The English Poor Laws, 1700–1930. By Anthony Brundage. [Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2001. vii and 185 pp. Hardback. £49.50. ISBN 0–333–68271–8.]

2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 715-738
Author(s):  
M.A. Stein
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Additional Research ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Short Account ◽  
Law System ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
Systematic Overview ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Subject

This latest addition to the Palgrave series on Social History in Perspective is a concise and systematic overview of the Poor Law system from the beginning of the 18th century through to its demise in 1930. Well written, The English Poor Law is intended as an introduction to the subject for students of law, history, and/or society, and therefore offers a very short account. Fortunately, the knowledgeable Professor Brundage (whose earlier books include an analysis of the New Poor Law and a biography of one of its facilitators, Edwin Chadwick) provides first-rate end notes and an extensive bibliography. In consequence, those wishing to learn more of this interesting topic have been afforded the means for additional research.

Some Actuarial Aspects of Unemployment Insurance

1929 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-160
Author(s):  
J. G. Kyd ◽  
G. H. Maddex
Keyword(s):  
Unemployment Insurance ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Poor ◽  
National Insurance ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Government

Judged by the amount of space devoted to the subject in the Journal of the Institute, Unemployment Insurance has received but little attention from actuaries in the past Public interest in the problem of relieving distress due to unemployment became pronounced in the early years of the present century and led to the appointment in 1904 of a Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and, eventually, to the passing in 1911 of the first Unemployment Insurance Act. These important events found a somewhat pallid reflection in our proceedings in the form of reprints of extracts from Sir H. Llewellyn Smith's address on Insurance against Unemployment to the British Association in 1910 (J.I.A., vol. xliv, p. 511) and of Mr. Ackland's report on Part II of the National Insurance Bill (J.I.A., vol. xlv, p. 456). At a later date, when the scope of the national scheme was very greatly widened, the Government Actuary's report on the relevant measure—the Unemployment Insurance Bill 1919—was reprinted in the Journal (J.I.A., vol. lii, page 72).

The Mendicity Society Movement and the Suppression of Begging

2018 ◽  
pp. 146-184
Author(s):  
Ciarán McCabe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Parent Body ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Law System ◽  
The Poor ◽  
System P ◽  
Short Space

Between 1809 and the early-1840s more than fifty mendicity societies were established throughout Ireland. These charities focused on the suppression of street begging and the relief of the destitute poor. Mendicity societies took their lead from earlier societies located in Britain and mainland Europe, and in Ireland the Dublin association acted as a parent body for this movement. While playing a prominent role in the welfare landscape in the first half of the nineteenth century Ireland’s mendicity societies largely disappeared within a short space of time, largely on foot of the introduction of the Poor Law system.

The Break-Up of the Poor Laws— German Style: Progressivism and the Origins of the Welfare State, 1900–1918

2008 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 981-1009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Frohman
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Social Security Systems ◽  
Security Systems ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Poor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Welfare State

While the 1834 New Poor Law and the controversies over its reform represent one of the central threads in every narrative of the history of modern Britain, the same can hardly be said of the German poor laws, whose history is far less known. This is due in large part to a historiographical tradition that sees the Bismarckian social insurance programs as the fons et origo of the German welfare state and thus marginalizes all forms of social assistance that can not be neatly fitted into the narrative pre-history or subsequent development of these programs. This contrasts with a British tradition where, as E. P. Hennock has recently argued, national insurance was primarily conceived as a means of poor law reform, and where the poor laws figure prominently in the historiography of the welfare state. On the other hand, this insurance-centered approach to the welfare state is not entirely to blame because, for their part, historians of poor relief have not been able to establish any positive connections between individualized, subsidiary, deterrent relief and social insurance or social security systems based on rights deriving from either contributions or citizenship.

Unemployment Assistance in Great Britain

1937 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-454
Author(s):  
Paul Tutt Stafford
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Local Government ◽  
National Government ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Law System ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
National Responsibility ◽  
Governmental Function ◽  
Break Up

The British Unemployment Assistance Act of 1934 is unquestionably the most important legislative innovation in the field of public poor relief since the passage of the Elizabethan poor laws. It represents the final fruition of the movement for the “break-up” of the old poor law system, for by its provision the “break-up” is made virtually complete. In sweeping terms, it adopts the principle of national responsibility for the care of the nation's ablebodied poor, and establishes for the administration of the duties thereby thrust upon the national government a vast new machinery directly operated from Whitehall. Local responsibility for a major portion of a basic governmental function is thus completely wiped out, and the old poor law stands stripped of its essential substance and significance, a mere shell of the former system out of which grew the modern institutions of English local government.

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.

Recent Lunacy Legislation: Retrogression or Progress?

1901 ◽  
Vol 47 (199) ◽  
pp. 687-702
Author(s):  
William Graham
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Public Regard

Literary apologies, it has been said, are either superfluous or impertinent—superfluous if the matter apologised for is of itself worthy of public regard, impertinent if it can lay claim to no such merit. Therefore it does not seem necessary on the present occasion for me to introduce the subject of asylum management with any deprecatory language. It will suffice simply to recall the fact that in this city the question has come up in an acute and even controversial form, and is deeply interesting the community in whose midst we are assembled. We may well hope that the impulse given by this discussion will leave a permanent impression throughout the length and breadth of Ireland. One thing, at any rate, we may expect—the abolition of the standing scandal that has so long permitted the insane poor to be huddled together in workhouses without the benefit of scarcely one of those ameliorative agencies elaborated by modern science wedded to a genuinely philanthropic spirit. It is an oft-told tale, and need not be repeated here. The Poor Law guardian who takes for his axiom “keep down the rates” must shut his eyes to the uncleanliness, the untidiness, the lack of discipline, the absence of proper scientific supervision, the utter discomfort which reigns everywhere—characteristics that have made the name of workhouse a byword and a reproach even among the most degraded. If at any time he is visited with a qualm of conscience, he reflects, perhaps, that the unfortunates in his charge owe their sad destiny to God, or Fate, or Nature, and that anything done for them robs the ratepayer of that which, not enriching them, leaves him poor indeed. These institutions are cheap, but if there is any warning writ more largely than another for the behoof of all future lunacy reform in Ireland, it is surely that supplied by our workhouses against a parsimonious and pettifogging spirit in our provisions for the insane.

Whigs and Paupers: The Reform of the English Poor Laws, 1830-1834

1981 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Dunkley
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Actual Distribution ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Practical Effect

In 1832, a royal commission was appointed to investigate the operation of the poor laws in England and Wales, and two years later legislation was adopted on the basis of the commission's recommendations. For most contemporaries the passage of this measure, the so-called New Poor Law, seemed to promise significant, perhaps even radical, change in the administration of poor relief. An ancient system of parochial government was to be supplanted in the localities by a series of larger poor law unions and boards of guardians, whose discretion was to be limited by responsibility to a national bureaucratic authority in London. No less dramatic was the relief policy that the new law envisioned. It was generally understood that the poor law commissioners appointed under the act were to direct their main efforts to the establishment of a system of workhouses, wherein relief could be accorded under conditions that rendered the pauper's lot “less eligible,” that is, less attractive, than that of the poorest independent laborer. Through such means, it was hoped, an end might be made to what was seen as a long-established and widespread practice of supplementing the inadequate wages of the laboring poor out of the poor rates.While the tendency of recent work has been to question the practical effect of this legislation on the actual distribution of aid, the problem remains of explaining the motivations and intentions of the men who promoted a measure of such seemingly abundant and far-reaching implications.

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