Everyday Giving: Food, Emotions and Community in England, 1760–1850

Abstract This article proposes that gifts of everyday foodstuffs were a crucial way in which labouring communities attempted to provide care, and express and manage emotions, in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. It suggests that such food-giving was most often facilitated by geographical distance, especially the proximity and interpersonal knowledge enabled by living within the same building or adjacent houses. In doing so, it highlights the importance of sharing and generosity among nearby friends, neighbours and co-lodgers (rather than blood relations) and the continued role of local networks of obligation and responsibility during this period, even in the face of urban, industrial and administrative change. Drawing upon 1,787 coroners’ inquests from the borough of Westminster, this study also emphasises the value of these records in writing social histories of food. Overall, it situates food-giving as a central part of emotional life during this period, and stresses that, especially for those with limited access to other resources, everyday foodstuffs were central to care.