New Poor Law Research Articles

Population Checks and Natural Laws: Malthus, Climate Determinism and Emigration

Through the lens of emergent laws of climatology developed to advance the scientific foundations and popular reach of practical meteorology in the nineteenth century, this article examines the checks on population and the global movement of people linked to reoccurring climate patterns and abnormal climatic events. Meteorological research contributed to debates within political economy and the public health movement, and to the disputed moral rationale for poor law reform. Scientific authority for this new analysis rested on a network of personal, religious, and professional links between T.R. Malthus, Thomas Chalmers, Francis Jeffrey, David Brewster, James D. Forbes, James Stark, Edwin Chadwick and William Pulteney Alison. The work of climate determinists argued that several causations were simultaneously affecting the nation’s vital statistics. The potential advantage to health from moving on a permanent basis to a more salubrious climate was explored. Adding further to the conundrum of colonisation, and the case for assisted migration, the laws of climatology offered reasons why any migrants pulled into parts of urban and Highland Scotland by freed resource – the vacuum effect – would still experience a positive Malthusian check on their life chances.

Deconstructing the Laissez-Faire Legend: A Critical Analysis of the 1834 Poor Law Reform and Its Legacy

This research paper critically examines the 1834 Poor Law Reform in Britain, a seminal event that is often heralded as a triumph of laissez-faire economics. The study delves into the historical context of the Old Poor Law system, established in 1601, which mandated legal support for individuals unable to sustain themselves. The paper scrutinizes the perceived problems of the Old Poor Law and the subsequent radical reforms introduced by the New Poor Law. It challenges the conventional narrative that the Poor Law Reform was a necessary corrective to an inefficient and market-distorting welfare system. Through a detailed analysis of the Poor Law Commission Report of 1834 and its criticisms, the paper reveals significant gaps in the arguments presented. The study also considers the impact of the Industrial Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the gold standard restoration on the Old Poor Law system, arguing that these external factors played a crucial role in shaping the economic and social landscape of the time. This study offers insights into the complexities of policy marking and the interplay of economic theories and social needs. It underscores the enduring impact of historical decisions on contemporary economic and political dynamics and challenges the notion of post-WWII liberal order as a perpetuation of the laissez-faire myth.

Pauper Voices, Public Opinion and Workhouse Reform in Mid-Victorian England: Bearing Witness, by Peter Jones and Steven King

Reviewed by: Pauper Voices, Public Opinion and Workhouse Reform in Mid-Victorian England: Bearing Witness by Peter Jones and Steven King Marjorie Levine-Clark (bio) Pauper Voices, Public Opinion and Workhouse Reform in Mid-Victorian England: Bearing Witness, by Peter Jones and Steven King; pp. ix + 136. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, $69.99, $54.99 ebook. Peter Jones and Steven King’s little book, Pauper Voices, Public Opinion and Workhouse Reform in Mid-Victorian England, explores demands for workhouse reform during the nineteenth century. It stands out as truly innovative in poor law literature while also engaging scholars of journalism and public opinion. The authors make three significant interventions (and several smaller ones) into poor law historiography, each introduced in the three main chapters of the book. Chapter 1 shows that historians need to reconsider the chronology and content of the resistance to deterrent workhouses. Chapter 2 introduces readers to Joseph Rowntree, an influential “amateur workhouse inspector and journalist,” “entirely neglected” in histories of the poor law (4). Most importantly, perhaps, the authors demonstrate in chapter 3 that (male) paupers inserted themselves in debates about workhouse reform. The study is deeply archival, analyzing sources from the massive MH 12 series of thousands of volumes in the National Archives in London. MH 12 has routinely been mined by historians to find correspondence between local poor law officials and central poor law authorities to tell stories of specific poor law unions. Jones and King use the collection differently. As principal members of the larger project “In Their Own Write: The Lives and Letters of the Poor 1834–c.1900,” they systematically scoured the MH 12 series to locate the letters of paupers across the volumes. (They expect to find 20,000 to 30,000 letters when the project is complete.) This broad look at the series also unearthed the prolific record of a man like Rowntree. In addition to their close archival readings, the authors employed digital searching of the online British Library Newspaper Archive to study the ways that the language relating to poor law reform changed over time. These two approaches to text prove richly rewarding in complicating our received historical narratives. Parts of this research have been introduced and published previously, most notably in the authors’ own edited volume Obligation, Entitlement and Dispute under the English Poor Laws (2015), which underscores the agency of the poor. Pulling the research together in one book, however, allows Jones and King to address more substantively continuities across the Old Poor Law and the New and when significant changes occurred, as well as to investigate more thoroughly the specifically Victorian aspects of their material and arguments. Chapter 1 tells the fascinating story of rhetorical and thematic shifts in criticisms of the workhouse from the Old Poor Law through the end of the nineteenth century. The authors convincingly show that both the idea of the deterrent workhouse and opposition to that idea existed long before the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. It was the New Poor Law, however, that galvanized resistance and regular attacks in the local and national press. Using the results of digital newspaper searching, the authors illustrate that a language of “abuse” and “cruelty” that followed the establishment of the work-house system changed in the second half of the century to a language of “scandal” (1). While scandal certainly encompassed distinct workhouse abuses, it more importantly came to stand for a general critique of the workhouse that came to dominate [End Page 727] the pages of newspapers. Jones and King insist that “something clearly happened in the 1860s” to shift the public discourse to emphasize the need to hold poor law officials accountable to those for whom they were responsible: the poor themselves (23). This is a persuasive new way of understanding workhouse scandal. As Jones and King note, scholars have tended to use scandal narrowly to focus on individual horrors at single workhouses. The authors’ revisioning of scandal as a broad public concern with the management of workhouses and the care of the poor transforms the story of the Victorian Poor Law in creative ways. In chapter 2 the authors add more to this story by examining the...

Welfare Cuts and Crime: Evidence from the New Poor Law

Abstract The New Poor Law reform of 1834 induced dramatic and heterogeneous reductions in welfare spending across English and Welsh counties. Using the reform in a difference-in-differences instrumental variables strategy, we document a robust negative relationship between the generosity of welfare provision and criminal activity. Results are driven by non-violent property crimes and are stronger during months of seasonal agricultural unemployment, highlighting the particularly criminogenic combination of welfare cuts and precarious work opportunities for the economically vulnerable.

Irish partition and poor law reform in interwar Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT This article examines poor law hospital reform during the 1920s and 1930s. Northern Ireland’s failure to dissolve the poor law system until the 1940s is viewed as one of its major failures in health policy, as the other countries in Britain and Ireland had broken up the system by 1929. Recent historiographical examinations of interwar healthcare have challenged older negative accounts of the period and instead identified diverse, vibrant and expanding health systems. Much of this has concentrated on English and Welsh health systems or comparisons between large, industrialized nations. Research remains lacking on the trajectory of healthcare in smaller, nascent countries that witnessed political realignment and new settlements during an era of transformation in empire. Irish partition and the establishment of two new states – Irish Free State and Northern Ireland – represented a major reshaping of the British Empire. This article concentrates on Northern Ireland and argues that where local workhouse infirmaries were transformed into district hospitals local authorities brought positive improvements in healthcare evident in many countries. Such improvements were, however, limited to the north-east and the west and south of Northern Ireland, which were marked by political and religious tensions, witnessed limited reform. Local authority policy innovation was thwarted by state interference in local government, which included the temporary dissolution of dissenting Nationalist authorities and gerrymandering of electoral boundaries. This article also argues that the failure to dissolve the poor law was a result of limited medical professional interest in reform. Northern Ireland’s powerful medical profession was key to shaping the direction of Northern Irish policy. This was a result of the devolved administration’s limited expertise in policy making and the dominance of the constitutional question and Nationalist–Unionist divisions in politics.

Richard Oastler, Toryism, Radicalism and the Limitations of Party, c.1807–46

AbstractRichard Oastler (1789–1861), the immensely popular and fiery orator who campaigned for factory reform and for the abolition of the new poor law in the 1830s and 1840s, has been relatively neglected by political historians. Few historians, however, have questioned his toryism. As this article suggests, labelling Oastler an ‘ultra‐tory’ or a ‘church and state tory’ obscures more than it reveals. There were also radical strands in Oastler's ideology. There has been a tendency among Oastler's biographers to treat him as unique. By comparing Oastler with other tories – Sadler, Southey, and the young Disraeli – as well as radicals like Cobbett, this article locates him much more securely among his contemporaries. His range of interests were much broader (and more radical) than the historiographical concentration on factory and poor law reform suggests. While there were periods when Oastler's toryism (or radicalism) was more apparent, one of the most consistent aspects of his political career was a distaste for party politics. Far from being unique or a maverick, Oastler personified the pervasive anti‐party sentiments held by the working classes, which for all the historiographical attention paid to popular radicalism and other non‐party movements still tends to get lost in narratives of the ‘rise of party’.

Economic Liberalism and the State: Dismantling the Myth of Naïve Laissez-Faire

ABSTRACTThe article offers a critique of the prevailing understanding of the relationship between neoliberalism and classic nineteenth-century liberalism in contemporary international political economy (IPE) and offers a redefinition inspired by Polanyi and Gramsci. Within critical IPE studies, a consensus has emerged that neoliberalism cannot be reduced to a simple attempt to roll back the economy and let loose free-market forces. However, this insight relies on contrasting neoliberalism with a classic liberalism, that is, a simple attempt to implement just this naïve laissez-faire ideology. In contrast, this article argues that nineteenth-century liberalism is also characterised by an active use of state and legislative power. Through a historical study of two cases from nineteenth-century Britain, Poor Law reform and the Gold Standard, the paper will argue that state action played a central role even during the heyday of laissez-faire liberalism. With a starting point in Polanyi’s dictum that ‘laissez-faire was planned’, this reinvestigation will point towards a need to develop a more nuanced understanding of the distinctions between economic theory, ideology, and practical policy, as well as pointing towards a general reinterpretation of the role of the state in liberal economic ideology.

Divorcing Rhetoric from Reality A Law Reform and Policy Perspective on Section 15 of the Property (Relationships) Act 1976

Section 15 of the Property (Relationships) Act 1976 was passed in 2001 as a substantial and controversial reform to New Zealand’s relationship property regime. Despite the laudable ambition of remedying significant economic disparities between separating spouses, civil union and de facto couples through s 15, this has failed to materialise. Section 15 has introduced uncertainty and inconsistency into what is otherwise a clear, rules-based regime. This paper provides a law reform perspective on how s 15 came to be an illustration of poor law reform. It argues the substance of the provision cannot be critiqued in the abstract, as the difficulties of s 15 are directly linked to deficiencies in its reform process. It unravels the procedural, conceptual and judicial challenges to this reform. Key players in s 15’s reform were constrained by the political environment, and were required to make trade-offs to effect reform in the circumstances. Section 15’s policy direction created conceptual tensions with the broader statutory scheme. The courts have struggled to play an effective role in the application and development of s 15 due to inadequate guidance and a reluctance to depart from the imbedded foundational principles of the Act. It is argued that these challenges to s 15 reveal broader impediments to law reform in New Zealand. Many of the identified challenges ought to be taken into consideration if s 15 is to be the subject of further reform in the future.

From Townsend and Malthus to the Poor Law Report: An Examination of the Influence of Ideas Concerning the Relationship of Public Aid and Reproduction on Policy Development, 1786-1834

From Townsend and Malthus to the Poor Law Report: An Examination of the Influence of Ideas Concerning the Relationship of Public Aid and Reproduction on Policy Development, 1786-1834 Stephen Monroe Tomczak Abstract Current welfare policies denying additional benefits to women who have children while on assistance are premised on the idea that the giving of aid causes reproduction, an idea that has its origins in earlier debates over aid policy. This paper examines ideas concerning the relationship of public aid policy to reproduction by its recipients in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England, and the influence of these ideas on the poor law policy of the period. The thoughts of leading theorists on this relationship, such as early political economists Joseph Townsend and Thomas Robert Malthus, are analyzed. This examination shows that these theorists asserted that the giving of aid led to reproduction by its recipients. Further analysis of proposed and enacted policies, particularly the Poor Law Reform of 1834, shows that these ideas asserting a relationship between poor relief and reproduction appear to have influenced policy in this era. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/jssw.v3n2a4

KEEPING TRACK: MODERN METHODS, ADMINISTRATION AND THE VICTORIAN POOR LAW, 1834–1871

This essay examines the archive created buy the poor law commissioners as a result of the Poor Law amendment act of 1834. Struggling to deal with the mountain of correspendence that resulted from its attempt to supervise local government across the whole of England and Wales, the commissioners invented new ways of keeping track of their records. The surviving archive provides a goldmine of information for historians interested in local and social history.

'These schemes will win for themselves the confidence of the people': irish independence, poor law reform and hospital provision.

This article examines hospital provision in Ireland during the early twentieth century. It examines attempts by the newly independent Irish Free State to reform and de-stigmatise medical relief in former workhouse infirmaries. Such reforms were designed to move away from nineteenth century welfare regimes which were underpinned by principles of deterrence. The reform initiated in independent Ireland - the first attempted break-up of the New Poor Law in Great Britain or Ireland - was partly successful. Many of the newly named County and District Hospitals provided solely for medical cases and managed to dissociate such health care provision from the relief of poverty. However, some hospitals continued to act as multifunctional institutions and provided for various categories including the sick, the aged and infirm, 'unmarried mothers' and 'harmless lunatics'. Such institutions often remained associated with the relief of poverty. This article also examines patient fee-payment and outlines how fresh terms of entitlement and means-testing were established. Such developments were even more pronounced in voluntary hospitals where the majority of patients made a financial contribution to their treatment. The article argues that the ability to pay at times determined the type of provision, either voluntary or rate-aided, available to the sick. However, it concludes that the clinical condition of patients often determined whether they entered a more prestigious voluntary hospital or the former workhouse. Although this article concentrates on two Irish case studies, County Kerry and Cork City; it is conceptualised within wider developments with particular reference to the British context.

THE IMPACT OF STURGES BOURNE'S POOR LAW REFORMS IN RURAL ENGLAND

ABSTRACTEngland was blighted by frequent agricultural depressions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Recurrent crises brought poor law reform to the parliamentary agenda and led to the passage of two non-compulsory pieces of legislation, Sturges Bourne's Acts of 1818 and 1819. These permissory acts allowed parishes to ‘tighten up’ the distribution of poor relief through two vital tools: the formation of select vestries, and the appointment of waged assistant overseers. Whilst previous studies have tended to represent the legislation as a failing reform in the dying days of the old poor law, we know remarkably little about the relief practices deployed by parishes operating under the auspices of Sturges Bourne's Acts. This article starts by detailing the genesis of the reforms before considering the provisions of the acts and their rates of adoption in rural England. Focusing upon administrative records from Wessex and West Sussex, the article proceeds to examine the inspection of relief claimants, and judgments made as to their ‘character and conduct’; the general measures taken to reduce outdoor relief; and their alternative strategies for allocating relief. It is argued that the reforms re-drew the distinction between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor, ultimately changing individuals' and families' entitlement to relief under the old poor laws.

‘Actual pinching and suffering’: Estate Responses to Poverty in Sutherland, 1845–86

Despite the period after the Great Highland Famine being labelled by some historians as a period of relative prosperity for the crofting and cottar community of north-west Sutherland, poverty and occasional destitution remained the norm. This article examines the structural causes and social consequences of this recurring pattern, principally from the perspective of the owners and managers of the Sutherland estate. The views of those factors ‘on the ground’ revolved around the organisation of immediate assistance for the people, as well as a fear of a ‘dependency’ culture being the permanent result of landlord charitable aid. These views clashed with those of the estate commissioner and ducal family, who were concerned with their public image, especially in the wake of unfavourable comment on the clearances. These contrasting views were further complicated by contemporary debates about charity and Poor Law reform which, although often metropolitan in focus, had a direct impact on the Sutherland estate's response to destitution in the mid-nineteenth century.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: ‘I mak Bould to Wrigt’: First-person Narratives in the History of Poverty in England, c. 1750-1900

Teaching & Learning Guide for: ‘I mak Bould to Wrigt’: First-person Narratives in the History of Poverty in England, c. 1750-1900

‘FACTS NOTORIOUS TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY’: THE POLITICAL BATTLE OVER IRISH POOR LAW REFORM IN THE 1860s

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on the campaign to reform the Irish poor law in the 1860s. Debate on poor law reform highlighted fundamental divisions over the principles underlying the New Poor Law as well as widespread dissatisfaction with the poor law system in Ireland particularly within the Catholic community. Led by the leading Catholic cleric, Archbishop Paul Cullen, critics of the Irish poor law sought to lessen reliance on the institution of the workhouse and to expand outdoor relief thus bringing the system closer to its English model. The poor law authorities supported by the Irish landed elite fought successfully to maintain the limited and restrictive nature of the system fearful of the consequences of extending local discretion. The paper reveals the contested nature of poor relief both in principle and in practice, and the centrality of social issues to Irish political debate in decades after the Great Famine.

Icons of the New System: Workhouse Construction and Relief Practices in London under the Old and New Poor Law

The construction of new workhouses lay at the centre of poor law reform after 1834. In London, however, such prominent displays of the new system were relatively rare. This article explores why that was the case, arguing that the absence of new workhouses was not necessarily a reflection of the reluctance of London parishes to adopt the reforms but rather because adequate provision already existed or other forms of indoor relief were considered to be more appropriate. Prior to 1834, several London parishes embarked on extensive enlargement or rebuilding of workhouses, notably in rapidly growing districts surrounding the City. During the 1820s, in the wake of financial stringencies, relief practices were tightened. Therefore, when the Poor Law Amendment Act came into force in 1834, many London parishes had already embarked on reforms that pre-dated those recommended by the legislation. In the following years, rather than build new workhouses to accommodate the growing number of paupers, London vestries chose to cooperate and build specialist institutions: district schools for children and county asylums for the lunatic poor. Economies of scale arising from the spatial proximity of numerous large parishes and unions made this approach feasible. The lack of new workhouses, therefore, should not be taken as evidence that London parishes refused to implement the spirit of the new poor law. Far from it: early construction and tighter relief regimes prior to 1834 and the continuing dominance of indoor relief throughout the period suggest that London led rather than followed developments elsewhere in the country.

<em>Protesting about Pauperism: Poverty, Politics and Poor Relief in Late-Victorian England, 1870-1900</em>, by Elizabeth Hurren

Reviewed by: Protesting about Pauperism: Poverty, Politics and Poor Relief in Late-Victorian England, 1870–1900 Julie-Marie Strange (bio) Protesting about Pauperism: Poverty, Politics and Poor Relief in Late-Victorian England, 1870–1900, by Elizabeth Hurren; pp. xii + 296. Woodbridge and Rochester: The Boydell Press, 2007, 50.00, $95.00. The story of the late-nineteenth-century crusades to cut the cost of poor relief by restricting and, where possible, removing outdoor relief in order to force both the deserving and undeserving poor into the workhouse has been eclipsed by historians' perceptions that, by the turn of the twentieth century, attitudes towards poverty had taken a more humanitarian turn. In this meticulously researched book, Elizabeth Hurren reminds readers that the last three decades of the nineteenth century witnessed one of the most punitive episodes in the life of the poor law. The crusades against outdoor relief began as an attempt to force able-bodied, idle, and habitual beggars into the workhouse, but an influential lobby of politicians, civil servants, and well-known philanthropists pushed for the complete withdrawal of outdoor relief. Driving such extreme measures was a desire to cut taxes, framed within a rationale based upon classic political economy and a self-help ethos. As Hurren observes, the removal of outdoor relief shifted philanthropic rhetoric away from a "mixed economy of welfare" and the "makeshift" economies of the poor to emphasise individual responsibility. Throughout the book Hurren italicises the terms "crusader" and "crusade." This mirrors existing historiographical language, but the italics also underline the fervour with which crusaders pursued their cause. Indeed, Hurren's scholarship bristles with a sense of the injustice of punitive reforms packaged in the rhetoric of welfare-to-work schemes. Hurren's book is divided into three parts. Part 1 offers a rigorous and informative overview of the machinery, rationale, and administration of the New Poor Law in a national context alongside a comprehensive introduction to the key arguments of the crusaders and those who opposed their measures. Part 2 introduces Hurren's case study analysis of the crusades in practice, first, by setting the regional stage for poor law administration and, second, by outlining the implementation of the crusades within the Brixworth Union, a relatively large rural poor law union in Northamptonshire. Part [End Page 721] 3, the bulk of the book, unpicks the particulars of agricultural labourers' experiences of poverty, their responses to the reforms, and the campaigns to reinstate outdoor relief. While contributing to the wealth of historical material on "being" poor, Hurren's chief success is integrating that story within a broader appreciation of mixed local welfare economies. Her rich empirical material also enables Hurren to establish the personal networks driving poor law governance and philanthropic organisation, an area that remains under-researched in the busy field of poverty studies. Hurren's decision to focus on the Brixworth Union is important. One of the book's key arguments is that historians' concentration on urban contexts has fostered the perception that the crusades had relatively limited impact. Examining Brixworth, one of the seven most effective crusading unions, Hurren demonstrates the enormous consequences (psychological, communal, personal, and financial) of removing outdoor relief. Unpicking the minutiae of a rural seasonal economy, Hurren highlights why outdoor relief was so pivotal to the makeshift economies of the agricultural labouring classes and, consequently, why the removal of a "right" to outdoor assistance had such devastating effects: parish guardians refused to pay for burials and sent families literally "begging" for charitable assistance in burying their dead. Indeed, the success of crusading rested partially on forcing the poor to turn to other charitable agencies for welfare aid. Similarly, Hurren demonstrates the importance of the rural within the national administrative framework: the successes of the crusades in Brixworth were championed by the Local Government Board while national criticism of the crusades used Brixworth as an example of the harsh economic impact on respectable labourers—particularly the aged poor—and the potential for poor law reform to ignite social unrest. Moreover, that the management of the poor law in Brixworth was engineered primarily by just three key players—a prominent landowner, a Conservative MP, and a parson—illustrates the dynamism...

The Break-Up of the Poor Laws— German Style: Progressivism and the Origins of the Welfare State, 1900–1918

While the 1834 New Poor Law and the controversies over its reform represent one of the central threads in every narrative of the history of modern Britain, the same can hardly be said of the German poor laws, whose history is far less known. This is due in large part to a historiographical tradition that sees the Bismarckian social insurance programs as the fons et origo of the German welfare state and thus marginalizes all forms of social assistance that can not be neatly fitted into the narrative pre-history or subsequent development of these programs. This contrasts with a British tradition where, as E. P. Hennock has recently argued, national insurance was primarily conceived as a means of poor law reform, and where the poor laws figure prominently in the historiography of the welfare state. On the other hand, this insurance-centered approach to the welfare state is not entirely to blame because, for their part, historians of poor relief have not been able to establish any positive connections between individualized, subsidiary, deterrent relief and social insurance or social security systems based on rights deriving from either contributions or citizenship.

THE ECONOMICS OF “A BIT O' VICTUAL,” OR MALTHUS AND MOTHERS IN ADAM BEDE

Hetty Sorrel's economic self-interest is impossible to ignore, as is its sexual nature. George Eliot tells us that Hetty is “quite used to the thought that people liked to look at her” and is determined to exchange her physical charms for a life of luxuries (96; ch. 9). Hetty's attraction to the young, wealthy Arthur Donnithorne is unabashedly opportunistic. While Hetty is searching for Arthur, once she is aware of her “swift-advancing shame,” the narrator reveals the turn of her thoughts: “He would not marry her and make her a lady; and apart from that she could think of nothing he could give her towards which she looked with longing and ambition” (364; ch. 35, 372; ch. 36). And it is certainly not unusual for economic considerations to figure in the Victorian marriage plot; Mary Barton's attraction to Harry Carson is predicated on his ability to make her a lady; Rosamond Vincy marries Lydgate in the hopes that his relationship to the landed gentry will, quite literally, pay off. It is the lethal turn of Hetty's material self-interest – the murder of her illegitimate child – that makes her story exceptional. I suggest that Hetty's desire to “purchase” Arthur's social prestige and her ultimate rejection of maternal responsibility intersect with Malthusian economics. The central action of the story, infanticide, signifies one of the chief topics of Malthusian debate. T. R. Malthus and his followers suggested that economically imprudent marriages were akin to an unthinking infanticide because the newlyweds would likely be unable to feed the children that would arise from their conjugal relations; they also registered child-murder as one of the checks to population, classifying it as “one of the worst forms of vice and misery” (1803: 71; ch. 3). In this essay, I read food and the life-and-death economics of food in Adam Bede as a register for Malthusian concerns about sex, family, responsibility, and dependence. In the novel, these concerns are not only for fathers – which is Malthus's own emphasis – but also for mothers. Although published in 1859, the novel is set in 1799, a year after the first publication of Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population, and three decades before the Poor Law reform developed in response to Malthusian analysis. It is in this context that I propose reading Adam Bede alongside Malthus's Essay.

After Emancipation: Thomas Fowell Buxton and Evangelical Politics in the 1830s

After the Emancipation Act of 1833 officially abolished slavery in the British empire, it became clear that the anti‐slavery coalition was even more tenuous than many had believed. The expectations created by reform, and by the previous measures removing disabilities on dissenters and catholics, sent the various elements within the anti‐slavery camp in different directions. This splintering of efforts was especially true of evangelicals in parliament. During the next four years, the anti‐slavery leader, Thomas Fowell Buxton, went through a reorientation as he worked to make sense of his priorities under new political conditions. Although involved with many issues of the day, Buxton came to focus on the plight of aboriginal peoples in the British empire and then formulated his proposals to end African slavery. Buxton's shift represents a larger one for evangelicals in England. While they could not all agree on the benefits or morality of poor law reform or the appropriate way to handle the Irish Church question, most could agree that the peoples coming under British rule should have their rights protected, especially if it opened a way for further missionary activity. By 1840, Buxton's efforts provided a set of concepts and an agenda for many people of otherwise diverse political bent. Domestically, the evangelical communities in Britain might disagree on what policy and programmes served their civilisation best; but they all agreed that Britain's growing empire needed to be directed in a way that promoted christianity and commerce, and hence the spread of ‘civilisation’.