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Social History and Material Culture of Boston’s North End, 1860-1880

Archaeology of Boardinghouses

Beaudry, Mary. "The Lowell Boott Mills Complex and Its Housing: Material Expressions of Corporate Ideology." Historical Archaeology 23, no. 1 (1989): 19-32.

Beaudry, Mary. "Public Aesthetics versus Personal Experience: Worker Health and Well-being in 19th-century Lowell, Massachusetts." Historical Archaeology 27, no. 2 (1993): 90-105.

Beaudry, Mary. “Stories That Matter: Material Lives in 19th-Century Lowell and Boston, Massachusetts.” In Cities in the World, 1500-2000: Papers Given at the Conference of the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology [April 2002], edited by Adrian Green and Roger Leech, 1-20. Leeds: Maney, 2006.

Beaudry, Mary Carolyn and Stephen A. Mrozowski. "Archaeology in the Backlots of Boott Units 45 and 48: Household Archaeology with a Difference." In Interdisciplinary Investigations of the Boott Mills, Lowell, Massachusetts: Volume III: The Boarding House System as a Way of Life. Division of Cultural Resources, North Atlantic Regional Office, National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 1989.

Cook, Lauren J. "Tobacco-Related Material and the Construction of Working-Class Culture." In Interdisciplinary Investigations of the Boott Mills, Lowell, Massachusetts. Volume III: The Boarding House System as a Way of Life, edited by Mary C. Beaudry and Stephen A. Mrozowski, 209-229. Division of Cultural Resources, North Atlantic Regional Office, National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 1989.

Crook, Penny. "Rethinking Assemblage Analysis: New Approaches to the Archaeology of Working-Class Neighborhoods." International Journal of Historical Archaeology 15, no. 4 (2011): 582-93.

Elia, Ricardo. Archaeological Investigations at the Paul Revere House in Boston, Massachusetts. 1997. On file at Massachusetts Historical Commission, Boston, Massachusetts.

Keim, Alexander. “Boston Inside Out: A Brothel, A Boardinghouse, and The Construction of the Nineteenth-Century North End’s Urban Landscape through Embodied Practice.” PhD diss., Boston University, 2015. 

Mrozowski, Stephen A., Edward. L. Bell, Mary. C. Beaudry, David. B. Landon and Gerald. K. Kelso. "Living on the Boott: Health and Well Being in a Boardinghouse Population." World Archaeology 21, no. 2 (1989): 298-319.

Mrozowski, Stephen A., Grace H. Ziesing, and Mary C. Beaudry. Living on the Boott: Historical Archaeology at the Boott Mills Boardinghouses, Lowell, Massachusetts. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996.

Pena, Elizabeth S., and Denmon, Jacqueline. "The Social Organization of a Boardinghouse: Archaeological Evidence from the Buffalo Waterfront." Historical Archaeology 34, no. 1 (2000): 79-96.

Archaeology of Brothels

Benes, Milena A. "Dr. Padelford’s Privy: A Study of the Socioeconomic Status of a Nineteenth-Century Non-Traditional Physician in Boston." Undergraduate honors thesis, Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University, 1995.

Costello, Julia G. "Red light voices: an archaeological drama of late nineteenth century prostitution." In Archaeologies of Sexuality, edited by Robert A. Schmidt and Barbara L. Voss, 160-75. London: Routledge, 2000.

Costello, Julia G. "'A Night with Venus, A Moon with Mercury': The Archaeology of Prostitution in Historic Los Angeles." In Restoring Women’s History through Historic Preservation, edited by Gail Lee Dubrow and Jennifer B. Goodman, 177-196. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

Crist, Thomas. "Babies in the Privy: Prostitution, Infanticide, and Abortion in New York City’s Five Points District." Historical Archaeology 39, no. 1 (2005): 19-46.

Gilfoyle, Timothy. "Archaeologists in the Brothel: 'Sin City,' Historical Archaeology and Prostitution." Historical Archaeology 39, no. 1 (2005): 133-41.

Glazebrook, Allison, and Barbara Tsakirgis, eds. Houses of Ill Repute: The Archaeology of Brothels, Houses, and Taverns in the Greek World. Philadephia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

Johnson, Amanda B. "Over the Counter and Unregulated: The Embossed Patent Medicine Bottles from the 27/29 Endicott Street Privy." Unpublished paper, Department of Archaeology, Boston University, 2008.

Johnson, Amanda B. "A Glimpse into the Lives of Boston’s "Butterflies': An Analysis of the Artifacts Pertaining to Personification of Self from the 27/29 Endicott Street Privy." IWD undergraduate thesis, Boston University, 2010.

Johnson, Amanda B. "Booze at The Brothel: Alcohol-Related Artifacts and Their Use in Performance at the 27/29 Endicott Street Brothel." Master’s thesis, College of William and Mary, 2012.

Johnson, Amanda B. "Champagne from Midnight until Daylight: The Social Ritual of Alcohol Use in a Victorian Brothel." Paper presented at the 45th Annual Meeting for the Society for Historical Archaeology, Baltimore, MD, 2012.

Johnson, Amanda B. "Behind Closed Doors: An Introduction and Case Study from a Nineteenth Century Boston Brothel." Paper presented at the 47th Annual Meeting for the Society for Historical Archaeology, Quebec City, Quebec, 2014.

Luiz, Jade. “'A House Recommended': The Sensory Archaeology of Sexuality, Embodiment, and Creation of Space In a Mid-Nineteenth-Century Brothel In Boston, Massachusetts.” PhD diss., UMass Boston, 2018.

O'Brien, Elizabeth Barthold. "Illicit Congress in the Nation's Capital: The History of Mary Ann Hall's Brothel." Historical Archaeology 39, no. 1 (2005): 47-58.

Seifert, Donna. “Mrs. Starr's Profession.” In Those of Little Note: Gender, Race, and Class in Historical Archaeology, edited by E. Scott, 149-174. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1994.

Seifert, Donna J., Elizabeth Barthold O’Brien, and Joseph Balicki. 2000. “Mary Ann Hall's first-class house: the archaeology of a capital brothel.” In Archaeologies of Sexuality, edited by Robert A. Schmidt and Barbara Voss, 117-128. London: Routledge, 2000.

Seifert, Donna J., and Joseph Balicki. "Mary Ann Hall’s House." Historical Archaeology 39, no. 1 (2005): 59-73.

Spude, Catherine. "Brothels and Saloons: An Archaeology of Gender in the American West." Historical Archaeology 39, no. 1 (2005): 89-106.

Yamin, Rebecca. “Wealthy, Free, and Female: Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century New York.” In Tales of Five Points: Working-Class Life in Nineteenth-Century New York, vol. 2, 314-337. West Chester, Pennsylvania: John Milner Associates, 2000.

Middle-Class Homes, The Roles of Women, Domestic Ideals, Domestic Reform

Ames, Kenneth L. Death in the Dining Room and Other Tales of Victorian Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.

Christensen, K. "'Domestic Reform' and 'Separate Spheres': What Do We Mean?" In Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on Gender Transformations, edited by Suzanne Spencer-Wood, 63-83. New York: Springer, 2013.

Clark, Clifford E. "Domestic Architecture as an Index to Social History: The Romantic Revival and the Cult of Domesticity in America, 1840-1870." The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 7, no. 1 (1976): 33-56.

Deutsch, Sarah. Women and the City Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Grier, Katherine. Culture and Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class Identity, 1850-1930. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2014.

Grover, Kathryn. Dining in America, 1850-1900. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987.

Green, Harvey, and Mary-Ellen Perry. The Light of the Home : An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.

Halttunen, Karen. Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-class Culture in America, 1830-1870. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.

Kerber, Linda. "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History." The Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (1988): 9-39.

Richter, Amy. At Home in Nineteenth Century America: A Documentary History. New York: New York University Press, 2015.

Stansell, Christine. City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860. New York: Knopf, 1986.

Wall, Diana DiZerega. The Archaeology of Gender: Separating the Spheres in Urban America. New York: Plenum Press, 1994.

Welter, Barbara. "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860." American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1966): 151-174

North End, Working Class, Immigrant Histories

DeMarco, William. "Ethnics and Enclaves: Boston's Italian North End." Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1981.

Goldfeld, Alex R. The North End: A Brief History of Boston's Oldest Neighborhood. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2009.

Handlin, Oscar. Boston's Immigrants [1790-1880]; a Study in Acculturation. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959.

Johnson, Marilynn S. The New Bostonians: How Immigrants Have Transformed the Metro Area since the 1960s. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015.

Keim, Alexander D. "Archaeological Excavations at a Brothel in Boston." YouTube, uploaded by WBGHForum, 16 September 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAZTMzNghnY.

O'Connor, Thomas H. The Boston Irish: A Political History. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995.

Puleo, Stephen. The Boston Italians: A Story of Pride, Perseverance, and Paesani, from the Years of the Great Immigration to the Present Day. Boston: Beacon Press, 2007.

Puleo, Stephen. A City So Grand: The Rise of an American Metropolis, Boston 1850-1900. Boston: Beacon Press, 2010.

Sarna, Jonathan D., and Ellen Smith. The Jews of Boston: Essays on the Occasion of the Centenary (1895-1995) of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston. Boston: Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, 1995.

Todisco, Paula J. Boston's First Neighborhood: The North End. Boston: Boston Public Library, 1976.

Upton, Dell. "The City as Material Culture." In The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz, edited by Anne E. Yentsch and Mary C. Beaudry, 51-74. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 1992.

Poverty and Social Reform

Blumin, Stuart M. The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Boylan, Anne M. The Origins of Women's Activism New York and Boston, 1797-1840. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Brenzel, Barbara M. Daughters of the State: A Social Portrait of the First Reform School for Girls in North America, 1856-1905. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983.

De Cunzo, Lu Ann. “Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of Institutions; The Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, 1800-1850.” Historical Archaeology 29, no. 3 (1995): 1– 168.

De Cunzo, Lu Ann. 2001. “On reforming the "fallen" and beyond: Transforming continuity at the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, 1845-1916.” International Journal of Historical Archeology 5, no. 1 (2001): 19-43.

De Cunzo, Lu Ann, and Bernard L. Herman. Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture. Winterthur, Del.: Henry Francis Du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1996.

Deutsch, Sarah. Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Fitts, Robert. “The Rhetoric of Reform: The Five Points Missions and the Cult of Domesticity.” Historical Archaeology. 35, no. 3 (2001): 115-132.

Ginzberg, Lori D. Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-century United States. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

Holloran, Peter C. Boston's Wayward Children: Social Services for Homeless Children, 1830-1930. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994.

Mayne, Alan, and Tim Murray. The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Mennel, Robert M. Thorns & Thistles; Juvenile Delinquents in the United States, 1825-1940. Hanover: Published for the University of New Hampshire by the University Press of New England, 1973.

Schneider, Eric C. In the Web of Class: Delinquents and Reformers in Boston, 1810s-1930s. New York: New York University Press, 1992.

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. Religion and the Rise of the American City: The New York City Mission Movement, 1812-1870. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1971.

Social Histories: Boston and New England

Allison, Robert J. A Short History of Boston. Beverly, Mass.: Commonwealth Editions, 2004.

Cohn, Raymond L. "The Occupations of English Immigrants to the United States, 1836–1853." The Journal of Economic History 52, no. 2 (1992): 377-87.

Domosh, Mona. "Shaping the Commercial City: Retail Districts in Nineteenth-Century New York and Boston." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80, no. 2 (1990): 268-84.

Horton, James Oliver., and Lois E. Horton. Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1999.

Horton, James Oliver., and Lois E. Horton. In Hope of Liberty Culture, Community, and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Horton, James Oliver. Free People of Color : Inside the African American Community. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.

O'Connor, Thomas H. Bibles, Brahmins, and Bosses: A Short History of Boston: Lectures Delivered for the National Endowment for the Humanities Boston Public Library Learning Library Program. Boston: Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, 1976.

O'Connor, Thomas H. The Athens of America: Boston, 1825-1845. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006.

O'Connor, Thomas H. Civil War Boston: Home Front and Battlefield. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997.

O'Connor, Thomas H. The Boston Irish: A Political History. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995.

Peel, Mark. "On the Margins: Lodgers and Boarders in Boston, 1860-1900." The Journal of American History 72, no. 4 (1986): 813-34.

Seasholes, Nancy. Atlas of Boston History. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019.

Women and Work

Dublin, Thomas. Transforming Women's Work: New England Lives in the Industrial Revolution. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Dudden, Faye E. Serving Women: Household Service in Nineteenth-century America. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1983.

Gamber, Wendy. The Boardinghouse in Nineteenth-century America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

Gilfoyle, Timothy J. City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992.

Halttunen, Karen. Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-class Culture in America, 1830-1870. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.

Hill, Marilynn Wood. Their Sisters' Keepers: Prostitution in New York City, 1830-1870. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Hobson, Barbara Meil. Uneasy Virtue: The Politics of Prostitution and the American Reform Tradition. New York: Basic Books, 1987.

Katzman, David M. Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Lasser, Carol. “The World’s Dread Laugh: Singlehood and Service in 19th Century Boston.” In The New England Working Class and the New Labor History, edited by Herbert G. Gutman and Donald H. Bell, 72-88. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.

Peel, Mark. "On the Margins: Lodgers and Boarders in Boston, 1860-1900." The Journal of American History 72, no. 4 (1986): 813-34.

Porter, Susan L. Women of the Commonwealth: Work, Family, and Social Change in Nineteenth-century Massachusetts. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996.

Stansell, Christine. City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860. New York: Knopf, 1986.

Sutherland, Daniel. Americans and Their Servants: Domestic Service in the U.S., From 1800-1920. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981

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