Soup and Reform: Improving the Poor and Reforming Immigrants through Soup Kitchens 1870–1910

Charitable soup kitchens proliferated in nineteenth-century Europe and North America. Three soup kitchens operating in England between 1870 and 1910 are compared; two were Jewish soup kitchens, the other was an English (non-Jewish) charity. Institutional buildings are often analyzed using Foucault-derived models of control based on surveillance and punishment. Such models may not explain fully charities, their buildings, or their method of reform. Historical archaeology can show how charity that coerces or dehumanizes the poor is less likely to create lasting improvements in the behaviors it is seeking to reform than charity that adopts a more positive approach.