Poor Law Report Research Articles

Nassau William Senior and the Poor Laws: Why Workhouses Improved the Industriousness of the Poor

The New Poor Law of 1834 was criticized for sending many poor to workhouses where conditions were designed to be harsh and degrading. N.W. Senior, one of the authors of the 1834 Poor Law Report, argued that the poor would become industrious if paid labour was clearly more attractive than the conditions of the workhouse. Senior argued that all people desire to better themselves, and they desire variety and distinction as their income rises. Although the poor lacked diligence and abstinence, entering paid employment would be a step towards their material and ethical improvement.

A Philosophy of Charity and the Debates over the English and Irish Poor Laws in the 1830s

AbstractThe role of charity as a provider of relief was notably little discussed in the comprehensive English Poor Law Report of 1834. By contrast, however, the debate at the time in Ireland over whether any kind of Poor Law at all was desirable ranged much more broadly, with the respective roles of statutory and voluntary provision hotly contested. In fact, beyond the confines of the English Report itself, the topic of the place of charity in relief was exercising plenty of minds on both shores of the Irish Sea. This article examines aspects of the intellectual importance accorded to the role of individual charity and wider voluntary action in welfare provision across the British Isles by some of the central figures in the English and Irish Poor Law debates in the 1830s. It is a study of how justifications were forged to underpin charitable activity and specific policy proposals as advanced by the main proponents of Christian political economy from the late 18th to the early 19th centuries, including William Paley, Thomas Robert Malthus, John Bird Sumner, Edward Copleston, James Ebenezer Bicheno, Thomas Chalmers and Richard Whately. The discussions of Irish circumstances and problems furnish new insights into the substance and reach of a ‘philosophy of charity’ which was firmly in place by the 1830s.

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

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

An Analysis of Environmental Issues in 19th Century England Using the Writings of Charles Dickens

If you were to ask your students what century is best known for its environmental and social problems, what would they say? Most likely, they would say 21st century. This is true; however, there is another century worth examining when environmental issues affected societies. Charles Dickens lived during the best and worst of times in 19th century England. His writings were greatly influenced by the ongoing industrial revolution. He described abhorrent environmental conditions, inadequate sanitary practices, abuse, and other social maladies of the times. But, wait ... why should we bring Dickens into the biology classroom? Fiction dealing with our environment can strengthen and broaden the real-life experiences of a child (Powers, 1974, p. 16). By having Dickens in the biology classroom, our students can discover that pollution, abuse, infectious diseases, and poor sanitary practices are not just 21st century problems: If students are stimulated by interesting past events, they could also study scenarios of future social patterns and values to initiate student interest in socialization. Reynolds, 1983, p. 407 Dickens' readings provide students with the opportunity to discuss such issues as: Will people continue to make the same mistakes in the future as they did in the past? How can people avoid the mistakes? What role will humanitarian causes play in making societal decisions? Dickens' writings can initiate discussions, debates, role-plays, and essays dealing with people vs. technology, nature vs. technology, and people vs. nature, among other topics (Fleener & Bucher, 2003). Dickens & the Environment When you discuss environmental issues (such as pollution, sanitation, infectious diseases, and housing conditions), provide your students with any of the following excerpts from Dickens' writings. In the following paragraph from Hard Times, Dickens describes the pollution of Coketown: It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of buildings full of windows where there was a ratline and trembling all day long. Dickens, 1959, p. 34 The effects of air pollution in London are described in Our Mutual Friend, by writing Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing and choking; inanimate London was snooting spectre (Dickens, 1964, p. 21). Dickens discussed sanitation issues frequently in his writings. He served as a reporter for the True Sun and then the Morning Chronicle. During this time, he became familiar with the legislation focusing on the poor. Edwin Chadwick was the Secretary to the Poor Law Commission. In 1834, all 15,000 parishes in England were responsible for looking after their own poor. No single system existed. The Poor Law Report of 1834 barely mentioned sanitary conditions and water quality found in the poorest areas of England. Dickens did not support the new Poor Law and became cynical about the politics in his country. In Bleak House, he wrote: Now, these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As on the ruined human wretch, vermin parasites appear, so these ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards: and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever, and sowing more evil in its every footprint than Lord Coodle, and Sir Thomas Doodle, and The Duke of Foodle, and all the fine gentlemen in office, down to Zoodle, shall set right in five hundred year-though born expressly to do it. …

Evidence and policy: interpreting the Delphic oracle

So wrote Edwin Chadwick more than a hundred years ago. Not only was he one of the pioneers of the public health movement, equally, he was the 19th century father of much 20th century social inquiry. To cite him is to underline that there is nothing new—except, possibly, the phrase itself— about evidence-based policy (EBP). As Royal Commissions and government committees of inquiry have demonstrated over the decades, policy makers have always sought evidence. The extent to which subsequent policy decisions were actually based on that evidence, as distinct from the use of such evidence to legitimate them, is another question: Chadwick himself has often been criticized for manipulating evidence to support his preconceived ideas, notoriously so in the case of the 1834 Poor Law Report. So why the sudden rush of enthusiasm for EBP today? One answer must be that it reflects the success of the evidence-based medicine (EBM) movement (and this is a ‘movement’ insofar as it has prophets, missionaries and zealots). If medicine can be based on evidence, so surely can policy. The proposition seems self-evident. The trouble is that a sleight of hand is involved in making the transition. EBM is distinguished by the fact that it privileges particular kinds of evidence—‘scientific’ evidence, with a strong emphasis on randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews. It is not at all self-evident that this model is appropriate for, or indeed relevant to, the making of policy. In the case of policy, evidence tends to be something of a Delphic oracle—difficult to decipher and apt to be misinterpreted. Much has been written about the pitfalls of, and the delusive hopes held out by, EBP. So this paper asks whether it is possible to plot out a sensible course between a platitude and a nonsense. The platitude is that policy should be informed by evidence. Who could possibly disagree? The nonsense is that policy should be based on scientific evidence. This is to misunderstand the nature of both the policy process and the role of evidence in it.2–4 The way forward is to disaggregate the notions of both policy and evidence: different stages of the policy process may call for different types of evidence. Consider, first, the different types of evidence or knowledge that are relevant for the policy process. There does exist scientific evidence—i.e. research-based, usually peer-reviewed, evidence. Next there is what might be called organizational evidence—in the case of health policy, the experience of those actually working in the NHS. As a Cabinet Office paper on policy-making5 has put it:

The rural labour market in the early nineteenth century: women’s and children’s employment, family income, and the 1834 Poor Law Report

This article revisits a familiar source–the 1834 Poor Law Report–to provide a fresh overview of the regional map of female and child labour in the early nineteenth–century countryside. Patterns of employment in domestic industry and agricultural labour (particularly haymaking, weeding, and harvesting) are investigated alongside labourers’ contributions to the annual family income. The results indicate that orthodox accounts of rural employment and wage patterns should not be accepted uncritically. Adopting an empirical approach to the qualitative evidence contained in the report offers a blueprint for future analysis of similar contemporary printed sources.

1997 Chadwick Lecture--is a healthy north west region achievable in the 21st century.

Edwin Chadwick, the very name evokes powerful images of Britain at its most self con fident and expansive. Victoria on the throne and the map of the world seemingly coloured...

“DESERT”, “NEED”, THE SOCIAL THEORY OF THE POOR LAW RE‐PORT OF 1834, AND JOHN STUART MILL.

The Poor Law Report of 1834 occupies an important, perhaps pre‐eminent place in attempts to understand changes in the distribution of power, social relations, and social provision in the nineteenth century. Few other documents have set in progress such a multitide of far‐reaching changes. This is true even though the Poor Law Amendment Act of the same year, very closely related to the Report, diluted considerably its recommendations for policy ‐ as the Checklands say in the Introduction to their edition of the Report, “The Government, with the understandable intention of making things easier for itself and harder for its opponents, produced a Bill that was much less explicit than the Report” (1974, p. 42). The innovations flowing from the Report included: a specialist body at central level in London (the Poor Law Commissioners, given extensive powers to set in being general rules covering poor re‐lief); nationwide units of “local government”, the union, bringing into control as boards of guardians many new people, who gained their position through elections; more systematic construction of workhouses, which often dwarfed the other buildings in their towns or villages; and a circumscribing of the power in the hands of the Justices of the Peace, stalwarts of a less formal, more paternalistic and discretionary attitude to poor relief.

The Poor Law Report of 1834.

The Poor Law Report of 1834.

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

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

Problems in Alcoholic Production and Controls in Early Nineteenth Century Ireland

From the time of Henry Grattan's pronouncement of 1791 that ‘the drinking of spirits’ had become ‘a great national evil’ to the conclusion of the Poor Law Report of 1837 that an Irishman could get ‘dead drunk for two pence', the problems of alcoholic production, consumption and controls plagued the Irish Government. In a country whose food supplies were often as precarious as its revenues, the brewing of beer and the distilling of spirits were enterprises as controversial as they were profitable. These industries, newly adapted to the large-scale production of the late eighteenth century, underwent rapid expansion during the first years of the Union despite restrictive taxation, periodic measures of prohibition and the persistent harping of temperance leaders. During this period Ireland became an exporter rather than an importer of alcoholic beverages and witnessed the development of a considerable number of licensed breweries and distilleries throughout the country.

The Poor Law Report Reexamined

In an earlier article, I pleaded for a reappraisal of the Old Poor Law. Despite what all the books say, the evidence that we have does not suggest that the English Poor Law as it operated before its amendment in 1834 reduced the efficiency of agricultural workers, promoted population growth, lowered wages, depressed rents, destroyed yeomanry, and compounded the burden on ratepayers. Beyond this purely negative argument, I tried to show that the Old Poor Law was essentially a device for dealing with the problems of structural unemployment and substandard wages in the lagging rural sector of a rapidly growing but still underdeveloped economy. It constituted, so to speak, “a welfare state in miniature,” combining elements of wage-escalation, family allowances, unemployment compensation, and public works, all of which were administered and financed on a local level. Far from having an inhibitory effect, it probably contributed to economic expansion. At any rate, from the economic point of view, things were much the same after 1834 as before. The Poor Laws Amendment Act of 1834 marked a revolution in British social administration, but it left the structure of relief policy substantially unchanged.

The Poor-Law Report of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, 1841

The Poor-Law Report of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, 1841

Poor-Law Report of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association. 1841

Poor-Law Report of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association. 1841

Poor-law Report of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association.--1841

Poor-law Report of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association.--1841