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The Dutch Republic had a broad range of means to establish an individual's identity, and a rudimentary ‘system’ of identity registration, essentially established at the local levels of town and parish. This chapter seeks to provide a description of the ways in which the Dutch established an individual's identity. The various registration methods covered almost the entire population of the Dutch Republic at some stage in their life, and it is argued that on balance identity registration in the Dutch Republic was fairly successful. The chapter contends that the degree to which identity was registered and monitored in the early modern era in the Netherlands, while certainly not wholly effective, is remarkable given the absence of a centralized state and the lack of a large bureaucracy.

This chapter is an overview of the world of the Catholic orphanage system into which Ed Rohs was placed. It opens with a comparison between the fantasies of Hollywood's orphans and the reality of life in an orphanage. The chapter describes how, until the 1960s, the Catholic orphanage system operated a silo system of childcare, separating boys and girls by age and gender. Children lived in an institution until they aged out and were sent on to the next home. Although in some ways their experiences were similar to the experiences of so-called “army brats” who endured frequent dislocations with their families, the important difference between the population of orphans who were moved and those of children born and raised by army personnel lay in the absence of consistent parent figures. With each move, institutionalized children were assigned to be supervised by different individuals—strangers to whom they had to adjust. After being discharged from the system at 18 (Ed Rohs remained until 19) some succumbed to a life of drugs and drug-related crimes but others, like Ed, overcame adversities.

Throughout U.S. history people of good have debated the issues of how to best serve the most vulnerable children in the population: How can society give impoverished, orphaned, and abandoned children the tools to become contributing members of society? Where should they live? Who will care for them? What will it cost? Who will pay? Chapter 1 describes a variety of early attempts, e.g., the Dutch Orphans Court in New Amsterdam and the first colonial poorhouse in Boston—which included the aged, alcoholic, disabled, mentally ill, unemployed, widowed, as well as children, and became the template for poorhouses built across the United States. The chapter explains the 1800s debate of “undeserving” vs “deserving” poor and the failed attempts to create a state-supported system of providing an ideal environment for every needy child. It discusses the grim results of this failure on the vulnerable children who were placed in their care.

This chapter focuses on the rising number of orphans and widows in South Carolina due to the Civil War. The number of orphans began ballooning by the summer of 1862. The number of widows started to rise equally at the same rate as the number of orphans. There were several citizens who tried to organize associations and institutions to aid widows and orphans. Major cities in South Carolina had orphanages before the war, including the Camden Orphan Society (1776) and the Ladies' Benevolent Society for Orphans and Destitute Children in Columbia (1839).

This chapter examines episcopal almsgiving, the principal sources of which were revenues from imperial subventions, church properties, special collections, and the regular offerings made by the faithful. These offerings, often referred to as first fruits, did not include tithes as they were later understood. Eloquence was essential to the bishop in raising funds for alms which he then distributed with assistance from the deacons. Such alms principally benefited a small number of Christian recipients: widows, their dependent children and other ‘orphans’, and some poorer virgins. While this form of poor relief chiefly took the form of regular distributions of food, some urban churches also founded hostels for the care of the sick destitute.

This chapter explores the ways in which the city corporately, working together with religious houses and city companies, and much assisted by charitable individuals, provided welfare support for the young, the ill, the poor, and the old. Provision was made for orphans, for the destitute poor, for the sick, those who were terminally ill, and for the old. The role played by hospitals and the medical profession in the care of the sick is examined. The gradual invasion of lay professionals into areas previously the exclusive domain of the Church is observed and discussed.

This chapter explains how catalogue retailers successfully expropriated working class social networks. Mail order evolved from an experiment with draw clubs to a billion pound credit base industry. Its mainly female agents were largely socially rather than financially motivated, and they embedded the catalogue in many social networks. However, until the 1930s catalogue retailers were reluctant to appoint female agents due to concerns about the legal status of married women's credit bargains. Credit assessment and policing by agents allowed mail order to keep bad debts at low levels. Agents were typically of a higher social status than customers and acted as a gatekeeper to credit for them. From the 1980s, increasing female employment, greater access to other forms of credit, and declining levels of trust in working-class neighbourhoods created ‘credit orphans’ of some former customers. Together with computerization and credit scoring, this was a significant factor in financial exclusion.

The demise of the Colored Orphan Asylum at Riverdale was a sad event in the history of an institution that dated to 1836. The founders and early managers were mainly women who sought to do God's will by caring for abused and forsaken black children. They took on this mammoth effort at a time when African Americans were shunned by society. Oppressive laws prohibited much of their daily contact with their fellow white residents unless they were in a subordinate position. The white women, many of whom personally abhorred the horrors of slavery and who wished to do God's will by feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, did so at the risk of “unsexing” themselves in the eyes of their less Christian contemporaries. Men and women of means such as John Jacob Astor, R. H. Macy, Theodore Roosevelt Sr., William Jay, Anna Jay, Caroline Stokes, and many others contributed generously to the betterment of the orphan black child.

In response to a general problem in the fourth‐century Church arising from ambitious or unworthy petitions submitted to the imperial court by individual bishops, seven of the Serdican canons are devoted to specifying appropriate causes for petition and for regulating the ways in which they should be presented. Canons 8 (Greek VII) and 10b draw a distinction between self‐seeking petitions, which are condemned, and petitions concerning widows, orphans, those who suffer injustice, and exiles, and stipulates that no bishop shall go to the court unless he is summoned or invited by the emperor. Canon 9a (Greek VIII) directs that the petitions should be delivered to the court by the petitioning bishop's deacon, and canon 9b (Greek IXa) adds that the petitions should first be approved by the metropolitan bishop of the province. Canon 10a (Greek IXb) makes a provision for bishops who have petitions and who are going to Rome that the Roman bishop may examine and send approved petitions to the court. This chapter also considers the development of the office of the metropolitan bishop in the East in the light of the evidence provided by Canon 9b (Greek IXa).

Trevecca College, founded by Lady Huntingdon in 1768, was one of the first institutions to be concerned exclusively with training for Christian ministry; it was significant both because of the influence that its achievements (and shortcomings) had upon later forms of ministerial education, and for the impact on evangelical and other congregations of the more than two hundred students who attended Trevecca in the twenty-three years of its existence. The chapter discusses the origins of the college, the initial plans for its curriculum and staffing, and the backgrounds and recruitment of the students. It describes the often haphazard nature of the educational regime at Trevecca (including the conflicting demands of study and preaching); the college’s involvement in foreign missions; its theology; and the diverse sources of authority and influence to which the students were subject. The successor to Trevecca opened at Cheshunt in 1792; its ground rules (particularly clearly defined courses of study, and strict limits on outside preaching) showed that some of the lessons of Trevecca had been learned.

This chapter surveys the mostly “illegitimate” theatrical forms in which The Thousand and One Nights appeared on stage between 1707 and c.1830, arguing that these dramas of state, farces, burlettas, melodramas, romances, and pantomimes effectively created popular Georgian Orientalism. Throughout this period, episodes drawn from the Arabian Nights facilitated critiques of domestic high politics while also establishing a vision of the Orient as despotic, wealthy, luxurious, and sensual. In the early decades of the 19th century however, dramatizations of “Sinbad the Sailor,” “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” and “Aladdin” gradually supplanted tales and episodes that allegorized domestic politics, a change owing to the so-called orphan tales' ability to symbolically negotiate the tensions accompanying the sudden wealth creation and social dislocation associated with nascent industrial capitalism.

Within the second half of the code are social and humanitarian commandments concerned with the poor, the widow and orphan, and the stranger who are not to be exploited, but must be supported by social welfare. These concerns are expressed in regulations regarding the practice of usury, fair treatment in a court of law, fair labor practices, and animal welfare. There are various apodictic prohibitions and injunctions on religious matters, including one that has been linked to the practice of child sacrifice, to which special attention is given. The last group of religious injunctions deals with the Sabbath and festival laws. Many of the laws within this half of the Covenant Code have their counterparts within the other biblical codes, as well as the larger biblical tradition, which call for careful comparative analysis.

This chapter analyses how Marianne, the orphan heroine of Marivaux's novel La Vie de Marianne, manipulates the language of gratitude in order to secure the social recognition she believes she deserves. Although she is unable to prove her noble birth, by displaying a refined appreciation of the favors she receives she turns humiliating obligation into a self-validating evidence of high status. She transforms the hierarchical dynamic of benefaction into a mutual and more egalitarian exchange of tendresse reminiscent of the noble romances of Madeleine de Scudéry. By contrast, Marianne's noble friend Tervire's inability to devise successful recognition scenes (Terence Cave, Paul Ricœur) makes her vulnerable to social degradation. The chapter argues that this double plot illustrates Marivaux's own reflection on his status as an author dependent on, and yet empowered by, the patronage of influential women.

This chapter charts the tendency to represent China as a space of inauthenticity, or fictionality, that emerged in the 18th century with the decline in the dominance and credibility of Jesuit missionary reports. However, this new preoccupation with the fragility and ephemerality of ‘China’ paradoxically allowed it to continue to play a robust and elastic role in the British cultural imagination. The analysis of fictional texts about China contributes to the increasing seriousness with which the cult of ‘chinoiserie’ is being treated by economic and cultural historians. The chapter considers four groups of fictional sources, first, oriental tales with a ‘Chinese’ setting by Thomas–Simon Gueullette, ‘Hoamchi-Vam’, Thomas Percy, and Horace Walpole; second, the group of tragic plays about Chinese ‘orphans’ written by figures as diverse as Voltaire and Elkanah Settle; third, the representation of China as an empire of ‘Dulness’ in poetry and fiction relating to Alexander Pope's Dunciad; and fourth, published letters written in the voice of the Chinese informant, of which Oliver Goldsmith's Citizen of the World is the most impressive, if late, example.

Chapter 6 follows Rusch’s work in army intelligence, where he was in close contact with a number of Japanese prime ministers and high officials. Many officials were cooperating with the American effort to ferret out Communists, and Rusch was part of an administration that bent the rules of democracy by supporting pro-American Japanese candidates while hindering their opponents. At the same time, Rusch was working to restore institutions of the Nippon Seikokai, the Episcopal Church of Japan, and he used his authority as an army officer to forward his various projects, including the rebuilding of Seisen-Ryo. He was accused by his superiors of abusing his power to help the church and rebuild the lodge. Rusch covertly aided the heiress Miki Sawada in caring for mixed-race children born of sexual liaisons between Japanese women and Allied personnel, and he routinely raided American supplies to help Sawada feed the displaced children. Rusch also played a minor role in ushering in the McCarthy era in America, providing anti-Communist intelligence to his superiors and helping defend the army and his boss, General Charles A. Willoughby, against charges that Willoughby’s operatives smeared an American citizen as a Communist agent.