Poor Relief and the Economy of Makeshifts: Bedfordshire in the early years of the New Poor Law', Rural History, 16: 1, pp.21-52 , 2005
'Malthus, Marriage and Poor Law Allowances Revisited: a Bedfordshire case study, 1770-1834', Agricultural History Review, 52, pp.56-82 , 2004
'Life Course and Lifecycle: reconstructing the experience of poverty in the time of the Old Poor Law', co-authored with Susannah Ottaway, Archives, 23, pp.19-29 , 1998
‘Urban governance and the impact of plague on everyday life in Cambridge, 1625’, Social History, 50:1 (2025), pp. 1-34 , 2025

BOOKS

Unmarried Motherhood in the Metropolis, 1700–1850: Pregnancy, the Poor Law and Provision (Palgrave Macmillan) , 2018
Poverty, Gender and Life-cycle under the English Poor Law, c.1760-1834 (Royal Historical Society, Boydell and Brewer) , 2011
A. Levene, T. Nutt, and S.K. Williams (eds.), Illegitimacy in Britain 1700-1920 (Palgrave Macmillan) , 2005

BOOK CHAPTERS

'"They lived together as Man and Wife": plebeian cohabitation, illegitimacy, and broken relationships in London, 1700-1840', in R. Probert (ed.), Changing Relationships? Cohabitation and births outside marriage, 1600-2012 (Palgrave Macmillan) , 2014
'Support for the elderly during the "crisis of the Old Poor Law", c.1790-1834', in C Briggs, P Kitson, and S Thompson (eds.), Population, welfare and economic change (Boydell and Brewer) , 2014
'Britain, 1750-2000', in E Vanhaute, I. Devos, T. Lambrecht (eds.), Rural Economy and Society in North-Western Europe, 500-2000, Making a Living: Family, Income and Labour (Brepols), pp.70-95 , 2012
'"I was Forced to Leave my Place to Hide my Shame": the living arrangements of unmarried mothers in London in the early nineteenth century', in J. McEwan and P. Sharpe (eds.), Accommodating Poverty: the housing and living arrangements of the English poor, c. 1600-1850 (Palgrave Macmillan), pp.101-219 , 2010
T.S. Ashton Prize from the Economic History Society: 'Poor Relief, Labourers' Households and Living Standards in Rural England c.1770-1834: a Bedfordshire case-study', Economic History Review LVIII, 3, pp.485-519 , 2005
'Caring for the Sick Poor: poor law nurses in Bedfordshire, c.1770-1834' in Keith Snell, Penny Lane and Neil Raven (eds.), Women, Work and Wages, c. 1650-1900 (Boydell and Brewer), pp.141-169 , 2004

OTHER

‘Poverty, gender and old age in the Victorian and Edwardian workhouse’, Continuity and Change, 37 (2022), pp. 389-421 , 2023

Memberships

Management Committee, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, University of Cambridge

English Local History Advisory Board, University of Leicester

Poverty project consultant, Adam Digital

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Economic History Society member