Resumen de Children and the quest for purity in the nineteenth century Scottish City
The seemingly uncontrollable demographic expansion of Scotland's cities during the nineteenth century, especially Glasgow, provoked considerable anxiety about community fragmentation and the deterioration of the urban environment. The scale of industrial development was such as to create some of the most congested and unsavoury living conditions in Europe, with practical solutions to the attendant social problems initially unco‐ordinated and piecemeal. Over time, however, there emerged a cohesive, influential and predominantly middle‐class reform movement which attempted to stem what they perceived as the moral as well as material disintegration of urban society. Guided by an ideology strongly underpinned by evangelical Protestantism, the reformers consciously depicted slum children as the poignant symbol of innocence corrupted, and argued that regeneration should focus, above all, on reclaiming the health and moral welfare of the young. This article will illustrate the varieties of rhetoric and imagery that were used to considerable effect in the reformers’ quest to create a purer environment in Scottish cities, in the belief that children ‐‐ as the future ‐‐ held the crucial key to success.
