scholarly journals The Implementation of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act on Tyneside

1969 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman McCord
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Important Region ◽  
Reliable Assessment ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Public Record ◽  
Selection Of

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was a measure of major importance, both as an administrative innovation and because of its social effects. The Ministry of Health archives in the Public Record Office include in the Poor Law Papers a very large and valuable source for the social history of nineteenth century Britain. Much more work on this mass of evidence will be necessary before any very reliable assessment of the effect of the New Poor Law can be made. This paper is an attempt to use a small selection of these papers to discuss the way in which the system prescribed by the 1834 Act was introduced into Tyneside, already an important region of economic growth in these years.

Emigration and the New Poor Law: The Norfolk Emigration Fever of 1836

Rural History ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Howells
Keyword(s):  
Poor People ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Potential Safety ◽  
Surplus Labour ◽  
Public Record ◽  
British Colonies

In 1836 under the auspices of section 62 of the New Poor Law, 3,069 poor people from Norfolk were assisted to emigrate to North America. Their passages, and various other requirements including spending money, travel to the port, equipment for the voyage and settling of debts, were paid for out of the poor rates. The rationale for this outflow of people revolved around the issue of surplus labour, which was believed to have a corrosive and unsettling effect upon the state of rural society. Emigration had long been seen as a potential safety valve for surplus labour. Clause 62 can be traced back to the vigorous debate about assisted emigration associated with Robert Wilmot Horton. For one emigration season, it looked as if parochial government were capable of rising to the challenge of solving its surplus labour problems and simultaneously satisfying the needs of the labour-hungry British colonies. This paper examines the Norfolk emigration fever by using a previously unused data set of nineteenth-century emigration (Ministry of Health files held at the Public Record Office). It argues that assisted emigration was the result of a concerted rational policy, applied by the parish officers aimed to benefit emigrants and those left behind. The policy was neither haphazard nor accidental and, though inspired by fear of the consequences of implementing the New Poor Law, was not a panicked response. It argues that the arrangements for assisted emigration resulted in a process of interchange and interaction between rich and poor which makes a mockery of the term ‘shovelling out paupers’. The poor emigrants who were targeted were assisted because they were good labourers, not useless indigents incapable of providing for themselves. The findings shed further light on the nature of emigrating populations, the emigratory process and the mindset of both rich and poor at the time of the introduction of the New Poor Law.

Seek and Hide: Public Health Departments and Persons with Tuberculosis, 1890–1940

1993 ◽  
Vol 21 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 289-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila M. Rothman
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Health Departments ◽  
Familial Predisposition ◽  
Public Health Departments ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
Old Females

In 1882 Koch discovered the tubercle bacillus and transformed both the medical and the social history of tuberculosis and the experiences of those who contracted it. For the first time, the absence or presence of the bacillus made it possible to define, in Koch’s terms, “the boundaries of the diseases to be understood as tuberculosis.” And for the first time the sick became subject to oversight and discrimination.Prior to Koch’s discovery, tuberculosis, or as it was then called, consumption, was considered a hereditary and non-contagious disease, albeit a very deadly and persistent one. Over the first half of the nineteenth century, it was responsible for one out of every five deaths. It crossed all boundaries of geography, social class, age, and sex affecting residents in rural as well as urban areas, the prosperous as well as the poor, the young even more notably than the old, females more often than males. Physicians assumed a familial predisposition existed (as in the case of insanity); following the precepts of humoral medicine, they postulated that the disease originated in “irritations” whose sources were to be found in the interaction of an inherited constitution with a particular lifestyle and environment.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social History ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Central Research ◽  
Dance Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dance Movements ◽  
History Of ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter defines the scope of the problem, and the central research question: Are there consistent patterns of political intent and impact in diverse public dance movements throughout the social history of the Americas? It surveys the existing literature from the fields of dance studies, anthropology, musicology, and cultural history. It lays out the argument, methodology, and disciplinary sources and explains the criteria for the selection of the specific case studies, linking the diversity of those case studies to the diversity of methodological tools necessary for their analysis and comparison.

Introduction

1979 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nasaw
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Social History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Schooling ◽  
The Public ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Public Colleges And Universities

A history of American public schooling reduced to graphs would tell a simple story of almost continuous growth. In every category, the graphs would incline upwards, recording a steady rise in the number of students in school, the time they spent there, the teachers who taught them, the schools that housed them, and the dollars expended. The upward trend would continue unbroken from the 1820s until the 1970s. We cannot, at this time, chart the downward course that has commenced (if only temporarily) in the mid-1970s. We know only that that part of the American public that votes on school bond issues and makes its opinions known to professional pollsters is no longer willing to spend as much money or place as much trust in public schooling as it once was. It is too soon to predict the future course of public schooling in America, but a good time to reconsider the past. To understand why Americans have grown disillusioned with their public schools we must look beyond the immediate present to the larger history of the United States and its public schools. The public schools of this country—elementary, secondary, and higher—were not conceived full-blown. They have a history, and it is the social history of the United States. This essay will not attempt to present that history in its entirety but will focus instead on three specific periods decisive for the social history of this society and its public schools: the decades before the Civil War, in which the elementary or “common schools” were reformed; the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, in which the secondary schools “welcomed” the “children of the plain people”; and the post-World War II decades, which found the public colleges and universities “overwhelmed” by a “tidal wave” of “non-traditional” students— those traditionally excluded from higher education by sex, race, and class. In each of these periods, the quantitative expansion of the student population was matched by a qualitative transformation of the enlarged institutions.

scholarly journals Public mood of the Kuibyshev Region residents in 1990-1991 in the context of the social history of Russia

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 263-270
Author(s):  
Alexey Vladimirovich Zakharchenko ◽  
Maksim Sergeevich Kirdyashev ◽  
Ksenia Viktorovna Pankeeva
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social History ◽  
Emotional Reaction ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Chronological Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Apathy

This paper deals with 1990-1991 as a turning point, which marked the collapse of the policy of perestroika, the communist institutions of power became a relic of the past, metamorphoses took place in the social structure of the Soviet society. The focus of everyday life history is the reality in the interpretation of its immediate participants, who were witnesses of the events of those years. Such events can relate to different spheres of life, and participants in these events can be people of different social strata. Newspapers and magazines are considered to be an irreplaceable source of information for studying the relationship between government and society in this chronological period. Letters and appeals of citizens from the regional newspaper Volzhskaya Kommuna were taken into consideration. There were rubrics expressing public opinion about the dynamics of the perestroika policy. The emotional reaction reflected in the letters is of great interest. The sources clearly record the main tendencies and stages of the public mood that prevailed in that period, thereby transfer the political apathy that spread in the society. The information received from the sources makes a definite contribution to the study of the everyday life history and can serve as a basis for research and reveal new aspects in social history.

RECONSIDERING POOR LAW INSTITUTIONS BY VIRTUALLY RECONSTRUCTING AND RE-VIEWING AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WORKHOUSE

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
SUSANNAH OTTAWAY ◽  
AUSTIN MASON
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
3D Model ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Architectural Features ◽  
Permeable Walls ◽  
History Of

Abstract There is a fine timber moulded cornice in a front room of the building that was once the House of Industry at Gressenhall, Norfolk, while along the eastern wing of the building one can still see the architectural features of an elegant open arcade. Why were such features included on a structure built to keep the poor at work, where residents spent their days making sacks, spinning, and working in the farm fields that surrounded the institution? Creating a digital 3D model of the 1777 House of Industry has allowed us to peel back the historical residue of the post-1834 Poor Law Union workhouse and re-engage the building's architectural features in their original context. The resulting building's peculiarly elegant characteristics reflect the emerging ambitions and defensiveness characteristic of the newly constituted ‘guardians of the poor’ who constructed it, while its permeable walls indicate considerably lower barriers between the workhouse and the outside world than is generally thought. By applying an innovative, digital humanities methodology to a significant social history topic, this article argues that virtual modelling and traditional archival research can together shape a new approach to the history of the Old Poor Law's institutions for the poor.

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