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.

Negotiating medical welfare

2018 ◽  
pp. 69-104
Author(s):  
Steven King
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Moral Hazard ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Core Business ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Poor

This chapter foregrounds the concept of pauper agency. Using the largest corpus of letters by or about the poor ever assembled, it argues that sickness was the core business of the Old Poor Law by the early nineteenth century. Rather than paupers being simply subject to the whim and treatment of the parish, the chapter argues that they had considerable agency. Despite problems of moral hazard and the idea that sickness could be faked, paupers and officials agreed that ill health and its treatment was an area of acceptable contestation.

The “Chiliasm of Despair” Reconsidered: Revivalism and Working-Class Agitation in County Durham

1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Jaffe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Wide Acceptance ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Radicalism

The role of evangelical religion in the social history of the English working class has been an area of both bewildering theories and un-founded generalizations. The problem, of course, was given a degree of notoriety by Elie Halévy who, according to the received interpretation, claimed that the revolutionary fervor characteristic of the Continental working class in the first half of the nineteenth century was drained from its British counterpart because of the latter's acceptance of Evangelicalism, namely, Methodism.It was revived most notably by E. P. Thompson, who accepted the counterrevolutionary effect of Methodism but claimed that the evangelical message was really an agent of capitalist domination acting to subordinate the industrial working class to the dominion of factory time and work discipline. Furthermore, Thompson argued, the English working class only accepted Methodism reluctantly and in the aftermath of actual political defeats that marked their social and economic subordination to capital. This view has gained a wide acceptance among many of the most prominent labor historians, including E. J. Hobsbawm and George Rudé who believe that Evangelicalism was the working-class's “chiliasm of despair” that “offered the one-time labour militant … compensation for temporal defeats.”There could hardly be a starker contrast between the interpretation of these labor historians and the views of those who have examined the social and political history of religion in early industrial Britain. Among the most important of these, W. R. Ward has claimed that Methodism was popular among the laboring classes of the early nineteenth century precisely because it complemented political radicalism.

scholarly journals Negotiating Independence: Manliness and Begging Letters in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie Barclay
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Regional Variation ◽  
Charitable Giving ◽  
Social Relationship ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

Begging letters provide a rich source for historians of the poor, who have used them to explore their lives, constructions of identity, and regional variation in charitable giving. The rhetoric of benevolence and gratitude that pervades them, however, has often been dismissed as ‘inauthentic’ or as interfering with our access to the words of the poor. This chapter explores how Scottish beggars used the language of gratitude in their letters to patrons, contributing to both a history of letter-writing and masculinity amongst the poor. It highlights the way that an emotional-charitable language placed patron and client in a hierarchical social relationship that brought benefits to both parties. It argues that, rather than being an unmanly act, begging could provide space for poor or subordinate men to articulate their masculine identities within a society where social hierarchies were normal and understood as key to social order.

Sickness, medical welfare and the English poor, 1750-1834

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven King
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Large Dataset ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor

This book explores the welfare experiences of the sick poor between the 1750s and through the so-called crisis of the Old Poor Law ending in the 1830s. It brings together a large dataset of accounts, vestry minutes, bills, contracts and letters by or about the poor to provide a comprehensive and colourful overview of the nature, scale and negotiation of medical welfare. At its core stand the words and lives of the poor themselves, reconstructed in painstaking detail to show that medical welfare became a totemic issue for parochial authorities by the 1830s. The book suggests that the Old Poor Law confronted a rising tide of sickness by the early nineteenth century. While there are spectacular instances of parsimony and neglect in response to such rising need, in most places and at most times, parish officers seem to have felt a moral obligation to the sick. Indeed, we might by and large construct their responses as considerate and generous. To some extent this reflected Christian paternalism, but we also see other factors at play. These include a growing sense that illness, even illness amongst the poor, was and should be remediable and a shared territory of negotiation between paupers, advocates and officials. The result was a canvas of medical welfare with extraordinary colour and depth. By the 1820s, more of the ill-health of ordinary people was captured by the poor law and being doctored or sojourning in an institution became part of pauper and parochial expectation. These trends are brought to vivid life in the words of the poor and their advocates, such that the book genuinely offers a re-interpretation of the Old Poor Law in it slater phases form the bottom up.

Gregory King and the Social Structure of pre-industrial England

1977 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 41-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. S. Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Social History ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Post War

Despite the rich and exciting work of recent years, the social history of England between the Restoration and the Industrial Revolution still bears something of a hangdog look, scarcely war-ranting, as yet, the cosmic conclusions and ferocious controversies to which students of early Stuart and early nineteenth-century society have grown accustomed. Yet, thanks to the work of one remarkable Englishman, who was born in 1648 and died in 1712, there is one aspect of this pre-industrial period—its social structure—on which we are all happy to pontificate. Gregory King's table of ranks and degrees, on which in the last resort so much of this confidence rests, has now acquired a unique cachet. The continual reproduction in post-war textbooks of this famous document, which we think of as King's ‘social table’ but which he described as his ‘Scheme of the Income and Expense of the Several Famillies of England’, is just the most obvious symptom of its dominant historiographical influence.

Wordsworth's Italy

PMLA ◽  
1923 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Hale Shackford
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
General Reader ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Isle Of Man ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Alps

Wordsworth's relation to Italy has been a subject rather neglected in the annals of English poets who have known and loved “the land of lands,” and have left us memorial records of the beauty of Italy's blue sky, the golden clarity of her air, the soft greenness of her trees, and the fame of her poets and artists. Biographers of Wordsworth have so emphasized his relation to France that the general reader is hardly aware that the poet had crossed the Alps, both in body and in spirit. He belongs with Chaucer, Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Milton, Gray, Goldsmith, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Landor, Clough, and the Brownings, all of whom will ever be associated with memories of Italy. An attempt to trace the history of his acquaintance with Italy, may, it is hoped, show that he had for things Italian a really life-long sympathy. Moreover, the study may help to dispel some lingering superstitions about Wordsworth's insularity. Wordsworth was one of the most assiduous travellers of all the English poets except Byron. The difficulty of travel in the early nineteenth century should be remembered in considering the distances he traversed. He knew France, Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and various regions of England, including every inch of the Lake Country.

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.

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