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‘Seen but not Heard’: City Childhoods from the Past into the Present

This article looks at two modern institutions designed to discipline and control urban bodies—the school and the asylum—and the records they produced and the young people whose moral and cognitive capacities they tended. Both institutions are the sites of past childhood stories, yet the lives experienced in them are essentially anonymous. The focus of historians has been on engaging with the ‘voices’ of the official policy makers, professionals and administrators rather than on the ‘voices’ of the children. In pursuing the ‘voices’ of children in these institutions the article makes a series of claims for the biographical approach and the use of multiple sources of evidence. It also addresses the relation between history and the telling of stories. 1 This article is based on the author’s inaugural lecture as Professor of Urban Educational History, School of Education, University of Birmingham, England delivered on 16 June 2005. The writing of this piece has been shaped by many conversations and I would like to thank Martin Lawn, Rita McLean, Siân Roberts, Sue Akehurst, Steve Holland and Dave Spencer for their ideas. Thanks to Birmingham Central Library Archives and Local Studies departments for permission to reproduce images and Errol Francis for permission to reproduce Figure 8. I would like to dedicate it to the memory of David Fred Spencer (1949–2004).