Voices of Ulster's Poor: Charitable Requests, 1850s-1920s

The aim of the project is to examine both written and oral petitions made by the poor of Ulster to various charitable organisations and individuals during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It seeks not just to comprehend which groups of society felt the need to resort to this course of action, and what conditions and challenges led them to it. It also looks more deeply at the petitions themselves, in an attempt to draw out the voices of the poor and foreground their individual, lived experiences of poverty as they described it. The research will explore what made petitions successful through an analysis of the strategies, language and rhetorical devices used, and any recurring themes which arise.