scholarly journals Urbanisation, Elite Attitudes and Philanthropy: Cardiff, 1850–1914

1982 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Evans
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
The Poor

How did philanthropy adjust to the transformation of society in the nineteenth century? What was its role in social relations and in relieving poverty? Recent writers studying these issues have suggested the need for detailed studies at local level, and in studying some English towns and cities in the earlier part of the nineteenth century they have come to varying conclusions. Roger Smith's study of Nottingham shows that philanthropy added insignificantly to the amount of relief available through the Poor Law. By contrast Peter Searby's study of Coventry shows that philanthropic funds were quite abundant and after some reforms in the 1830's even applied to the relief of the poor! Professor McCord's articles on the North-East of England in the early nineteenth century seek to establish the more ambitious claim “that nineteenth-century philanthropy provided increasing resources and extended machinery with which to diminish the undesirable effects of that period's social problems”.

Negotiating medical welfare

2018 ◽  
pp. 69-104
Author(s):  
Steven King
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Moral Hazard ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Core Business ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Poor

This chapter foregrounds the concept of pauper agency. Using the largest corpus of letters by or about the poor ever assembled, it argues that sickness was the core business of the Old Poor Law by the early nineteenth century. Rather than paupers being simply subject to the whim and treatment of the parish, the chapter argues that they had considerable agency. Despite problems of moral hazard and the idea that sickness could be faked, paupers and officials agreed that ill health and its treatment was an area of acceptable contestation.

Sickness, medical welfare and the English poor, 1750-1834

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven King
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Large Dataset ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor

This book explores the welfare experiences of the sick poor between the 1750s and through the so-called crisis of the Old Poor Law ending in the 1830s. It brings together a large dataset of accounts, vestry minutes, bills, contracts and letters by or about the poor to provide a comprehensive and colourful overview of the nature, scale and negotiation of medical welfare. At its core stand the words and lives of the poor themselves, reconstructed in painstaking detail to show that medical welfare became a totemic issue for parochial authorities by the 1830s. The book suggests that the Old Poor Law confronted a rising tide of sickness by the early nineteenth century. While there are spectacular instances of parsimony and neglect in response to such rising need, in most places and at most times, parish officers seem to have felt a moral obligation to the sick. Indeed, we might by and large construct their responses as considerate and generous. To some extent this reflected Christian paternalism, but we also see other factors at play. These include a growing sense that illness, even illness amongst the poor, was and should be remediable and a shared territory of negotiation between paupers, advocates and officials. The result was a canvas of medical welfare with extraordinary colour and depth. By the 1820s, more of the ill-health of ordinary people was captured by the poor law and being doctored or sojourning in an institution became part of pauper and parochial expectation. These trends are brought to vivid life in the words of the poor and their advocates, such that the book genuinely offers a re-interpretation of the Old Poor Law in it slater phases form the bottom up.

A Different Kind of Speenhamland: Nonresident Relief in the Industrial Revolution

1991 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Stephen Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Labor Migration ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Work Force ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Family

“Speenhamland” is a word popularized by late nineteenth-century historians as a derogatory term for the systematic subsidization of laborers' wages by allowances paid from the poor rates. This system was thought to have flourished in southern and agrarian England in the early nineteenth century, the size of the allowances determined by the size of the family and the price of bread. The unwitting “villains” were the Berkshire justices who met at the Pelican Inn, located in a tithing of Speen Parish. Moved by corn dearth and a terrible winter, the justices on May 6, 1795, set in train the fatal hemorrhaging of the Old Poor Law that, in turn, led to the draconian Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834.Myth this may largely be, and it has been explored elsewhere; however, no one questions that subsidizing the employed from the poor rates, including allowances in aid of wages, occurred in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is in this sense that “Speenhamland” is used here, but to suggest a radically different and mainly constructive consequence for British economic and social development.For subsidizing the employed poor, when it took the form of nonresident relief, could function as a kind of “Industrial Speenhamland” (freshly coined), to wit: a system of parochially funded labor migration that promoted a work force for expanding industries. This subsidization could include allowances in aid of wages as well as other welfare benefits in times of sickness and unemployment—all at the expense of the home parish or township, not of the places in which the factories and industrial workshops were located.

Navigating the Old English Poor Law

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
National Context ◽  
Postal Service ◽  
General Reader ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Emotional Landscape

This edition of 599 letters written by, for or about the poor to the early nineteenth century Cumbrian town of Kirkby Lonsdale provides a unique window onto the experiences, views and conditions of a much neglected group in English social history. The letters provide a sense of the emotional landscape of people who have so far largely escaped our attention, telling the intensely human stories of their hardships and the efforts they made to survive, often against considerable odds. However, they also give a real sense of the agency of the poor and their advocates, demonstrating time and again that they were willing and able – indeed, that they saw it as their right – to challenge those who administered welfare locally in an attempt to shape a system which (notionally, at least) afforded them no power at all. The letters are framed by a scholarly introduction which explains the structural conditions under which they were produced and gives essential local and national context for readers wishing to understand them better. The volume as a whole will be of interest to students and scholars of the Old Poor Law and the history of welfare. It will equally appeal to the general reader with an interest in local and national social history, covering at is does everything from the history of literacy or clothing through to histories of health, disability and the postal service.

The Relief of the Poor in Coventry, 1830–1863

1977 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Searby
Keyword(s):  
Local Economy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Will ◽  
Law Commission

Recent writers have pointed out that the 1834 act often made little immediate difference to the practice of local poor-law authorities. The poor-law commissioners lacked the means or the will to enforce their programme. Poor law unions did not replace the township as the effective unit of administration. The same men (albeit with different titles) remained in control. Authorities continued to vary greatly in efficiency and generosity, strong determinants of leniency or harshness being the fortunes of the local economy and the strength of local impulses towards paternalism or frugality. In Nottinghamshire, for example, relief policy became steadily more stringent from the 1820s onwards, largely owing to the work of cost-conscious magistrates; 1834 speeded the current, rather than changed its course. On the other hand, in the Durham unions surveyed by Peter Dunkley, relief was generous throughout the 1830s, but stingy when the local economy was hit by slump after 1840; in the Hungry Forties, the Durham unions were as ruthless as the poor law commission in their attitude towards the poor – and sometimes, indeed, were more so, the commission protesting vainly against the overcrowding of workhouses. Even local authorities' generous phases reflected a shrewd assessment of the ratepayers' best interests: Rhodes Boyson has shown how the north-east Lancashire unions' insistence on continuing outdoor relief was due in part to a realisation that to enforce indoor relief in all cases would be much more costly.

The Relief of Poverty in Mid Nineteenth-Century Colyton

Rural History ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Robin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Present Form ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poor Person ◽  
The Welfare State

The welfare state emerged in 1948 when the National Assistance Act finally abolished the New Poor Law Forty-two years later, as politicians and bureaucrats struggle to keep increasing expenditure within bounds, the existence of the welfare state in its present form is under threat. Just over 150 years ago, the Old Poor Law was presenting parish ratepayers with a similar problem of rising costs, leading in 1834 to a fundamental reorganisation into the New Poor Law It may therefore be profitable to see how effective in practice the New Poor Law was when it replaced a system widely regarded as profligate, and to consider the extent to which benefits payable through the welfare state were available a hundred years or more ago.This study examines in detail how the New Poor Law, and other forms of relief, affected the whole population of the rural parish of Colyton, in south Devonshire, during the thirty years from 1851 to 1881. It will first describe the sources from which a poor person in Colyton in the mid nineteenth century could look for relief; next discuss how widespread poverty was and who the poor were; then look at what kinds of relief were available, under what conditions; and finally assess the comparative importance to the poor of the different agencies providing assistance.

Reformism and Orthodox Practice in Early Nineteenth-Century Muslim North India: Sayyid Ahmed Shaheed Reconsidered

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-198
Author(s):  
SANA HAROON
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North India ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The North ◽  
The Creation

AbstractThis paper is a reconsideration of the career of the north-Indian Sayyid Ahmed Shaheed (1786–1831). I argue that Sayyid Ahmed used a Sufi devotional premise to understand and explain principles of orthodoxy. He also applied a concept of innate spiritual knowledge to reformed practice, suggesting that ordinary people, without scholarly training, could determine and apply the principles of orthodox practice of Islam for themselves and for others. His movement modified traditional seminary-centred teaching and leadership through the creation of a popular and easily transferrable system of practice rooted in the community and imprinted with the obligation to spread reformist teachings.

scholarly journals Community Health Workers: Challenges and Vulnerabilities of Accredited Social Health Activists Working in Conflict-affected Settings in the State of Assam, India

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Preety R Rajbangshi ◽  
Devaki Nambiar ◽  
Aradhana Srivast
Keyword(s):  
Community Health ◽  
Community Health Workers ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
Social Health ◽  
Access To Health Services ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
East Region ◽  
Access To Health

Abstract Introduction:. It is well acknowledged that India’s Community Health workers known as Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) are the bedrock of its health system. Many ASHAs are currently working in fragile and conflict-affected settings. No efforts have yet been made to understand the challenges and vulnerabilities of these female workers. This paper seeks to address this gap by bringing attention to the situation of ASHAs working in the fragile and conflict settings and how conflict impacts them and their work. Methods: Qualitative fieldwork was undertaken in four conflict-affected villages in two conflict-affected districts -Kokrajhar and Karbi Anglong of Assam state situated in the North-East region of India. Detailed account of four ASHAs from the majority (Bodo or Karbi) and minority (Adivasi or Koch) communities serving roughly 4000 people is presented. Data transliterated into English were analysed by authors by developing a codebook using grounded theory and thematic organisation of codes. Results: ASHAs reported facing challenges in ensuring access to health services during and immediately after outbreaks of conflict. They experienced difficulty in arranging transport and breakdown of services at remote health facilities. Their physical safety and security were at risk during episodes of conflict. ASHAs reported hostile attitudes of the communities they served due to the breakdown of social relations, trauma due to displacement, and loss of family members, particularly their husbands. Conclusion: Conflict must be recognised as an important context within which community health workers operate, with greater policy focus and research devoted to understanding and addressing the barriers they face as workers and as persons affected by conflict.

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