Table Of ContentILLICIT MOBILITIES AND WANDERING LIVES: INDIGENT
TRANSIENCY IN THE MID-ATLANTIC, 1816-1850
Thesis submitted for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
at the University of Leicester
by
Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan, BA, MA
School of History
University of Leicester
2016
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Abstract
Illicit Mobilities and Wandering Lives: Indigent Transiency in the
Mid-Atlantic, 1816-1850
Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan
This dissertation is a social history of indigent transiency, written using the records of
criminal justice systems and poor relief infrastructure in order to examine the lives,
experiences, and socio-political significance of vagrants and pauper migrants in the
Mid-Atlantic between 1816 and 1850. It examines the causes for and consequences of
illicit mobilities in this period, and argues that the policing of vagrancy and pauper
mobility demonstrate key interpretations of the role of the state in defining and
regulating class. It is the first study to link conceptually indigent transiency with the
policing of vagrancy, limitations on the movement of African Americans, forced
transportation of the wandering poor, and management of the spread of disease in this
period.
This study follows the vagrants and pauper migrants whose geographical
movements were at odds with settlement laws, state constitutions, and welfare policies.
It charts how the itinerant poor were forcibly transported to places deemed by the state
to be their legal settlement through the process of pauper removal long after most
historians acknowledge removal to have ended. It also considers the ways in which
fugitive slaves and runaway servants experienced a transition from the oppression of an
unfree labour status to the oppression of poverty after participating in illicit forms of
mobility.
This dissertation advances one central argument: that indigent transiency, in its
many shapes and through the varied forms of its management, contributed significantly
to contemporary understandings of citizenship, community, labour status, freedom of
movement, the spread of disease, and the transformation of punishment in the early
American republic. It proposes that indigent transiency was among the most important
factors in determining how the poor lived, interacted with, and were viewed by local
and state governments and their representatives, both under the law and by law
enforcement, in this period.
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Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks go to my supervisors Dr. James Campbell and Dr. Elizabeth Clapp
for their guidance and support in the research and writing of this dissertation. I am
especially grateful to James for his keen understanding of the topic, astute analytical
approach, and good cheer in our meetings. I’m grateful to Elizabeth, as well, for
meeting and talking about the project with me at conferences across the US and UK
over the last few years. This dissertation has been significantly improved by their
feedback and comments, as well as those of the departmental annual assessors, Clare
Anderson and George Lewis.
While conceptualising, researching, and writing this dissertation, I was fortunate
enough to receive essential financial support from the following organisations, through
grants, fellowships, and employment: the Peter Parish Memorial Fund awarded by the
Association of British American Nineteenth Century Historians, the College of Arts,
Humanities, and Law at the University of Leicester, the Society of Historians of the
Early American Republic, the Maryland Historical Society, Drexel University, and the
Archives of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.
I am grateful for the assistance of archivists across New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware, who aided a fellow archivist and researcher in
locating documents that others considered impossible to locate or, indeed, non-existent.
Profound thanks also to all of the historians who kindly shared their time, interest, and
enthusiasm at conferences and other events over the last few years, especially at
SHEAR and BrANCH. The conversations I was fortunate enough to have with Sarah
L.H. Gronningsater, Seth Rockman, Clare Anderson, Christian DeVito, Mike Wise,
Debjani Bhattacharyya, Thavolia Glymph, Josh Greenberg, Hilary Miller, Bill Wagner,
and Kirsten Wood over the past few years have been challenging, helpful, and have
improved my work immeasurably.
My sincere thanks go to friends from Queen’s University Belfast, who in many
ways shaped my thinking about the topics discussed in this dissertation: Prof. Catherine
Clinton, Louise Canavan, and Jonathan Lande. Catherine has offered far more
intellectual, academic, and career-related support, not to mention cups of tea and
positive chutzpah, than anyone could be expected to, and I remain in her debt.
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Abigail Raymond and Christopher Schaeffer, beloved friends conveniently
located near the archives in Philadelphia, provided me with countless opportunities to
sleep on their Ikea couch and listened to tales of archival woe. Lynne Calamia, Quaker
historian and Philadelphia transplant, provided invaluable conversation, emotional
support, and vegan cookies from Wholefoods. Sincere thanks also to the Jordies, who
provided frequent chances to hug their Boston Terriers, to the Kulfans, who offered
unflagging confidence, and, of course, to the O’Brassills, who never doubted me for a
second.
Most of all, I am grateful to my husband and comrade Christopher Kulfan for
providing life-sustaining cooking, good humour, support, and sanity while I worked on
this project. He accompanied me on numerous jaunts to archives and conferences,
tolerated my frequent absences, and both enthusiastically and carefully read the full
draft. All he asked for in exchange was homemade pizza and lifelong partnership. I
intend to continue to provide both.
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Table of contents
Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 2
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... 3
Table of contents ............................................................................................................... 5
List of tables ...................................................................................................................... 7
List of figures .................................................................................................................... 8
Abbreviations .................................................................................................................... 9
Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................... 10
Chapter 2: 'She is doubtless a very vagrant': Poverty and Mobility on the Legal
Landscape ....................................................................................................................... 33
Anti-migratory Policies ............................................................................................... 39
Vagrants, Citizenship, and Voting Rights ................................................................... 47
Vagrancy as Defined and Connoted ............................................................................ 52
Conclusion................................................................................................................... 58
Chapter 3: 'A wandering life': The Physical Landscape of Indigent Transiency ............ 60
Cartographies of Transiency ....................................................................................... 63
‘Real Poverty!!!,’ Spatiality, and Temporality ........................................................... 75
Population Shifts among Nineteenth Century Indigent Transients ............................. 79
Conclusion................................................................................................................... 88
Chapter 4: 'The removal of so many human beings…like felons': Institutional Mobility
and the Poor .................................................................................................................... 90
Law and Process in Pauper Removal .......................................................................... 92
Settlement, Removal, and Vagrancy ......................................................................... 101
Experiencing Pauper Removal .................................................................................. 109
Conclusion................................................................................................................. 113
Chapter 5: ‘Since he was free’: Vagabondage, race, and emancipation ...................... 115
Fugitive Slaves as Vagrants ...................................................................................... 119
Geographies of Servitude .......................................................................................... 128
Perceptions of Black Transiency ............................................................................... 136
Regulating Indigent Transiency through Manumission ............................................ 140
Conclusion................................................................................................................. 145
Chapter 6: ‘Punishment for their misfortunes’: Discretion, Incarceration, and
Resistance ..................................................................................................................... 147
Public Justice ............................................................................................................. 149
Vagrants in the Almshouse, Vagrants in the Prison .................................................. 156
Legal Resistance ........................................................................................................ 165
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Conclusion................................................................................................................. 172
Chapter 7: ‘It was amongst the vagrant class…that cholera was most fatal’: Mobility,
poverty, and disease ...................................................................................................... 175
Corporeality of Indigent Transiency ......................................................................... 177
Vectors of Disease ..................................................................................................... 182
Perpetrators and Victims ........................................................................................... 185
Conclusion................................................................................................................. 196
Chapter 8: Conclusion .................................................................................................. 198
Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 203
Primary Sources ........................................................................................................ 203
Secondary Sources .................................................................................................... 211
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List of tables
Table 2.1: Convictions recorded by justices of the peace in Kingston, New York,
1839-1844
Table 3.1: Non-Resident Paupers in Philadelphia Almshouse
Table 3.2: Vagrants in Philadelphia Prison Population
Table 4.1: Distances Paupers Removed from Philadelphia, 1822-1825
Table 6.1: Monthly Census of Vagrants in the Philadelphia Almshouse, 1827-
1833
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List of figures
Figure 3.1: Map showing trajectory of indigent transient Joseph Robinson
Figure 3.2: Trajectories of 50 Indigent Transients, 1822-1831
Figure 3.3: Trajectories of 50 Female Indigent Transients, 1822-1836
Figure 3.4: Trajectories of 50 African American Indigent Transients, 1822-1836
Figure 6.1: Map showing indigent transient Mary Porter’s repeated removals
Figure 7.1: Pamphlet documenting the events at Arch Street Prison during the
1832 cholera epidemic
Figure 7.2: Encyclopaedia entry for ‘epidemic cholera’ featuring the vagrants in
Arch Street Prison
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Abbreviations
PCA Philadelphia City Archives
GPP Records of the Guardians of the Poor, PCA
EXPA Examinations of Paupers, Guardians of the Poor, PCA
VAG Vagrancy Dockets, Philadelphia Prisons System, PCA
MCR Medical Case Records, GPP, PCA
HTCA Huntington Town Clerk’s Archives, NY
UCCA Ulster County Clerk’s Archives, NY
DPA Delaware Public Archives
MSA Maryland State Archives
WCA Westchester County Archives, NY
MDHS Maryland Historical Society
NYCM New York City Municipal Archives
PPL Philadelphia Public Ledger
PI Philadelphia Inquirer
LCHS Lancaster County Historical Society, PA
PH Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies
PMHB Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
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Chapter 1: Introduction
In 1841, a young Scottish-born woman named Isabella Stewart donned an outfit of
men’s clothing, walked to Liverpool, and hired on to a ship’s crew under the name of
‘Billy Stewart.’ She passed ‘as a sailor boy…dressed in the habiliments, neatly rigged
from top to toe’ and ‘actually performed the duty of a lad on board…for several days’
before the crew’s suspicions led to the revealing of her identity as ‘a healthy, stout
female, 16 years of age.’ Stewart was punished for her use of false pretences by the
captain, A. Turley, with passing the rest of the voyage in steerage wearing ‘female
apparel.’ Newspapers throughout the antebellum United States reported on Stewart’s
escapades, which appealed to readers for the amusement offered by Stewart’s trade on
her gender. But underpinning the interest stimulated by the thought of a dainty female
performing the hard labour of seafaring was a question of the relationship between
subsistence and travel: according to the National Gazette, Stewart was ‘a destitute girl,
1
who had taken this method to get a passage to America.’ Participation in the
antebellum Atlantic world’s economy of makeshifts sometimes required going to great
2
lengths, and often, as it did for Stewart, great distances.
Stewart’s participation in a form of illicit mobility involved a complete
revamping of her identity for the sake of increasing her likelihood of cobbling together
a living for herself, like so many other would-be Americans. But unlike many single-
paragraph nineteenth century newspaper sensations, Stewart’s notoriety was not limited
to this one dramatic episode. Over a year after her arrival in the United States, she
graced headlines in Philadelphia as ‘The Sailor Girl’ about ‘whose adventures…a pretty
romantic story’ had been told by the press, when the city police reported committing her
as a vagrant. The press was counting on the public’s remembrance of her exploits by
describing her as ‘the girl that came a year or two since with Capt. Turley, from
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England, habited as a sailor.’
1
‘A Would Be Sailor’, Niles’ Weekly Register (Baltimore, 1841), vols 59-60, p.368.
2
This term is used to describe the varying means employed by the poor to make ends meet, notably in S.
King and A. Tomkins (eds), The Poor in England, 1700-1850: An Economy of Makeshifts (Manchester,
2003).
3
‘City Police’, PPL, 6 June 1843.
