The context : the Massachusetts State Almshouse at Tewksbury, immigration, and industrialization
The "uprooted" : immigrants and migrants
Falling down : yet a surprising resilience
"Criminal intimacies" : out-of-wedlock births
Family conflict and desertion
Being "put out" : children in and out of the almshouse
"We can do nothing for him" : the fate of the elderly
From history's shadows : partial views of the poor.
