Conclusion

This concluding chapter considers the relevance of the Victorian way of thinking to the modern world. The financial crisis of 2007–8, and the resultant austerity, has lead to a resurgence of ‘Victorian’ health afflictions. In recent years we have seen a re-emergence of hunger as a humanitarian problem in the West. Neoliberalism and austerity are iterations of a conservative way of thinking that has been with us at least as far back as the New Poor Law. This chapter considers what we might learn from Kingsley, Gaskell, and Dickens, and from their intersections with nineteenth-century starvation science.