The Decretists and the “Deserving Poor”

1959 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 360-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Tierney
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Deserving Poor ◽  
Great Mass

In spite of all the complex controversies concerning the interplay of religious ideas and economic forces at the end of the Middle Ages the investigation of the pre-existing medieval poor law has been rather neglected by modern scholars. Evidently enough attitudes toward the relief of poverty are as significant as attitudes toward the acquisition of wealth in gauging the climate of economic thought in any given age. Yet, apart from studies on hospital administration, little has been done in this field of medieval research since the pioneering works of Ratzinger, Emminghaus, Ehrle, Uhlhorn and Ashley in the nineteenth century. Since then the attitudes of social welfare experts to the problems of poor relief have radically changed and a great mass of source material unknown to the earlier writers, notably the work of the medieval canonists, has come to the attention of historians. Both these facts suggest a need for some reconsideration of medieval attitudes to the poor and to the relief of poverty.

scholarly journals Procesy i egzekucje „żywych trupów” przed sądami miejskimi i wiejskimi w XVI–XVIII wieku – przyczynek do wierzeń w magia posthuma na Śląsku

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4 (1)) ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
Daniel Wojtucki
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Expert Witnesses ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Middle Ages

There are references reaching back to the Middle Ages, regarding the fear of the “undead” or “living dead” who would rise from their graves in a local cemetery to haunt and harm the community. The fear of the “undead” was extremely strong, and the entailing hysteria often affected entire communities. In the 16th to the 18th century, in Silesia, effective forms of coping with the harmful deceased were developed. Analysing the preserved source material, we are able to determine that the basic actions involved finding the grave of the “undead” in the cemetery, exhuming the corpse and destroying it. However, this did not always mean the total annihilation of the poor man’s corpse. The trial and execution of the corpse of a person suspected of the harmful activity against the living took place observing almost the same rules as in the case of the living. Apart from the authorities, who usually commissioned local jurors to handle the situation, opinions and advice were also sought from the clergy as well as gravediggers and executioners. The last were considered to be experts of sorts and were often called upon to see corpses of the suspected dead. In the analysed cases of posthumous magic (magia posthuma) in Silesia, we deal with two directions of handling the corpse accused of a harmful posthumous activity. In both cases, the main decision was made to remove such corpses from the cemetery’s area. Costs of the trial and execution of the “undead” were considerable. They included expenses incurred due to rather frequent court hearings at which sometimes dozens of witnesses were heard, payments to expert witnesses, payments to guards watching graves, costs of legal instructions, services of gravediggers who would dig up suspicious graves, and, finally, the remuneration of executioners and their people. In the second half of the 18th century, despite relevant decrees issued by supreme authorities, trials and executions of the dead were not completely abandoned.

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

Labourers are Revolting: Penalising the Poor and a Political Reaction in the Brixworth Union, Northamptonshire, 1875–1885

Rural History ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth T. Hurren
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Central Government ◽  
General Rule ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Political Reaction ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Medical Wards ◽  
Guide Lines

Throughout the nineteenth century one of the main issues that preoccupied central government policy-makers was how poverty should be dealt with, in order to reduce poor relief expenditure. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, as Karel Williams argues, aimed to introduce a general rule against out-door relief by substituting instead a workhouse test that sought to deter paupers with its axiom of ‘less eligibility’. In practice, as Williams explains, regulations only stipulated that a workhouse test was to be strictly applied in the case of able-bodied male applicants and this gave unions the discretion to award out-door relief to other types of pauper. For example a number of unions continued to grant small out-door relief allowances to the aged, widows and infirm on medical out-door relief orders. Others found that it was not possible to follow poor relief guide-lines because they did not have the workhouse capacity to relieve all pauper applicants before the 1860s. This was because a comprehensive administrative infrastructure was not put in place in most unions until after the passing of the Union Chargeability Act of 1865. Once workhouse capacity had been improved with the creation of dispensaries and new medical wards, central government expected out-door poor relief expenditure to decrease. Consequently, in 1870 concern was expressed when they calculated that only 15 per cent of paupers were relieved within workhouses. A new discourse on the causes of poverty, as outlined by organisations such as the Charity Organisation Society, demanded that stricter poor relief regulations should be implemented.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 215-226
Author(s):  
Esther Chung-Kim
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Poverty Alleviation ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Community Formation ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Religious Ideals ◽  
Political Persuasion

Religious reformers in sixteenth-century Europe were integral to the development and implementation of poor relief programs. They effectively utilized theological justification through writings, sermons, and strategic political persuasion to gain support and funding for social welfare. The reformers’ unique positions as ecclesiastical authorities allowed them to connect care for the poor with one’s practice of devotion to God and religious ideals of generosity and compassion. The establishment of these reforms emerged in the context of an expanding migration of religious refugees, who required relief but were at first poorly received by city residents. One of the key components of determining poor relief was the importance of community formation and the demarcations in the process of determining poor relief coverage. Ultimately, religious reformers served as a major driving force in the efforts toward poverty alleviation and community motivation in the care for the poor; and their efforts impacted the development of poor relief.

III. Parliamentary Radicals and the Reduction of Imperial Expenditure in British North America, 1827–1834

1968 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Burroughs
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
National Debt ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
British North America ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Post War

Although retrenchment, with its overtones of efficiency and its implied attack on corruption, is a familiar watchword of modern politics, it is difficult today to appreciate the deep ethical and constitutional significance of the issue of economy during the early nineteenth century, or the strong hold which the concept exerted over the attitudes and actions of British politicians and administrators in the decades following the Napoleonic Wars. Twenty-three years of costly war with France had increased Britain's national debt from £228 million in 1793 to £876 million in 1815, and the laborious process of eliminating this deficit at the rate of a few millions a year by means of a sinking fund was aptly described as ‘the attempt of a wooden-legged man to catch a hare’. The propertied classes in the post-war period considered themselves excessively burdened with taxation, and until the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 had been effectively put into operation, they were also called upon to meet the costs of an expensive and inefficient system of poor relief.

scholarly journals “In Darkest England and the Way Out”

1984 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Social Characteristics ◽  
Moral Reform ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Wage Labour

In the past decade a prominent theme in the historiography of nineteenth-century Britain has been the imposition of middle-class habits and attitudes upon the populace by means of new or re-invigorated mechanisms of “social control”. To the apparatus of law enforcement and to the disciplines of the factory and wage labour, historians have added the less overt instruments of social welfare, education, religion, leisure and moral reform. Philanthropists, educators, clergymen and moralizers have all become soldiers in a campaign to uproot the “anti-social” characteristics of the poor and to cement the hegemony of the elite.

VAKIFAS INTENT AND PRACTICE: CHARITY AND POOR RELIEF IN TURKEY

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damla Isik
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Charitable Giving ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Deserving Poor ◽  
Religious Ideals ◽  
To Receive

AbstractThrough ethnographic and archival research conducted in Istanbul and Izmir, this article examines the dynamics and regulation of charitable giving in contemporary Turkey. The article is based on interviews I conducted with the volunteers, employees, and aid recipients of three civil society organizations that rely on charitable giving to fund their projects, which center on helping the poor and providing aid during and after wars and other disasters. I document how religious ideals of anonymous charitable giving for the sake of giving, without expectation of return, are closely intertwined with anxiety over finding a worthy charitable association and recipient. In doing so, I focus onvakıfas both a concept and a practice that gives meaning to charitable giving in Turkey. The increasing desire to document, define, and categorize the deserving poor as a way to justify the intent to give and to receive goes against the anonymity and immediacy of giving, thus riddling intent with ethical contradictions. I argue that attention needs to be paid to the intent, practice, and various forms of giving, and not just to the effects and outcomes of charity.

Local responses to the poor in late medieval and Tudor England

1988 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie K. McIntosh
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Public Assistance ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Local Responses ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Deserving Poor

The leaders of English villages and towns between 1388 and 1598 accepted that deserving poor people, those unable to work to support themselves, warranted private and, if necessary, public assistance. Poverty was objectively mild in the century after the 1349 plague. Economic and demographic developments between c. 1465 and 1530 increased the number of poor people. Religious and political changes of the mid-sixteenth century forced individuals and parishes to assume virtually the entire burden of poor relief. Parliamentary legislation empowered local authorities to raise compulsory taxes for support of the poor. In Elizabeth's reign the problems of poverty intensified, forcing nearly all parishes to use taxation at least in bad years.

Healthcare for the Poor

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-127
Author(s):  
Gabriel J. Loiacono
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early American ◽  
Native Woman ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Newspaper Articles

Early American poor relief included extensive healthcare. Doctors’ visits, nurses’ care, and medicine could all be covered by poor relief. One nurse, called “One-Eyed” Sarah, healed poor residents of Providence, Rhode Island, in the very early nineteenth century. One of thousands of women, nationwide, who did the hard work of physically tending to their needy neighbors, Sarah’s work was highlighted in newspaper articles in 1811. Sarah was “Indian,” and her impoverished patients requested her by name. While her actual identity remains mysterious, this chapter explores what we can learn about a Native woman who nursed the poor back to health, while being paid by poor relief funds. Sarah’s life shows evidence of being controlled by overseers of the poor, as Cuff Roberts’s was. It also shows how she could use her experience to find income from overseers of the poor like William Larned.

Romantic Medievalist Nationalism in Schumann’s Genoveva, Then and Now

2020 ◽  
pp. 154-173
Author(s):  
Michael S. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Source Material ◽  
First Century ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Grand Opera ◽  
The Middle Ages

Prior to Richard Wagner’s dominance of the German operatic scene in the second half of the nineteenth century, a healthy competition to establish a distinctively Germanic tradition of grand opera occupied the minds and activities of several prominent composers. In seeking to establish their own operatic tradition, a number of German composers looked to the Middle Ages for their source material. Schumann’s Genoveva represents an important contribution to the quest for German grand opera as well as the height of the German romantic medievalist aesthetic in opera. Martin Kušej’s 2008 production of Genoveva offers a fascinating twenty-first century reinterpretation of this aesthetic.

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