Women and the Poor Law in Victorian and Edwardian England

Abstract

Throughout the history of the New Poor Law, from its introduction in 1834, women were a majority of adult recipients of Poor Law relief. Almost certainly they were a majority of the much larger number of the very poor as they were, indeed, of the entire population. The central objective of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act was to withdraw poor relief from men judged capable of work, the 'able-bodied' in Poor Law terminology.[1] Such persons were to be granted relief only in conditions so rigorous that no-one would voluntarily seek it in preference to work the approach conventionally described as 'less eligibility'. The Act of 1834 intended that relief should be available to the 'able-bodied' only in strictly regulated workhouses, whose function was to inculcate and maintain habits of work-discipline for those temporarily withdrawn from the labour market. The legislation of 1834 was the work of the political economist Nassau Senior, the bureaucratic reformer Edwin Chadwick, and the experienced administrator of a rigorous Poor Law regime in a Suffolk workhouse, George Nicholls. These policymakers recognised the existence of a category of 'non able-bodied', 'deserving' poor which included the sick, the aged, children and the mad. This group, they believed, could not be expected to support themselves by work, and could not be described as work-shy dependents upon the public purse. These, the Law of 1834 allowed, could be granted outdoor relief, a weekly dole upon which they could support themselves, or be supported, in their own homes; or if they needed institutional care, they could be cared for in the workhouse, but under a separate, more relaxed regime than was allowed to the 'able-bodied'. However, these policy-makers of 1834 identified the unemployed male 'ablebodied' worker as the central problem of poverty at that time. They assumed that much unemployment was voluntary and could be substantially reduced in an expanding economy, by encouraging men to find work. They took for granted the universality of the stable two-parent family, primarily dependent upon the father's wage, and the primacy of the family as a source of welfare. Hence the poverty of women and children was thought to be remediable by the increased earnings of husbands and fathers. These were assumptions quite incompatible with the realities of the 1830s, of industrial low pay and recurrent unemployment, and early or sudden death. Many deserted or abandoned women were left to support children or other dependents on less than subsistence wages. The policy-makers ignored or underestimated severe problems of poverty among