Although much has been written about elite Philadelphians, only in recent decades have historians paid attention to the Jews and working-class blacks, the immigrant Irish, Italians, and Poles who settled in the city and gave such sections as Moyamensing, Southwark, South Philadelphia, and Kensington their vitality. In this classic of social and ethnic history, the authors draw on census schedules, court records, city directories, and tax records as well as newspaper files and other sources to give a picture of the ways in which these less-privileged groups of Philadelphians lived. What emerges is a picture of Philadelphia radically different from the conventional portrait of a staid old city.
Price: $34.95
Pages: 312
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press
Series: Pennsylvania Paperbacks
Publication Date:
29 October 1998
Trim Size: 8.50 X 5.50 in
ISBN: 9780812216707
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
HISTORY / United States / State & Local / General, History of the Americas, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Cultural & Ethnic Studies / General
"Just the kind of book that is needed. It should be stimulating to all historians interested in urban America."
— Journal of American History
Allen F. Davis has published many books, including The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society and Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890-1914. Mark Haller is the author of Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought. Both are professors of history at Temple University.
Preface to the 1998 Edition
Introduction
1. Poverty, Fear, and Continuity: An Analysis of the Poor in Late Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia
2. Residential Mobility Within the Nineteenth-Century City
3. Urbanization as a Cause of Violence: Philadelphia as a Test Case
4. Fire Companies and Gangs in Southwark: The 1840s
5. Crime Patterns in Philadelphia, 1840-70
6. Free Blacks in Antebellum Philadelphia
7. The Philadelphia Irish: Persistent Presence
8. "A Peaceful City": Public Order in Philadelphia from Consolidation Through the Civil War
9. Housing the Poor in the City of Homes: Philadelphia at the Turn of the Century
10. The Immigrant and the City: Poles, Italians, and Jews in Philadelphia, 1870-1920
11. Philadelphia's Jewish Neighborhoods
12. Philadelphia's South Italians in the 1920s
13. Recurring Themes
Suggested Readings
Index
