‘As Full of Grief as Age’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Fitter
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Rogue Literature

This chapter situates King Lear in angry underclass responses to the recent Poor Law as revealed by the new social history. Revisiting the scene of Lear denied ‘raiment, bed and food’ by his disdainful and flinty-spirited daughters, it argues that this scanting of the geriatric at the gate, newly impotent and increasingly humiliated, enacts the familiar commons tragedy of the impoverished old man hectored by Overseers of the Poor, yet allocated little or nothing. Lear’s outcry ‘Allow not nature more than nature needs, / Man’s life is cheap as beast’s’ emerges as an impassioned rebuke to the spirit of hostile petty calculation practised by the prosperous of the parish and their officers. Revisiting Poor Tom, the chapter places him alongside eight traits of the vagrant persistently alleged by statutes and rogue literature, discovering that, created as a composite of refutations, Shakespeare’s Poor Tom is a serial exposé of government fatuity.

The English Poor Laws, 1700–1930. By Anthony Brundage. [Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2001. vii and 185 pp. Hardback. £49.50. ISBN 0–333–68271–8.]

2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 715-738
Author(s):  
M.A. Stein
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Additional Research ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Short Account ◽  
Law System ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
Systematic Overview ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Subject

This latest addition to the Palgrave series on Social History in Perspective is a concise and systematic overview of the Poor Law system from the beginning of the 18th century through to its demise in 1930. Well written, The English Poor Law is intended as an introduction to the subject for students of law, history, and/or society, and therefore offers a very short account. Fortunately, the knowledgeable Professor Brundage (whose earlier books include an analysis of the New Poor Law and a biography of one of its facilitators, Edwin Chadwick) provides first-rate end notes and an extensive bibliography. In consequence, those wishing to learn more of this interesting topic have been afforded the means for additional research.

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.

Registration of the Religion of Children under the Irish Poor Law, 1838–1870

2009 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
MEL COUSINS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
The State ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
The Poor

There were obvious tensions inherent in the fact that in nineteenth-century Ireland, while the majority of the population was Catholic, the state religion was Protestant. This had numerous effects on Irish political and social history, including the administration of the poor law. This article looks at one of the religious issues involved in the operation of the poor law: the registration of children (of unknown religion) on admission to the workhouse. The Irish attorney-general had ruled that they should be registered as Protestant. However, local boards of guardians often objected strongly to this. This article outlines and analyses the struggles which took place between the different interests involved.

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.

Rethinking the Debates on the Poor Law in Early Nineteenth-Century England

Utilitas ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Eastwood
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social History ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Policy Formation ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Social Agenda ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Statutory Authority ◽  
Post War

One of the more interesting developments in recent historical writing has been a reconsideration of the debates over poor law reform. In the sharply-demarcated world of post-war scholarship, the poor law fell clearly, if somewhat problematically, into the domain of social history. For obvious contemporary reasons, post-war social history devoted a good deal of scholarly energy to constructing a history of social policy. Much of this work was problematized in terms of the then orthodox agenda of the welfare state. The dominant questions concerned modes of assessing entitlements, mechanisms for delivering welfare, and the bureaucratic characteristics of the old and new poor laws. Despite its considerable empirical merits, this kind of social history was inhibited by its methodological and problematic certainties. To a large extent this was a social history which defined itselfagainsttraditional political history, offering a narrative of social policy formation which, whilst not eliminating political processes from its account, tended to marginalize their normative significance. One extreme formulation was Sydney Checkland's ‘socially innocent state’. Here the loss of ‘social innocence’ on the part of the British state is evaluated directly in terms of its willingness to develop the kind of social agenda and administrative machinery characteristic of modern wellfarism. For Checkland in particular, social policy was conceived almost exclusively in terms of state-driven programmes of ‘social improvement’. The old poor law, with its pattern of local management, discretionary administration, and paternalist social vision flatly contracted the statutorily-articulated welfarism which Checkland took to be axiomatic to a coherently-conceived social policy. In terms of statutory authority and administrative machinery, Checkland saw the new poor law as a critical move towards a more coherently-constructed state social policy.

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.

Workhouse Populations of the Preston Union, 1841–61

2014 ◽  
pp. 33-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis Darwen
Keyword(s):  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
High Concentration ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Fertile Ground

The census enumerators' books (CEBs) have provided fertile ground for studies of workhouse populations in recent years, though it has been acknowledged that work remains to be done on different regions and periods to develop our understanding of these institutions and the paupers who resided therein. This article will examine the indoor pauper populations of the Preston union, in Lancashire, over three census years from 1841. The region, which is notable for a protracted campaign of resistance to the New Poor Law and its associated workhouse system, has been previously neglected in studies of workhouse populations focusing on the decades immediately after the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. It will be shown that the profile of the union's workhouse populations broadly mirrors those found elsewhere at the aggregate level, but that important variations reflected local and central policy. A high concentration of able-bodied paupers—in particular—seems to indicate ideas governing local policy which were not carried out elsewhere.

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