THE IMPACT OF STURGES BOURNE'S POOR LAW REFORMS IN RURAL ENGLAND

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 399-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
SAMANTHA A. SHAVE
Keyword(s):  
Law Reform ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Alternative Strategies ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Administrative Records ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Rural England ◽  
Undeserving Poor

ABSTRACTEngland was blighted by frequent agricultural depressions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Recurrent crises brought poor law reform to the parliamentary agenda and led to the passage of two non-compulsory pieces of legislation, Sturges Bourne's Acts of 1818 and 1819. These permissory acts allowed parishes to ‘tighten up’ the distribution of poor relief through two vital tools: the formation of select vestries, and the appointment of waged assistant overseers. Whilst previous studies have tended to represent the legislation as a failing reform in the dying days of the old poor law, we know remarkably little about the relief practices deployed by parishes operating under the auspices of Sturges Bourne's Acts. This article starts by detailing the genesis of the reforms before considering the provisions of the acts and their rates of adoption in rural England. Focusing upon administrative records from Wessex and West Sussex, the article proceeds to examine the inspection of relief claimants, and judgments made as to their ‘character and conduct’; the general measures taken to reduce outdoor relief; and their alternative strategies for allocating relief. It is argued that the reforms re-drew the distinction between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor, ultimately changing individuals' and families' entitlement to relief under the old poor laws.

Pauper Policies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha A. Shave
Keyword(s):  
Policy Process ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
Adoption And Implementation ◽  
System P ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Impact

Pauper Policies examines how policies under both old and New Poor Laws were conceived, adopted, implemented, developed or abandoned. The author engages with recent literature on the experience and agency of poor relief recipients, and offers a fresh perspective on poor law administration. Through a ‘policy process’ approach, the author exposes several significant topics in poor law history which are currently unknown or poorly understood, each of which are explored in a series of thematic chapters. It contains important new research on the adoption and implementation of enabling acts at the end of the old poor laws, Gilbert’s Act of 1782 and Sturges Bourne’s Acts of 1818 and 1819; the exchange of knowledge about how best to provide poor relief in the final decades of the old poor law and formative decades of the New; and the impact of national scandals on policy-making in the new Victorian system. The volume points towards a new direction in the study of poor law administration, one which examines how people, both those in positions of power and the poor, could shape pauper policies. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in welfare, poverty and society in eighteenth and nineteenth-century England, as well as those who want to understand the early workings of the welfare system.

Restricting relief: the impact of Sturges Bourne’s reforms

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha A. Shave
Keyword(s):  
Poor Relief ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Southern England ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Undeserving Poor

The second chapter about ‘enabling acts’ examines the impact of Sturges Bourne’s Acts of 1818 and 1819. Sturges Bourne’s Acts permitted parishes to employ an assistant overseer whose main task was to inspect the poor and distribute relief, and allowed for the appointment of a Select Vestry to take charge of policy decisions and relief claimants. The chapter first examines why and when the policies were adopted in southern England. These permissory acts allowed parishes to tighten up the distribution of poor relief. As such whilst the retrenchment of relief provision was an inevitable consequence of the Act, the sheer variety of ways in which it was implemented is examined in the chapter. It is argued that the reforms re-drew the distinction between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor, ultimately changing individuals' and families' entitlement to relief under the old poor laws.

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.

The False Dawn of Poor-Law Reform: Nixon, Carter, and the Quest for a Guaranteed Income

1998 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Public Works ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
American People ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Social ◽  
Liberal Government

In August 1969, President Richard M. Nixon approached the American people with a radical proposal to do what the federal government had never done before: guarantee a minimum level of income for every American family unable to provide one for itself. Eight years later, in August 1977, President Jimmy Carter announced a similar proposal for a federal guarantee of income, this time along with an expansion of public works jobs. Like Nixon before him, Carter soon abandoned his bill, and with it the quest for a federal income guarantee. Thus, inconclusively, ended a decade-long struggle to replace the nation's uncoordinated, incomplete collection of welfare programs with a single, comprehensive system of federal relief. This struggle took place against a backdrop of economic stagnation and demographic change that sent social spending soaring and made existing poor-relief arrangements seem increasingly obsolete. It also tapped into growing taxpayer resentment and a rising tide of popular animosity toward welfare. In part for these reasons, the quest for a guaranteed income marked the end of an era of liberal government activism against poverty, and ushered in a new era of poor-law reform. Welfare, not poverty, was the social problem of the 1970s. And the idea of a guaranteed income was the solution embraced by a new, more chastened and conservative, ideological center.

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.

scholarly journals ‘FACTS NOTORIOUS TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY’: THE POLITICAL BATTLE OVER IRISH POOR LAW REFORM IN THE 1860s

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 157-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Crossman
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Law System ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Local Discretion ◽  
Landed Elite ◽  
Political Battle

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on the campaign to reform the Irish poor law in the 1860s. Debate on poor law reform highlighted fundamental divisions over the principles underlying the New Poor Law as well as widespread dissatisfaction with the poor law system in Ireland particularly within the Catholic community. Led by the leading Catholic cleric, Archbishop Paul Cullen, critics of the Irish poor law sought to lessen reliance on the institution of the workhouse and to expand outdoor relief thus bringing the system closer to its English model. The poor law authorities supported by the Irish landed elite fought successfully to maintain the limited and restrictive nature of the system fearful of the consequences of extending local discretion. The paper reveals the contested nature of poor relief both in principle and in practice, and the centrality of social issues to Irish political debate in decades after the Great Famine.

scholarly journals PAUPER INVENTORIES, SOCIAL RELATIONS, AND THE NATURE OF POOR RELIEF UNDER THE OLD POOR LAW, ENGLAND, c. 1601–1834

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOSEPH HARLEY
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The North ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Local Practices ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Many

ABSTRACTDuring the old poor law, many paupers had their possessions inventoried and later taken by authorities as part of the process of obtaining poor relief. Historians have known about this for decades, yet little research has been conducted to establish how widespread the system was, what types of parishioners had their belongings inventoried and why, what the legal status of the practice was, and how it affected social relations in the parish. Using nearly 450 pauper inventories, this article examines these historiographical lacunae. It is argued that the policy had no legal basis and came from local practices and policies. The system is found to be more common in the south and east of England than in the north, and it is argued that the practice gradually became less common from the late eighteenth century. The inventorying of paupers’ goods often formed one of the many creative ways in which parishes helped the poor before 1770, as it guaranteed many paupers assistance until death. However, by the late eighteenth century the appraising of paupers’ goods was closely tied to a negative shift in the attitudes of larger ratepayers and officials, who increasingly wanted to dissuade people from applying for assistance and reduce expenditure.

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