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Julie-Marie Strange is Professor in Modern British History at Durham University.

Thrift (and 'self help') formed the bedrock of nineteenth and early twentieth century norms about social worth. It was enshrined by the state (the New Poor Law) and welfare agencies as the thing that separated the 'deserving' from the 'undeserving' poor. The apparent logic of thrift continues to enable many historians of working-class life to participate in treating the 'undeserving' poor (the so-called 'rough', pauperised, 'feckless', underclass) as if social abjection was separate to the constitution of the 'working' class.

This paper examines the perils of taking the logic of thrift for granted. First, it identifies the ways in which thrift acquired sacred or 'enchanted' qualities during the nineteenth century and its related consequences. While the doctrine of thrift could be appropriated for heterodox ends, it also created popular consent for stigmatising the thriftless as undeserving of welfare. Second, it argues that for some working-class people, there was a compelling logic to rejecting thrift. Thriftlessness could represent a positive choice (an act of commission rather than omission) that exposed 'respectability' as a false god and troubled naturalised hierarchies of social worth.

Julie-Marie Strange is Professor of Modern British History at Durham University. Mostly a Victorianist, her previous projects include books on Death, Grief and Poverty; Fatherhood and the British Working Class; The Charity Market - making humanitarianism; The Invention of the Modern Dog; and Pets in the making of modern Britain. Ostensibly diverse, the projects all address inequalities of one kind or another (and, latterly, justify inordinate amounts of time spent with dogs). She is currently developing outputs from a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship on emotion, class and money in working-class life in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.