The Black Fountain: Childhood and Class in Eighteenth-Century England
Bibliographic record
Abstract
“The Black Fountain: Childhood and Class in Eighteenth-Century England” explores the nature of childhood as it was experienced by the poor in the eighteenth century. The scarcity of direct accounts from children at this level of society necessitates a creative examination of available sources: by combining quantitative records—such as workhouse admissions and discharge records or the registers of the philanthropic organizations of the capital—with qualitative sources—such as newspaper accounts, the work of pamphleteers, and parliamentary and court debates—this study overcomes the limitations of the fragmented evidence of childhood and reconstructs a more complete picture.\n\nThese findings highlight the difficulties in capturing children's attitudes and opinions due to the absence of their personal narratives: interpreting quantitative sources is not without challenges, because they reflect societal biases and perceptions of the time. This study thus adopts an analytical approach that reads institutional records “against the grain,” illuminating the ways that institutions processed and categorized children, but also uncovering instances where children managed to elude or subvert these systems. “The Black Fountain: Childhood and Class in Eighteenth-Century England” also recognizes the agency of impoverished children within the constraints imposed by their circumstances. Although these children faced material deprivation and had limited decision-making power, they actively shaped their own lives and resisted societal expectations. \n\nThis research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of childhood in the eighteenth century. By synthesizing quantitative and qualitative sources and emphasizing the agency of young individuals, this study challenges prevailing narratives of innocence, vulnerability, and victimhood and unveils the resilience and active participation of children in shaping social, cultural, and economic structures of their time. This exploration offers valuable insights into the lives and experiences of marginalized children, enriching our understanding of this period in history.\n
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.010 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".