The Labour Market and the Continuity of Social Policy after 1834: The Case of the Eastern Counties

Abstract

Tll SHE persistence of the allowance system in the industrial north of England after I834 has been established but it has been assumed that the Poor Law Amendment Act was comparatively effective in the rural south.2 Although the administrative framework of the New Poor Law was implemented swiftly in the south, and new unions and workhouses created, this institutional success concealed a failure of relief policy because outdoor allowances to the able-bodied poor continued to be given. The administration of poor relief as a response to underemployment in the rural labour market produced very similar social policies before and after i834: allowances in aid of wages continued but were ostensibly in aid of sickness; the parish vestry was replaced by the union workhouse as the local labour exchange; and parish roundsmen and labour-rate schemes were superseded by a ticket system as a means of apportioning labourers among employers. The Royal Commission on the Poor Laws of i832-4 had stated that the great source of abuse is out-door relief afforded to the able-bodiedand had particularly condemned both allowances in aid of wages, and the employment of the poor in roundsmen and labour-rate schemes.3 The i834 Act had embodied the economic analysis and recommendations of the Royal Commission's Report but had failed to end these practices which blurred the distinction between the pauper and the independent labourer. This failure was the outcome of a misconception in the Poor Law Report of i834 which saw rural underemployment as a result rather than a cause of poor-relief practices before i 834.4 The ideological preconceptions of its authors blinded them to the work of theorists and reformers who had since the seventeenth century been studying the problem of underemployment in English agriculture. These had proposed a variety of make-work schemes to alleviate the social consequences of the periodicity of work in arable farming where seasonal unemployment succeeded a tight labour market during haytime and harvest.5 Although the develop