| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.1 | The History Cooperative

Simon P. Newman. Embodied History: The Lives of the Poor in Early Philadelphia. (Early American Studies.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2003. Pp. 211. Cloth $47.50, paper $18.95.
The study of the lower sort in urban colonial America has received considerable attention over the past several decades. Inspired by the new social history that emerged in the 1960s and led by Gary B. Nash, Billy G. Smith, John Alexander, Marcus Rediker, and others, these historians convincingly argued that understanding the ways in which society treated its poor offered considerable insight into the discrepancy between the promise of America and its reality.	1
Simon P. Newman's book fits into this tradition. It focuses on various bodies from the perspective of middling and upper-class Philadelphians who criticized and attempted to reform the poor, and it explores the ways in which life experiences were inscribed on the bodies of the poor, who earned their livelihood from bodily labors. Newman examines the bodies that were placed in late eighteenth-century Philadelphia institutions—the almshouse, Walnut Street Jail, and the Pennsylvania Hospital For the Sick Poor—and runaway, seafaring, and dead bodies. He seeks to illuminate the struggle between middling and elite folk on one side, who judged and attempted to mold the bodies of the lower sort, and the poor, who refused to yield control over their own lives.	. . .

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