scholarly journals Poor Law Institutions through Working-Class Eyes: Autobiography, Emotion, and Family Context, 1834–1914

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-309
Author(s):  
Alannah Tomkins
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Family Context ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Emotional Life ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Narrative Voices

AbstractHistories of the English workhouse and its satellite institutions have concentrated on legal change, institutional administration, and moments of shock or scandal, generally without considering the place of these institutions, established through the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, in the emotional life course of poor inmates. This article uses working-class autobiographies to examine the register of emotional responses to workhouses and associated Poor Law institutions, and the range of narrative voices open to authors who recalled institutional residence. It also gives close attention to two lengthy narratives of workhouse district schools and highlights their significance in comparison to the authors’ family backgrounds and the representation of each writer in the wider historical record. It suggests that a new affective chronology of the workhouse is needed to accommodate room for disparity between the aspiration of systematic poor relief and the reality of individual experience within local interpretations of the law.

Old Age Poverty and Pauperism

2018 ◽  
pp. 134-166
Author(s):  
George R. Boyer
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Family Support ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Older Workers ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Old Age Poverty

This chapter demonstrates how the aged coped economically and the extent of their reliance on the Poor Law from the 1860s to 1908. The share of working-class persons 65 and older receiving poor relief within a year ranged from about one-half in the 1860s to about one-third in 1908. A large part of this decline in old age pauperism resulted from policy changes brought about by the Crusade Against Outrelief. Workers found it difficult to save enough to provide for their old age. Those who were physically able continued to work, albeit at reduced pay, and many received assistance from their children. However, the ability of older workers to support themselves declined with age, and married children with families often were unable to assist aged parents. The combination of little saving, declining earnings, and lack of family support forced many of the aged to turn to the Poor Law.

Settlement, Poor Law and the Rural Historian: New Approaches and Opportunities

Rural History ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
K.D.M. Snell
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Rural Poverty ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Agricultural Improvement ◽  
Agrarian Society ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

English and Welsh agrarian society, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was intimately tied to the poor law. That law was extensive in scope, encompassing settlement and removal, apprenticeship, illegitimacy, parochial rating and taxation, as well as welfare and unemployment provision. It continually swayed the rural labour market. It underlay the development of so-called ‘open’ and ‘close’ parishes, or as I would prefer to express it, the maintenance of a number of parishes (or hamlets or townships) as fundamentally estate units. It was an essential element in tenant farmers' judgements on profitability, and was routinely discussed in the General Views of Agriculture. Like the overhang of a George Morland tree, sometimes clutching, sometimes benign, it extended far over the lives of that majority of village inhabitants termed the ‘labouring poor’. Commentators like Arthur Young, John Howlett or Sir Frederick Eden discussed the poor law in the same paragraphs as they wrote about enclosure, agricultural improvement, depression and rural social relations. They paid close attention to poor-relief, making extensive connections between the poor law, rural poverty, rents, and agricultural innovation. To them such matters were closely entwined.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF POOR RELIEF IN LANCASHIRE, c. 1598–1680

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN HEALEY
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor

ABSTRACTThe development of the poor law has formed a key element of recent discussions of ‘state formation’ in early modern England. There are, however, still few local studies of how formal poor relief, stipulated in the great Tudor statutes, was implemented on the ground. This article offers such a study, focusing on Lancashire, an economically marginal county, far from Westminster. It argues that the poor law developed in Lancashire surprisingly quickly in the early seventeenth century, despite the fact that there is almost no evidence of implementation of statutory relief before 1598, and formal relief mechanisms were essentially in place before the Civil War even if the numbers on relief remained small. After a brief hiatus during the conflict, the poor law was quickly revived in the 1650s. The role of the magistracy is emphasized as a crucial driving force, not just in the enforcement of the statutes, but also in setting relief policy. The thousands of petitions to JPs by paupers, parishes, and townships that survive in the county archives suggests that magistrates were crucial players in the ‘politics of the parish’.

Economies and Strategies of the Northern Rural Poor: the Mitigation of Poverty in a West Riding Township in the Nineteenth Century

Rural History ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
GRAHAM RAWSON
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Rural Poor ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Economic Strategies ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Northern Community

Abstract:In the agricultural township of Rigton, ten miles north of Leeds, three-quarters of labouring households had recourse to poor relief at some stage between 1815 and 1861. The chronology of this microhistory straddles the end of the French Wars, the Sturges Bourne reforms, and, due to the existence of the country's largest Gilbert Unions, the region's laggardly application of the Poor Law Amendment Act. It seeks, by source linkage, to establish the contexts of labour, welfare and the life cycle within a northern community, and place the poor and their experiences of, and strategies against, poverty within that community. A demographic overview introduces the contexts of labouring families' lives, whilst a commentary on expositions of biographical reconstitutions of two generations of a labouring family, forms a major part of this exploration. This argues that whilst relationships with, and mitigation against, poverty were fluid and complex, as the century progressed labouring families had a decreasing interface with the Poor Law, and adopted and developed new economic strategies to add to their portfolio of makeshifts.1

scholarly journals Parsimony and Pauperism: Poor Relief in England, Scotland and Wales in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Harris
Keyword(s):  
The Elderly ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Welfare Spending ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Different Levels

As the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws noted in 1909, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and the Poor Law (Scotland) Act of 1845 sprang from rather different motives. Whereas the first Act aimed to restrict the provision of poor relief, the second was designed to enhance it. However, despite these aims, it is generally accepted that Scotland's Poor Law continued to relieve a smaller proportion of its population and to spend less money on them. This paper revisits the evidence on which these claims are based. Although the gap between the two Poor Laws was less than previously supposed, it was nevertheless substantial. The paper also explores the links between the size of Scottish parishes and welfare spending, and demonstrates that the main reasons for the persistence of the spending gap were related to different levels of investment in poorhouses and workhouses, and support for the elderly.

Plague and Poor Relief in Cambridge, 1665-1666

2020 ◽  
pp. 47-55
Author(s):  
Samantha Williams
Keyword(s):  
Local Communities ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Economic Costs ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Mixed Economy ◽  
The Poor

Plague and the poor law were inextricably entwined, yet there has been little research into the extent to which poor relief contributed to the economic costs of plague epidemics. While much of the huge expense plague represented to local communities was met largely by special plague rates, fasts and fines, and income from charitable briefs, poor relief was a part of this mixed economy of funds. Through a microhistory of the parish of St Benedict in Cambridge in the town's worst outbreak of plague in 1665–1666, this article indicates that poor relief supported a substantial number of families and paid for their burials. The costs met by overseers represented around one month's additional parish spending. If this was scaled up proportionately to all fourteen parishes this would represent a significant sum of money.

Earnings, Poor Relief and the Economy of Makeshifts: Bedfordshire in the Early Years of the New Poor Law

Rural History ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
SAMANTHA WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Household Income ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Low Incomes ◽  
Agricultural Labourers

It is increasingly recognised by those engaged in the debate concerning the standard of living of workers during industrialisation that all forms of household income need to be assessed, not just male waged work. A more holistic approach also considers women and children's earnings, poor relief, and the wide range of self-provisioning activities and resources available through the ‘economy of makeshifts’. Over one hundred household budgets of agricultural labourers and their families have been analysed from the Ampthill Union, Bedfordshire, just before and during the implementation of the new poor law in order to further explore and quantify all components to the household income of labouring families in this key transition decade. The article finds that poor relief to families was cut in the wake of the Poor Law Amendment Act. It also finds that the low incomes of families necessitated supplementation through making shift. When the makeshift economy is quantified, it becomes clear that such activities could significantly supplement incomes.

PARISH ECONOMIES OF WELFARE, 1650–1834

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 985-1006 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN BROAD
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Basic Needs ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Southern England ◽  
Rural Employment ◽  
The Poor

This article argues for a more holistic approach to understanding the Old Poor Law. Using three detailed case studies from southern England, it focuses on the dynamics of differing social groups within the parish. It also looks at the role of the law, looking beyond the statutes to the parts played by King's Bench, Quarter Sessions and individual justices and petty sessions in creating a diversity of experiences for the poor. However, it also stresses the differential access to charitable funds, common rights, and poor relief in individual communities, and the ways in which parish elites attempted to put the total available resources to what they saw as the best uses. From 1650 to 1780 these combined resources allowed a generally humane approach to the treatment of poverty and misfortune, and maintained the independence of the cottager and labourer in southern England. Only after 1780 when population rose sharply and rural employment shrank did the flexibility of combined charitable and rate-based relief founder and more drastic devices were employed to cope with basic needs. In this process the independence of the labourer and cottager was undermined, charitable sources were marginalized, and the seeds were sown for the acceptance of the New Poor Law.

A new source for the historian of urban poverty: a note on the use of charity records in Leicester 1904–29

Urban History ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 51-60
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Page
Keyword(s):  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
The Town

This article reviews the potential use of charity records in reconstructing the lives of the poor in the early twentieth-century city and suggests how computer-assisted modes of quantitative and qualitative techniques of analysis can expand the known source base of research on poverty. Although the poor have themselves left only a small direct imprint on the historical record, the historian of poverty has managed to use the diverse and voluminous Victorian records generated by officials of the Poor Law which has resulted in a variety of administrative and institutional analyses of pauperism within various urban and regional settings. These studies have attracted a certain amount of criticism because of their dependence upon a narrow range of sources and orthodox historical methodology. It can be argued, however, that the full potential of Poor Law records in terms of what they contribute as well as what can be done with them has not yet been fully exploited. There is scope, for example, for the linkage of Poor Law material with demographic sources, such as the census enumerators' returns, to explore the geography of urban poverty in the nineteenth century. The value of Poor Law records would be enhanced if research questions could be phrased in relation to the socio-geographical context of the city, taking into account the dynamics of urbanism. For example, in Victorian and Edwardian Leicester it is possible to consider the consequence of socio-economic changes in a move from a domestic to a predominantly factory-based mode of production in the hosiery and footwear trades and the impact of the Poor Law during this transformation as patterns of discrimination characterized the provision of relief in certain districts of the town.

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