Philadelphia’s 200-year-old disability records show welfare reform movement’s early shift toward rationing care and punishing poor people
- Written by Nicole Lee Schroeder, Postdoctoral Fellow, Kean University
Drawing shows men making shoes at the Philadelphia Almshouse, circa 1899.Alice Barber Stephens/Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Alfred Bendiner Memorial CollectionCharles Kingley was a widower and a single father of four who lived in the Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia in 1829. He worked at a brewhouse but...

