This comparative learn gathers jointly new learn by means of neighborhood historians into facets of welfare in Hertfordshire spanning 4 centuries and concentrating on cities and villages around the county, together with Ashwell, Cheshunt, Hertford, Pirton, and Royston, among many others. In so doing it makes a necessary contribution to the present debate concerning the spatial and chronological version within the personality of welfare regimes inside of unmarried counties, not to mention extra generally. in addition to viewing terrible reduction geographically and chronologically, the ebook additionally considers the therapy of specific teams reminiscent of the elderly, the mad, kids, and the unemployed, and indicates how, in the constraints of the proper welfare legislation, each one team was once handled otherwise, giving a extra nuanced photo than has maybe been the case ahead of. The overarching query that the booklet makes an attempt to respond to is how successfully Hertfordshire cared for these in want. With chapters on madhouses, workhouses, qualified commercial faculties, the Foundling clinic, pensions, and therapy, the ebook covers a truly large variety of themes in which a fancy photograph emerges. whereas a few officers appear to have been pushed by means of a comparatively slender experience in their duties to the terrible and susceptible, others seem to have adapted welfare programs to their unique wishes. certainly, self-interest performed a component: if the weakest electorate have been good controlled, vagrancy can be lessened, the unfold of sickness contained, and keep watch over maintained over the price of taking care of the bad and ill. it sounds as if Hertfordshire used to be quite nimble and delicate in gaining knowledge of and treating its people's wishes. facts is starting to emerge, in different phrases, that Hertfordshire used to be in essence a worrying county.