ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a diverse range of subjects: lepers, disabled, single women, foreigners, executioners, slaves, pedlars, prostitutes, and child victims of rape. While a modern reader might understand all these as being marginalized social groups, David Turner points out that some caution must be exercised in eliding modern understandings with the evolving and changing contexts of the past. Sarah Toulalan's discussion of child rape and sexual assault cases from the eighteenth-century Old Bailey archive reveals the troubling reality that the ruin of reputation meant that it was the victims of rape that were marginalized. Andrew Spicer's discussion of William Herbert's account of the condition of foreigners in England documents a live debate in England after the Restoration, indicating that though marginal, foreigners and religious refugees might be viewed favourably. Putting place and space into a discussion about the margins helps provide geographical coordinates and physical expression to otherwise potentially evanescent or subjective notions of social belonging and exclusion.
