1.–The Relief of Urban Poverty outside the Poor Law, 1800–1850: A Study of Nottingham

Abstract

Those familiar with the scholarly works that have been written on the early 19th-century history of Nottingham will be aware both of the acute poverty which was endemic in the town and of the severe depression that followed in the wake of the downward turn of the trade cycle. The plight of the framework knitters had been exhaustively studied and the effects of the depressions of the 1830s, 1847 and 1848 on the town analysed. There, is no need to recapitulate here, nor is there a need to describe how the local bodies created by the New Poor Law dealt with these crises. Thanks to the work of Professor Church and Dr. Marshall we are now aware of the response and contribution of leading Nottingham citizens to this new ideology and how they -set about implementing it by building a new workhouse and operating the system of less eligibility. This note has been written because, although the poor law authorities were the major benefactors of the poor, studies of other sources of poor relief in the town have been neglected. It is the aim of this paper to examine that modest area of poor relief that lay outside the orbit of the poor law guardians. It fell into three categories, the friendly societies, the endowed charities and voluntary charities. We can begin with the friendly societies.