scholarly journals “It Is Extreme Necessity That Makes Me Do This”: Some “Survival Strategies” of Pauper Households in London's West End During the Early Eighteenth Century”

2000 ◽  
Vol 45 (S8) ◽  
pp. 47-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Boulton
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Elderly Parents ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Alternative Sources

Although research on survival strategies is still at a relatively early stage, there are clearly some areas where there is considerable difference in emphasis placed by historians on the relative importance of particular “expedients” deployed by the poorin extremisThere is, for example, uncertainty regarding the amount of support given by neighbours as opposed to relatives. There is some historical contention, too, over the importance to the elderly of care by their children, as opposed to alternative sources of maintenance such as earnings, charity and especially the formal institutions of poor relief. After all, in the early modern period the principle source for a study of the survival strategies of poor people is always likely to be the records of poor relief or charitable agencies and institutions. The obvious danger here is that historians of poor relief consistently overestimate the importance of such relief to the poor. Both Richard Wall and Pat Thane, using evidence from nineteenth- and twentieth-century England, for example, have demonstrated that the elderly received far more support from relatives than has been realized. Professor Thane has argued that this situation is unlikely t o have been new. Other historians, however, are much more sceptical over the value of intergenerational flows of wealth from children to elderly parents.

Epilogue

2012 ◽  
pp. 226-230
Author(s):  
Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Remarkable Feature ◽  
Economic Opportunities ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The City

This chapter identifies the most important characteristics of poverty and welfare among the Portuguese community of early modern Amsterdam. One remarkable feature of the poor in the Amsterdam Portuguese milieu is the prominence of women, until recently hardly considered. The reasons for this were manifold: as a key group in the effort to perpetuate Jewish tradition in the peninsula, women were consistently persecuted by the Inquisition and many fled in fear of it, as well as out of the desire to live openly as Jews. Also, economic opportunities for men outside the Dutch Republic led to many women being left on their own in the city, dependent on welfare. The poor relief provided by the Portuguese community was not exceptionally generous, at least when judged by Amsterdam standards, nor was it granted permanently to all poor people. The system was hierarchical and elitist, presided over by a closed, wealthy caste who ran a strict regime. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the Amsterdam Portuguese community had lost its international attraction as a place of refuge.

Changing Patterns of Poor Relief in Some English Rural Parishes Circa 1650–1750

Rural History ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOAN KENT ◽  
STEVE KING
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Court Records ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Rural Parishes ◽  
Changing Patterns

This article uses court records, overseers' accounts, pauper examinations and other records from several counties, including Huntingdonshire and Staffordshire, to look at the experiences of poor relief in early modern England. It shows the varied circumstances under which the poor ‘encountered’ the poor law in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, highlighting the often contradictory attitudes that poor people encountered. More than this, it argues that there were many sorts of ‘poor’ people with very different capacities to negotiate about relief and to help themselves and each other. These features compounded enduring regional differences in the nature and extent of relief to generate a complex patchwork of experiences for the poor in early modern England.

Migration of the Poor

2012 ◽  
pp. 13-60
Author(s):  
Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Preventive Measures ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Admissions Policy ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time

This chapter discusses the arrival in to and departure from Amsterdam of poor migrants and the underlying reasons for their movements. The early modern period saw thousands of people, Jews among them, emigrate from their home countries and travel in search of a new life. Some were forced to leave by war, persecution, or economic difficulties; others were attracted by the work made available by new state or mercantile policies. The chapter then looks at the admissions policy of the Amsterdam Portuguese community and casts light on the city's role as a transit port. The city's tolerant immigration policy carried a number of risks, the most obvious of which was that it would be burdened with a large influx of paupers. However, the city seemed undeterred by this. Nevertheless, the city did take a few preventive measures from the last decades of the sixteenth century onwards. For example, undesirable elements were banned from the city, and the authorities laid down that all immigrants must have resided in Amsterdam for a specified period before they could claim poor relief from the city or from the Reformed Charity Board. Over time, eligibility for poor relief was made conditional on increasingly long periods of residence, along with more and more stringent restrictions of other kinds.

Poverty and Welfare Among the Portuguese Jews in Early Modern Amsterdam

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tirtsah Levie-Bernfeld
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Welfare Institutions ◽  
Poor Women ◽  
Relative Tolerance ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Work Education

Early modern Amsterdam was a prosperous city renowned for its relative tolerance, and many people hoping for a better future, away from persecution, wars, and economic malaise, chose to make a new life there. Conversos and Jews from many countries were among them, attracted by the reputed wealth and benevolence of the Portuguese Jews who had settled there. Behind the facade of prosperity, however, poverty was a serious problem. It preoccupied the leadership of the Portuguese Jewish community and influenced its policy on admitting newcomers. This book looks at poverty and welfare from the perspective of both benefactors and recipients. The book analyses benefactors' motives for philanthropy and charts its dimensions; it also examines the decision-making processes of communal bodies and private philanthropists, identifying the cultural influences that shaped their commitment to welfare. At the same time the book succeeds in bringing the poor to life: it examines what brought them to Amsterdam, aspects of their daily life in the petitions they sent to the different welfare institutions, and the survival strategies offered by work, education, and charity. The book also considers the related questions of social mobility and the motivation of the poor for joining the Amsterdam Portuguese community, and finally, to the small but active groups of Sephardi bandits who formed their own clandestine networks. Special attention is paid to poor women, who were often singled out for relief. In this way the book makes a much-needed contribution to the study of gender, in Jewish society and more generally.

Taking Forward Roger's Interest in the Relationship between the Early Modern Family, Demography, Economy and Government Policy

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-36
Author(s):  
Simon Szreter
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
Economic Productivity ◽  
Work Related ◽  
The Poor

This paper describes how Roger Schofield came to characterise the English social system of the early modern period as 'individualist-collectivist', in which individualism is located within a larger structure and context of collectivism. It discusses this in the context of his contributions to the book he co-edited with John Walter in 1989, entitled Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society. Roger's work related the evidence of demographic and epidemiological change not only to family structures, ideological belief systems and government policy, as saliently represented by effects of the poor laws, but also to economic productivity as a dependent variable. That was quite the opposite of the dominant orthodoxy of the post-war era, which was that demography and epidemiology were driven by economics, not vice versa. This has the implication for our own era that constructive government policy has repeatedly played an important positive role in the economic productivity of the nation and that tax-funded generous support for the poor is a central part of that, which citizens should positively support.

Beyond the Kirk Session: Mixed Economies of Relief

2018 ◽  
pp. 206-235
Author(s):  
John McCallum
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Significant Source ◽  
European Research ◽  
Mixed Economy ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Relief System ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

While the focus in the previous two sections is on the formal relief system operated by the church in the localities, on the poor who received relief, and on the relationship between them, the final chapter of the book turns to consider the wider context of relief. Recent European research has demonstrated the significance of mixed economies of relief, as well as developing growing attempts to trace the lives and survival strategies of the poor on their own terms, and not merely as recipients of charity. This section applies these two trends to the Scottish experience, and contextualises the church’s relief work through an examination of the relief provided by secular authorities; hospitals; and private individuals; and the informal survival strategies employed by the poor themselves. The chapter argues that the kirk session was at the centre of the mixed economy of relief, and was by far the most significant source of support for early modern Scots in need of assistance, and furthermore that the kirk session was often instrumental in supporting, working with, and developing these other forms of relief (hospitals, testamentary charity and foundations).

“Constructing the Poor in Early Seventeenth-Century London”1

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 450-463
Author(s):  
Claire S. Schen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Demographic Pressure ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Undeserving Poor

Historians of early modern Europe have become accustomed to the dichotomy of the deserving and undeserving poor, though they still debate the origins of the transformation of attitudes toward the poor and poverty. Historians have studied less carefully the ways in which these presumably static categories flexed, as individuals and officials worked out poor relief and charity on the local level. Military, religious, and social exigencies, precipitated by war, the Reformation, and demographic pressure, allowed churchwardens and vestrymen to redraw the contours of the deserving and undeserving poor within the broader frame of the infirm, aged, and sick. International conflicts of the early seventeenth century created circumstances and refugees not anticipated by the poor law innovators of the sixteenth century. London’s responses to these unexpected developments illustrate how inhabitants constructed the categories of die deserving and undeserving poor. This construction depended upon the discretion of churchwardens and their fellow officers, who listened to the accounts and read the official documents of the poor making claims on parish relief and charity.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF POOR RELIEF IN LANCASHIRE, c. 1598–1680

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN HEALEY
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor

ABSTRACTThe development of the poor law has formed a key element of recent discussions of ‘state formation’ in early modern England. There are, however, still few local studies of how formal poor relief, stipulated in the great Tudor statutes, was implemented on the ground. This article offers such a study, focusing on Lancashire, an economically marginal county, far from Westminster. It argues that the poor law developed in Lancashire surprisingly quickly in the early seventeenth century, despite the fact that there is almost no evidence of implementation of statutory relief before 1598, and formal relief mechanisms were essentially in place before the Civil War even if the numbers on relief remained small. After a brief hiatus during the conflict, the poor law was quickly revived in the 1650s. The role of the magistracy is emphasized as a crucial driving force, not just in the enforcement of the statutes, but also in setting relief policy. The thousands of petitions to JPs by paupers, parishes, and townships that survive in the county archives suggests that magistrates were crucial players in the ‘politics of the parish’.

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.

scholarly journals Charity and Conflict: Poor Relief in Mid-Seventeenth-Century Dundee

2016 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
John McCallum
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Town ◽  
Insight Into

This article addresses the poor relief provided in Dundee during the 1640s and 1650s, years of particular upheaval in the burgh. Contrary to some assumptions, some unusually rich archival evidence on this subject survives and offers rich insight into the collection and distribution of welfare by the kirk treasurers. The article argues that significant fundraising activities took place and survived the disasters of the late 1640s and early 1650s, pointing to the resilience of the town and its charitable structures. This relief was effectively administered and carefully recorded, and drew on a variety of additional sources such as voluntary gifts, as well as regular church-door collections. The article also analyses the recipients of regular and exceptional relief payments and considers the much more limited care provided by Dundee's hospital. As well as suggesting further opportunities for the study of poor relief in pre-modern Scotland, the article also helps to shed new light on the seventeenth-century experiences of one of the less well-studied of Scotland's leading early modern burghs.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document