Earnings, Poor Relief and the Economy of Makeshifts: Bedfordshire in the Early Years of the New Poor Law

Rural History ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
SAMANTHA WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Household Income ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Low Incomes ◽  
Agricultural Labourers

It is increasingly recognised by those engaged in the debate concerning the standard of living of workers during industrialisation that all forms of household income need to be assessed, not just male waged work. A more holistic approach also considers women and children's earnings, poor relief, and the wide range of self-provisioning activities and resources available through the ‘economy of makeshifts’. Over one hundred household budgets of agricultural labourers and their families have been analysed from the Ampthill Union, Bedfordshire, just before and during the implementation of the new poor law in order to further explore and quantify all components to the household income of labouring families in this key transition decade. The article finds that poor relief to families was cut in the wake of the Poor Law Amendment Act. It also finds that the low incomes of families necessitated supplementation through making shift. When the makeshift economy is quantified, it becomes clear that such activities could significantly supplement incomes.

PARISH ECONOMIES OF WELFARE, 1650–1834

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 985-1006 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN BROAD
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Basic Needs ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Southern England ◽  
Rural Employment ◽  
The Poor

This article argues for a more holistic approach to understanding the Old Poor Law. Using three detailed case studies from southern England, it focuses on the dynamics of differing social groups within the parish. It also looks at the role of the law, looking beyond the statutes to the parts played by King's Bench, Quarter Sessions and individual justices and petty sessions in creating a diversity of experiences for the poor. However, it also stresses the differential access to charitable funds, common rights, and poor relief in individual communities, and the ways in which parish elites attempted to put the total available resources to what they saw as the best uses. From 1650 to 1780 these combined resources allowed a generally humane approach to the treatment of poverty and misfortune, and maintained the independence of the cottager and labourer in southern England. Only after 1780 when population rose sharply and rural employment shrank did the flexibility of combined charitable and rate-based relief founder and more drastic devices were employed to cope with basic needs. In this process the independence of the labourer and cottager was undermined, charitable sources were marginalized, and the seeds were sown for the acceptance of the New Poor Law.

MALTHUS AND THE POOR LAW

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-62
Author(s):  
E. A. WRIGLEY ◽  
RICHARD SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Marital Status ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Marriage Patterns ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Made In ◽  
Agricultural Labourers

AbstractMalthus was severely critical of the old poor law, especially when the payments paid to recipients were made in conformity to the principles adopted by the local magistrates in Speenhamland in 1795. He considered that it encouraged early and improvident marriage with unfortunate consequences. There have been a number of attempts to determine whether Malthus was justified in supposing that the old poor law had this effect, some concluding that he was correct in his assumption, others that he was mistaken. The information contained in the first four English censuses did not include a breakdown of the population by age, sex, and marital status, and therefore did not provide a basis for a definitive test of Malthus's assertion before the repeal of the old poor law in 1834. The 1851 census, however, did provide this breakdown for five-year age groups which makes it possible to compare marriage patterns in counties in which a large proportion of the male workforce were ‘peasants’ (Malthus's term for agricultural labourers), and the Speenhamland provisions were widely adopted, with other counties. The results show that Malthus was mistaken.

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’.

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

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 Źródła zaspokojenia bieżących potrzeb gospodarstw domowych o niskich dochodach

2016 ◽  
pp. 145-159
Author(s):  
Paweł Ulman
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Average Data ◽  
Extreme Poverty ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poor Households ◽  
Subsistence Minimum ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Low Incomes

The problem of low income households in Poland is quite common. As it was shown by Polish CSO extreme poverty (subsistence minimum) affects more than 7 percent of people in Poland, and at the level of the statutory criterion of poverty, nearly 13 percent (average data from the 2013). The interesting research problem is to identify the sources of widely understood income (cash and in kind) and their importance to meet the current needs of households with low incomes in connection with a wide range of extreme poverty arising from low income of households. The aim of the work is to present the results of statisti-cal analysis of the level of income from various sources affecting the ability to satisfy the current needs of the poor households. So it is going to be shown how these households cope with basic needs. The statistical analysis are made on the basis of data published by the CSO and the data from the study “Social Diagnosis”.

Plague and Poor Relief in Cambridge, 1665-1666

2020 ◽  
pp. 47-55
Author(s):  
Samantha Williams
Keyword(s):  
Local Communities ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Economic Costs ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Mixed Economy ◽  
The Poor

Plague and the poor law were inextricably entwined, yet there has been little research into the extent to which poor relief contributed to the economic costs of plague epidemics. While much of the huge expense plague represented to local communities was met largely by special plague rates, fasts and fines, and income from charitable briefs, poor relief was a part of this mixed economy of funds. Through a microhistory of the parish of St Benedict in Cambridge in the town's worst outbreak of plague in 1665–1666, this article indicates that poor relief supported a substantial number of families and paid for their burials. The costs met by overseers represented around one month's additional parish spending. If this was scaled up proportionately to all fourteen parishes this would represent a significant sum of money.

scholarly journals Material lives of the poor and their strategic use of the workhouse during the final decades of the English old poor law

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOSEPH HARLEY
Keyword(s):  
Poor Relief ◽  
Survival Strategy ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Survival ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Short Term Survival

ABSTRACTThis article is the first to use a combination of three different types of inventories from Dorset to examine the material lives of paupers inside and outside Beaminster workhouse. It argues that life was materially better for paupers on outdoor relief, compared with workhouse inmates and with paupers in the moments before they entered the workhouse. The article also examines how the poor used admission into the workhouse as part of their economy of makeshifts. The evidence demonstrates that the able-bodied poor used the workhouse as a short-term survival strategy, whereas more vulnerable inmates struggled to use this tactic. This article therefore furthers our understanding of the nature of poor relief and adds further weight to recent historical work that has emphasised pauper agency.

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.

The ‘Hungry Forties’ and the New Poor Law: a Case Study

1974 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Dunkley
Keyword(s):  
Royal Commission ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Administrative Practices ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Commission Report ◽  
Law Commission

For well over a century the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, the so-called New Poor Law, has been die centre of controversy. Just as contemporaries were drawn into bitter conflict over die measure, modern scholars have continued to debate die degree of ‘cruelty’ engendered in this novel poor relief scheme. The records of die individual poor law unions, however, reveal so many variations in administrative practices as to render invalid nearly all generalizations regarding me operation of die Act. The most obvious difficulty arises over the disparity between Poor Law Commission policy, ostensibly founded upon the recommendations of the famous Royal Commission report of 1834,3 and its actual implementation by the commissioners at Somerset House and their assistants in the field. It is by now a commonplace of poor law history that the commissioners, despite opposition from their secretary, Edwin Chadwick, pursued different policies in various parts of England.4 As we shall see, moreover, the commissioners often held certain provisions of their directives in abeyance, leaving their implementation to the discretion of provincial administrators.

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