This book offers a compelling and extremely welcome examination of child welfare in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Belfast, focusing in particular on the experiences of children and families engaging with the poor law system. As the authors point out, throughout most of the second half of the twentieth century, around 12,000 children were contained in workhouses across the country, and at times of distress this figure was much higher. Emerging as a key outcome from the AHRC-funded project ‘Welfare and public health in Belfast and the north of Ireland 1800–1972’, the book contains nine chapters, each examining the different spaces occupied by the ‘workhouse child’: spaces of surveillance, of resistance and places of engagement that intersected with both the state and middle-class society.

From the outset, the authors acknowledge how difficult it is to locate the voice of the child and the experience of children in the workhouse. Concerns around agency, the authenticity of children’s voices and experiences of how it ‘felt’ to be a child exposed to the workhouse are engaged with throughout, in keeping with many debates within the history of childhood and youth, and by historians of the poor. In an attempt to address this challenge, the authors have examined and read across an enormous array of primary sources, from recently digitised collections to institutional records, newspapers, pamphlets, commissions of inquiry and contemporary reports. Set in the context of a city dealing with industrial growth, sectarian division and the glaring realities of poverty, the authors highlight how the promises of city life often dissolved into hardship for the most vulnerable, especially children. Bookended by the experience of one particular boy, Lawrence McA., the underlying message remains that even for those who escaped the stigma of being a ‘workhouse child’, the experience of being institutionalised, and at times neglected, were still present. The extremely difficult positions of families in poverty and destitution are also highlighted, having to make ‘strategic’ decisions to place one or more of their children in the workhouse as they could not afford to keep them.

The class divisions in Belfast at the time are similarly well explored, and the spaces and sites of ‘encounter’ occupied by children — be it the workhouse, the foster home or the colonies — are important sites of engagement, resistance and power struggles. There is a conscious attempt by the authors to balance the role and responsibilities of the institution with the actual lived experience of limited choices of those engaging with it. As we move through the different sites or institutional frameworks of the poor law, a strong sense remains that there are families navigating these systems. The concept of an ‘economy of makeshifts’ emerges as a central theme, showing how impoverished families engaged with welfare structures in resourceful, if often painful, ways.

The inclusion of perspectives on the role of women inspectors and boarding out committees is an important feature underscoring the gendered dimensions of child welfare oversight, particularly in the later half of the period. As the authors point out, the women appointed to Belfast’s board of guardians following the Poor Law Guardians (Ireland) (Women) Act, 1896, became prominent in changes to how things were overseen and monitored. However, these early bureaucratic efforts to document, categorise and manage poor children through case files and closer surveillance would constitute an increase in state intervention in family life, and an increase in judgements made against foster families and those families from which the children were coming. Belfast was one of only three Irish poor law unions to have established a history sheet committee prior to the First World War. In the absence of the records of the committee, the authors have been creative in piecing together the committee’s work through other archives.

Overall, this study makes an important contribution to Irish social history, welfare history, the history of the poor and the history of children and childhood. It demonstrates how welfare policies not only shaped children’s immediate lives but also left lasting imprints on family structures and social attitudes. While the research and writing is rigorous and it is written for an academic audience, the writing style is quite accessible, and it is arguably an empathetic work using individual families and lived experiences to draw attention to Belfast’s poorest children.