The Rural Poor Law

Abstract

Only five years after the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, the Poor Law Commission announced proudly that the allowance system was ‘almost totally extinguished’ in the rural areas of southern England and Wales.1 Historians have tended to accept this judgement and have concentrated on the more obvious and continued difficulties experienced by the administrators of the New Poor Law in urban, industrial areas. The Royal Commission on the Poor Laws of 1832–4, by focusing on the abuse of outdoor allowances to the able-bodied poor in the countryside, seemed to have provided remedies for the problems of rural poverty and these were adopted in the 1834 Act. That the New Poor Law in rural areas was apparently successful was shown by the swift formation of new unions, the erection of workhouses and the implementation of reformed relief policies to which there was no concerted local opposition. The central Poor Law authority found it easy to make effective propaganda based on these early achievements, but gave minimal publicity to the later failures of the 1834 Act in rural England and Wales. By 1840 the provisions of the Poor Law Amendment Act had been implemented effectively in many rural areas, but in the ensuing decade local administrators discovered that in practice they had substantial autonomy over relief policies. For the rest of the century many rural boards of guardians adopted a system of poor relief which they considered to be more appropriate for the socio-economic conditions of the countryside.