Report by Mr. A. D. Steel-Maitland and Miss Rose E. Squire (H.M. Inspector of Factories) on the Relation of Industrial and Sanitary Conditions to Pauperism, Together with an Additional Memorandum in Certain Other Points Connected with the Poor Law System and Its Administration.

1909 ◽  
Vol 19 (76) ◽  
pp. 617
Author(s):  
N. B. Dearle
Keyword(s):  
Poor Law ◽  
Law System ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Sanitary Conditions

The Mendicity Society Movement and the Suppression of Begging

2018 ◽  
pp. 146-184
Author(s):  
Ciarán McCabe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Parent Body ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Law System ◽  
The Poor ◽  
System P ◽  
Short Space

Between 1809 and the early-1840s more than fifty mendicity societies were established throughout Ireland. These charities focused on the suppression of street begging and the relief of the destitute poor. Mendicity societies took their lead from earlier societies located in Britain and mainland Europe, and in Ireland the Dublin association acted as a parent body for this movement. While playing a prominent role in the welfare landscape in the first half of the nineteenth century Ireland’s mendicity societies largely disappeared within a short space of time, largely on foot of the introduction of the Poor Law system.

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.

scholarly journals ‘FACTS NOTORIOUS TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY’: THE POLITICAL BATTLE OVER IRISH POOR LAW REFORM IN THE 1860s

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 157-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Crossman
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Law System ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Local Discretion ◽  
Landed Elite ◽  
Political Battle

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on the campaign to reform the Irish poor law in the 1860s. Debate on poor law reform highlighted fundamental divisions over the principles underlying the New Poor Law as well as widespread dissatisfaction with the poor law system in Ireland particularly within the Catholic community. Led by the leading Catholic cleric, Archbishop Paul Cullen, critics of the Irish poor law sought to lessen reliance on the institution of the workhouse and to expand outdoor relief thus bringing the system closer to its English model. The poor law authorities supported by the Irish landed elite fought successfully to maintain the limited and restrictive nature of the system fearful of the consequences of extending local discretion. The paper reveals the contested nature of poor relief both in principle and in practice, and the centrality of social issues to Irish political debate in decades after the Great Famine.

‘The Going Out of the Voluntary and the Coming in of the Compulsory’: The Impact of the 1838 Irish Poor Law on Voluntary Charitable Societies in Dublin City

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ciarán McCabe
Keyword(s):  
Select Committee ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Law System ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Great Famine ◽  
Welfare Institutions ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
The Many ◽  
Withdrawal Of Support ◽  
The Impact

The introduction of the workhouse-centred Poor Law system into Ireland on the eve of the Great Famine transformed the provision of poor assistance in the country. Throughout various urban centres, the plethora of charitable societies that had been prominent in the provision of corporate assistance to the poor faced an increasingly uncertain future, fearing that the levying of compulsory poor rates would result in a withdrawal of support from subscribers and donors. This article analyses the impact of the Poor Law system on charitable societies in Dublin city, covering the fifteen-year period between the 1830 Select Committee on the State of the Poor in Ireland to the eve of the Great Famine in 1845. The article outlines how the establishment of the statutory Poor Law system resulted in confusion among the managers of existing welfare institutions and demonstrates that the opening of Poor Law Union workhouses greatly affected charitable societies’ pauper lists and income levels; yet the impact on the many charities that dotted Dublin’s crowded welfare landscape was not uniform.

Conceiving and constructing the Irish workhouse, 1836–45

2012 ◽  
Vol 38 (149) ◽  
pp. 22-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Gray
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Early History ◽  
Irish Society ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Law System ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Great Famine ◽  
History Of ◽  
Industrial Schools

The Irish workhouse has had a troubled history, attracting mostly negative commentary from the inception of the national poor law system after 1838 to the final abolition of the poor law in Northern Ireland in 1948. The popular historian of the institution opens his account with the bald statement that ‘the workhouse was the most feared and hated institution ever established in Ireland’. While one might quibble with this (the penitentiaries and asylums of the nineteenth century were surely as much feared, and perhaps with more reason; the record of the industrial schools and Magdalene asylums has more recently attracted the appalled attention of Irish society), the statement contains a kernel of truth. Designed with the deterrent principle of ‘less eligibility’ to the forefront, and irrevocably associated with the horrors of mass mortality during the Great Famine, the workhouses became in Irish popular memory (and in the bulk of historical commentary) associated with the suffering and degradation of their inmates. Nevertheless, the early history of the poor law and its associated workhouses is more complex than this suggests and deserves closer attention.

The New Metropolitan Asylums

1871 ◽  
Vol 17 (79) ◽  
pp. 356-364
Author(s):  
F. P.
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Chronic Patients ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
New Era ◽  
Law System ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Lunatic Asylums

In June, 1867, a new era was begun in the Poor Law system by Mr. Gathorne Hardy's Bill, which comprised arrangements for meeting the epidemic requirements of London, and for relieving the workhouses and lunatic asylums of the imbecile, idiotic, and chronic patients, not dangerous or destructive, but quiet in their habits, leaving behind merely the infirm poor and the acute and violent lunatics, for whom the accommodation was thought sufficient. There was also another clause providing a bevy of dispensaries, which however has not been carried out, though it was probably one of the most promising parts of the Bill. As regards the arrangements for epidemics, recent events have shown them to be inadequate; it must be said, however, that in 1867 the idea of meeting visitations of severe epidemics by temporary structures was not even in its infancy, otherwise we might have been spared such structures as Stockwell and Homerton Hospitals, which will never be filled or even half-filled in times of ordinary public health, and which are too small for great emergencies. A rapidly expansive system, as by temporary hospitals or by tents, capable of enlargement and of folding up and packing away when done with, is the proper plan for treating epidemics. What then is the proper one for quiet lunatics and imbeciles ?

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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