The "Lower Sort": Philadelphia's Laboring People, 1750–1800

by Billy Gordon Smith

This book recreates the daily lives of laboring men and women in America's premier urban center during the second half of the eighteenth century. Billy G. Smith demonstrates how the "lower sort" (as they were called by their contemporaries) struggled to carve out meaningful lives during an era of vast change stretching from the Seven Years' War, through the turbulent events surrounding the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution, into the first decade of the new nation.

Genres: History

272 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1990

Reviews

[Andrew Johnson]

Smith is an excellent scholar, who applies a great amount of quantitative data to construct an amazing historical narrative of what life was like for the urban poor in the late eighteenth century. A must read for anyone interested in class, labor, and early American urban history.

[Poppy]

Smith reconstructs the daily lives of the working class majority in 18th century Philadelphia. He uses extensive quantitative data, and utilizes “limited prosopography” to reconstruct the lives of individuals who have otherwise been left out of historical sources and documents. He covers aspects of their daily life such as the local neighborhood, employment, households, material goods and more. There is clearly a rich and deep amount of work done–and Smith examined over 50,000 people for this research. It makes for a very intimate read, however, its disappointing that women feature only as side pieces to men. Nonetheless, a nice microhistory to read, and I especially enjoyed the opening chapter which took you down a sensory experience of the "lower sorts" streets.

[Raven Jane]

who up n wanting to talk about the eternality of wealth disparity & common misconceptions of the workers’ lot?