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.

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.

scholarly journals The Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, 1905–09

1977 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Woodroofe
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
Conservative Government ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Cost

Although there is some truth in the comment made by Canon Barnett, rector of St Jude's, Whitechapel, and founder of Toynbee Hall, that the issue in 1909 of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws “may mark the beginning of a new epoch in our social life”, the precise reasons for the appointment of the Commission on December 4th, 1905, are not yet known. The Conservative government, which made the appointment almost on the eve of its defeat, had been in power for ten years, first under the prime ministership of Lord Salisbury and then, until his resignation in December 1905, of A. J. Balfour. During that time the cost of the Poor Law had risen steadily, and yet, until the end of 1904, either through social myopia or a preoccupation with the greater drama of events abroad, the government displayed little interest in the problem of the Poor Law or, indeed, in any of the wider questions of social reform.

scholarly journals Krytyka nowego prawa o ubogich w ujęciu ruchu oksfordzkiego (1833‑1845)

Politeja ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (55) ◽  
pp. 57-75
Author(s):  
Piotr Musiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Personal Approach ◽  
History Of

The Oxford Movement’s Critique of the Poor Law Amendment ActThe paper presents a short history of poor laws in England and Great Britain, the content and justifications of the Poor Law Amendment Act (1834), general characteristics of the Oxford Movement and its main political ideas, the state of contemporary research on the topic, and finally the Movement’s approach to the new Poor Law. This approach – the Oxford Movement’s critique – has been reconstructed into three main groups of arguments. In the first group there are arguments pointing out why a state’s responsibility, and state-organised system of poor relief, is to be irrelevant and why the Church should play a far greater role in this field. The second group of arguments underlines the impracticality of centralisation in the system and proposes the major role of the local units in poor relief, as well as more ‘personal’ approach to the poor, also by reforming workhouses. The third group of arguments undermines the liberal (and Puritan) idea of solely individual responsibility for one’s poverty and destitution – an idea underlying the new Poor Law.

Tories and Paupers: Christian Political Economy and the Making of the New Poor Law

1990 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Mandler
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
The Political ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Political Economist

Everyone knows that Edwin Chadwick wrote the New Poor Law; or, rather, that he wrote the report – issued in 1834 by the royal commission appointed two years earlier to inquire into the poor laws – which formed the basis for the New Poor Law. The well-informed among us might add the name of the political economist Nassau Senior as Chadwick's co-author. But few would be able to supply any of the further seven names which stood with Chadwick's and Senior's as co-signatories to the report. These seven royal commissioners were Bishop Blomfield of London, Bishop Sumner of Chester, William Sturges Bourne, M.P., the Rev. Henry Bishop, Henry Gawler, Walter Coulson, and James Traill.

Providing for the elderly in eighteenth-century England

1998 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUSANNAH R. OTTAWAY
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Local Community ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
Local Justice ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Family ◽  
Poor Person ◽  
Justice Of The Peace

In 1776, in the parish of Puddletown, Dorset, Sarah Dibben, an elderly, impoverished widow, was examined as to her place of settlement by the local justice of the peace to determine whether the parish should pay for her poor relief. At the same time, the JP interviewed her son, Melchizedeck, with whom Sarah had been living, to shed further light on Sarah's situation. Melchizedeck told the justice that because Sarah was his mother he ‘thought it his Duty to assist her if he could without injuring his family’. However, he was at the marginal level of poverty himself, ‘having nothing but what he can earn to support his family’. As a consequence of these examinations, Sarah was removed to the neighbouring parish of Piddlehinton, where she had borne her children over forty years earlier.The case of Sarah Dibben's settlement highlights the main issues surrounding provisions for the elderly in eighteenth-century England. (Here, the elderly are defined as those aged 60 and above.) The provisions of the poor law of 1601 meant that both the local community and the family had a legal obligation to support the aged. This law stated that ‘the aged and decrepit’ of every parish were to be supported by a tax, collected from all those who held property in the parish. At the same time, the law dictated:The father and grandfather, mother and grandmother, and children of every poor, old, blind, lame and impotent person, or other person not able to work, being of sufficient ability, shall at their own charges, relieve and maintain every such poor person, in that manner, and according to that rate, as by the justices in sessions shall be assessed: on pain of 20s. a month. [I will be referring to this clause as the family-support section of the poor laws.]

Hard-Working Single Mother

2021 ◽  
pp. 128-164
Author(s):  
Gabriel J. Loiacono
Keyword(s):  
Small Town ◽  
Single Mother ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Court System ◽  
Unwed Mothers ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Temporary Worker ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Poor

Poor law officials had tremendous authority over families, children, and unwed mothers. Lydia Bates was separated from her own parents as a child, when they became too poor to support her. Overseers of the poor in her small town moved her to other families’ houses. As she grew older, overseers likely treated Bates like an unpaid temporary worker. She lived, temporarily, in houses where her work could help the houseowners, including an elderly couple who might have needed poor relief without Bates’s help. When Bates became pregnant with baby Rhoda, overseers became even more involved. They used the court system to hold Rhoda’s father financially responsible. They also had the authority to decide whether Rhoda could remain with her mother or, like her mother, would have to live in neighbors’ homes. This chapter focuses on how poor laws governed sexuality and families.

III. The Medical Mission and the Care of the Sick Poor in Nineteenth-Century England

1964 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen J. Heasman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Medical Missions ◽  
Medical Mission ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
The Poor

Sidney and Beatrice Webb, in their book The State and the Doctor, which was submitted in the first instance as a memorandum to the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws in 1909, dismiss the work of the free dispensaries and medical missions in one short paragraph.

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