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Durham E-Theses Durham E-Theses The new poor law and county Durham Dunkley, Peter James How to cite: Dunkley, Peter James (1971) The new poor law and county Durham, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/10095/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk THE NEW POOH LAW AHD COUOTY DURHAM Peter James Dunkley Submitted for the M.A. Degree in the University of Durham, 9 July 1971* The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. ABSTRACT The thesis traces, in a general sense, the developments that directly led to the legislative refoxm of a poor relief system that had remained essentially unaltered since its inception two hundred years earlier* The impetus for the dismantling of the Old Poor Law is seen in largely economic texms - the breakdown of a traditional administrative scheme under the pressure of the dramatio fluctuations of an embryonic industrial society* After an extensive review of the provisions of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, the paper turns to a close examination of its imple• mentation in County Durham* The administrative framework erected in the latter 1830*8 receives careful attention* An attempt is made to ascertain Poor Law Commission policy and its actual application by local organs* It is found that although the form of poor relief administration was substantially altered by the new measure* in a substantive sense* the economic considerations that animated relief management in previous years continued to dictate* to a large extent* regional administrative practices after the introduction of the Act. despite increasing inter• ference by the Commission* TABLE OP COMTEMTS Prefatory Bote i INTRODUCE!Ofl 1 CHAPl'MH QUE The Coming of the Sew Poor Law 19 CHAPTER TWO The Hew Poor Lav 55 i«; The Commission 55 ii«. The Report 60 iii. The Bill 80 iv. The Act 96 Durham 1 Prelude 101 CHAPTER POUR Durhamt The First Tears 115 i. The Implementation 115 ii« The Hierarchy 124 iii. Outdoor Relief 140 iv. The Workhouses 154 v. Medical Relief 184 vi. The Parochial Authorities 192 vii. Opposition '202 CHAPTER FIVE Durham* Crisis and Reaction 212 CHAPTER SIX Conclusion 275 BIBLIOGRAPHY 290 i PREFATORY NOTE This is a long paper* Perhaps one might say it is too long for an M.A. degree, but I have been loath to extract what seems to me to be significant merely for the irrelevant reason that this is an M.A. and not an II* Litt* or Ph.D. thesis* Consequently) I have carried on, trusting to the indulgence of the reader* The reader will also notice that certain words in the text* with the exception of those found in quotations and proper nouns, are spelled in the manner peculiar to North America* This policy was decided upon for the sake of consistency; that is, if I had been compelled to adopt the English method, a mode of spelling wholly unfamiliar to me, it is certain that spellings of both types would have appeared inadvertently in the text* The original purpose of this paper was to examine in detail the 1834 Poor Lav Amendment Act and its specific application in the County of Durham. It became clear from the start, however, that the Act was basically a formulation of poor relief principles and attitudes that arose in the years following the Napoleonic wars and, accordingly, that a thorough investigation of the measure necessitated some reference to this pre-formulation period* More Importantly, certain developments in Durham following the implementation of the Act require an understanding of relief administration in the l820*s, if their full significance is to be appreciated* I have, therefore, prefaced the main feature of this thesis with general comments (including appropriate allusions to Durham) on poor relief prior to 1832 and on the shaping of the Act in the crucial years 1832-34* Although an inspection of this thirty-year period was bound to be time-consuming, both for the writer and the reader, I have sustained myself in the knowledge that this work encompasses the ii New Poor Law itself* as well as its history in County Durham* and that a comparison of the new with the old would be of value* I have drawn mostly on secondary sources and British Sessional Papers for the writing of the first two chapters* The general, more well-known books on the Ektglish poor laws may be looated in any tolerably supplied library) while certain contemporary works on early nineteenth- century Durham may be found in the local history collection of Durham University Library* The Sessional Papers are also deposited there) however* they are only available on microcard, which renders their examination a formidable task* The remaining portion of the thesis is based on four sets of primary informations the annual reports of the Poor Law Commissioners* boards of guardians* minutes* Ministry of Health Papers (Series 12), and local newspapers* From these materials X have been able to compile a reasonably complete picture of relief administration in eleven of Durham's fourteen poor law unions up to 1847* the year the Poor Law Commission was dissolved* The Stockton* Lanchester, and Weardale Unions are the areas for which I have been able to evolve only a sketchy idea as to administrative developments* In the oase of Stockton, by far the most important of the deficiencies, the reoords are unsatisfactory and, in some instances, non-existent* The minutes of this Board in the Durham County Beoord Office do not include any notations prior to the l880*s, and the Union correspondence on deposit at the Public Record Office in London is incomplete until well into the 1840*8. No similar alibi exists for the Lanchester and Weardale Unions; they are, I am afraid, merely victims of the exigencies of time* Nevertheless, the eleven areas coming under close scrutiny include the major unions in iii Durham, and being distributed evenly throughout the county, they represent every type of local characteristic* The original editions of the Poor Lav Commissioners* annual reports are relatively common} a complete Set is available in Durham University Library* A fairly extensive collection of guardians' minutes is located in the Durham County Record Office, although only five unions have records on deposit there for the period of this paper* Consequently, in order to examine the minute books of Durham's most important Union, Sunderland, the investigator must resort to the Central Reference Library in that town* The most definitive group of documents on poor relief administration in Durham is the correspondence of the Poor Lav Commissioners (Ministry of Health Papers), which may be seen at the Public Record Office in London* ThiB material includes observations by the Assistant Commissioner for the northern district, as veil as communi• cations with local administrators and ratepayers* It should be pointed out, however, that while these papers remain the most important single collection of primary poor law information, a concurrent review of regional records is advisable, in order to avoid a distorted impression of actual administrative practices* The investigator quickly learns that official correspondence did not always accurately reflect regional developments* I should like to record here my appreciation for assistance I have received during the writing of this thesis* Mr. P.A.J. Heesom of the University of Durham kindly read the paper in draft, and his encouragement enabled me to survive periodic fits of depression and doubt* I should also like to thank Dr. Norman MoCord of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne for his advice concerning the Ministry of Health iv Papers, and especially for his generosity in allowing me to see and make use of some of his transcripts of Poor Law Commission correspondence* The relevant material is noted in the bibliography* It goes without saying that I alone am responsible for any errors in the work* Gilesgate, Durham P.J.D. 6 July 1971 INTRODUCTION A dl8oussion of the Poor Lav Amendment Act of 1834 is certain to be incomplete without at least a cursory look at what is known as the Old Poor Law, being a convenient term for the myriad, of poor lav admin• istrative methods practiced throughout England under the problematical provisions of the 43rd of Elizabeth (l60l). The New Poor Lav, as the Amendment Act is commonly called, was conceived, adopted, and developed as a direct consequence of the alleged foibles of the Old Poor Lav, most particularly those of the famous Speenhamland system of poor relief, the supplementation of wages by allowances* The Royal Commission of 1832, constituted to review the poor lav administration of England and from whose report came the recommendations that formed the basis of the New Poor Lav, found that by that period the allowance system had "spread over almost every part of the country, and into the manufacturing towns • • • [and] the evil • • • is, on the whole, steadily and rapidly pro• gressive ."^ On the other hand, scholars have suspected for some time, for reasons discussed later, that the Commissioners greatly exaggerated the importance and extent of the allowance system, and two recent articles 2 by Dr* Mark Blaug have given evidential weight to these suspicions* [Royal Commission,] Extracts Tfrom the Information Received by His Majesty *sCoinm< Minn ers.
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