The Alley Cast Elfreth's Alley Museum

In our Season 2 finale, we look at the people who have been there
throughout all of the other episodes—the laborers! We also try to consider
what types of labor today share the physical toll and the meager wages with
laborers of the past.

The ongoing pandemic has wreaked chaos on the restaurant industry, closing
popular spots and leaving huge numbers of restaurant workers out of work.
In this episode of The Alley Cast, we explore the long history of the
transience of restaurant work in order to try to gain some perspective on
the challenges of today.

Taking a week off from our regular schedule and having a conversation with some of the folks who make this podcast about how this season came about.

Find a full transcript and sources at elfrethsalley.org/podcast/2021/7/14/episode-206-cabinetmakers

This week we are talking about boarding houses, and we got to interview Dr. Wendy Gamber, who is one of the leading scholars on the history of the American boarding house. We trace Elfreth’s Alley’s history of boarding houses through the 18th and 19th centuries to the era when, nationally, the institution came under fire. Yet even when the boarding house seemed to fade into the sands of time, we see emerging echoes of it in the 21st century.

This week on The Alley Cast we turn our attention to the topic of child labor and look at the lives of some children on Elfreth’s Alley as well as the story of how understandings of childhood were changed by the national movement to reform child labor.