Poor Law Commissioners' Report of 1834
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The Poor Law of 1601
Tit) POOR LA.v OF 1601 with 3oms coi3ii3rat,ion of MODSRN Of t3l9 POOR -i. -S. -* CH a i^ 3 B oone. '°l<g BU 2502377 2 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Chapter 1. Introductory. * E. Poor Relief before the Tudor period w 3. The need for re-organisation. * 4. The Great Poor La* of 1601. w 5. Historical Sketch. 1601-1909. " 6. 1909 and after. Note. The small figares occurring in the text refer to notes appended to each chapter. Chapter 1. .Introductory.. In an age of stress and upheaval, institutions and 9 systems which we have come to take for granted are subjected to a searching test, which, though more violent, can scarcely fail to be more valuable than the criticism of more normal times. A reconstruction of our educational system seems inevitable after the present struggle; in fact new schemes have already been set forth by accredited organisations such as the national Union of Teachers and the Workers' Educational Association. V/ith the other subjects in the curriculum of the schools, History will have to stand on its defence. -
The Poor of the Parish: Social Care in Kingsbury in the Early Nineteenth Century
The Poor of the Parish: Social care in Kingsbury in the early Nineteenth Century. It would be easy to believe that the care we take for granted under the Welfare State only dates from the 20th Century, but evidence at Brent Archives reveals a different story. Among the many interesting old documents held there are the hand-written Kingsbury Poor Accounts from 1811 to 1829, which give a fascinating glimpse into social care nearly 200 years ago. The Poor Accounts book for St Andrew’s Parish, Kingsbury, from 1811 to 1829. [Source: Brent Archives, ref. 197747/4/1, from which all of the accounts entries below are shown.] From Queen Elizabeth I’s time, under the Relief of the Poor Act of 1597, each English parish had to appoint two Overseers to ensure that poor people in their area were looked after. They raised money based on the value of the property that local people occupied, and kept records of how this was spent. In 1811 Kingsbury’s Overseers were elected at Easter, but a few years later this was changed to a fixed date of Lady Day (25 March) each year, one of the official “quarter days” used for business purposes. Although the Overseers were only elected for a year, some men served the parish in this role for successive years. Samuel Harrison was one of them from 1812 until 1819, while Henry Pope was an Overseer for ten of the twelve years between 1817 and 1828, with seven different colleagues. The signature of Henry Pope, and mark of his fellow Overseer, George Cooper, from a page of the accounts in 1823. -
ARCHITECTURE, POWER, and POVERTY Emergence of the Union
ARCHITECTURE, POWER, AND POVERTY Emergence of the Union Workhouse Apparatus in the Early Nineteenth-Century England A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Gökhan Kodalak January 2015 2015, Gökhan Kodalak ABSTRACT This essay is about the interaction of architecture, power, and poverty. It is about the formative process of the union workhouse apparatus in the early nineteenth-century England, which is defined as a tripartite combination of institutional, architectural, and everyday mechanisms consisting of: legislators, official Poor Law discourse, and administrative networks; architects, workhouse buildings, and their reception in professional journals and popular media; and paupers, their everyday interactions, and ways of self-expression such as workhouse ward graffiti. A cross-scalar research is utilized throughout the essay to explore how the union workhouse apparatus came to be, how it disseminated in such a dramatic speed throughout the entire nation, how it shaped the treatment of pauperism as an experiment for the modern body-politic through the peculiar machinery of architecture, and how it functioned in local instances following the case study of Andover union workhouse. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Gökhan Kodalak is a PhD candidate in the program of History of Architecture and Urbanism at Cornell University. He received his bachelor’s degree in architectural design in 2007, and his master’s degree in architectural theory and history in 2011, both from Yıldız Technical University, Istanbul. He is a co-founding partner of ABOUTBLANK, an inter-disciplinary architecture office located in Istanbul, and has designed a number of award-winning architectural and urban design projects in national and international platforms. -
New Men of Wealth and the Purchase of Land in Great Britain and Ireland, 1780 to 1879*
New men of wealth and the purchase of land in Great Britain and Ireland, 1780 to 1879* new men of wealth by David Brown Abstract Of all the indicators of the integration of the bourgeoisie class and the aristocracy, the most important was the purchase of a residence and a landed estate by ‘new men of wealth’. In new research, 2566 new men of wealth have been identified who purchased estates of over 1000 acres and a rental of £1000 in Great Britain and Ireland between 1780 and 1879. Of those, 1439 purchased estates of over 2000 acres in extent and £2000 in rental, which represents an estimated turnover of over 38 per cent over the century. Although there is no consensus about what level of upward mobility is required for an elite to be ‘open’, these figures demonstrates that there were sufficient purchasers to sustain the contemporary belief that Britain’s elite was indeed open. The relationship between plutocratic and aristocratic elites in the century of the classic Industrial Revolution has been a topic of great interest to historians. For example, Avner Offer has explored the development of the ideology of a ‘free trade in land’ to break the aristocratic dominance achieved through the use of strict settlement. R. J. Morris has considered the strategies adopted by middle-class families to succeed in a period where landed wealth still dominated.1 The most divisive, and arguably the key issue about this relationship, arising from the Marxist model of conflict between the rising bourgeois elite and the declining aristocratic elite, has been the tendency of ‘new wealth’ to join the ranks of landowners. -
An Economic History of the English Poor Law 1750-1850
AN ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH POOR LAW 1750-1850 GEORGE R. BOYER Cornell University The right of the University of Cambridge to print anil sell all manner of hooks was granted by Henry Vlll in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge New York Port Chester Melbourne Sydney 1990 CONTENTS Acknowledgments page xi Introduction 1 1. The Development and Administration of the Old Poor Law in Rural Areas, 1760-1834 9 1. The Administration of Poor Relief 10 2. Timing of Changes in Poor Law Administration 23 3. Changes in the Economic Environment 31 4. Conclusion 43 Appendix A: Agricultural Laborers' Wages, 1750-1832 43 Appendix B: Labor Rate for Wisborough Green 49 2. The Old Poor Law in Historical Perspective 51 1. The Historiography of the Poor Law Before 1834 52 2. The Poor Law Report of 1834 60 3. Fabian Interpretations of the Poor Law 65 4. Polanyis Analysis of the Poor Law 71 5. The Revisionist Analysis of the Poor Law 75 6. Conclusion 83 3. An Economic Model of the English Poor Law 85 1. The Effect of Seasonally on the Rural Labor Market 86 2. Seasonality in English Agriculture 88 3. The Parish Vestry and the Financing of the Poor Rate 94 4. An Economic Model of the Rural Labor Market 99 5. The Effect of Migrant Labor on the Rural Labor Market 113 6. Conclusion 118 Appendix 119 vii viii Contents 4. The Old Poor Law and the Agricultural Labor Market in Southern England: An Empirical Analysis 122 1. -
Almshouse, Workhouse, Outdoor Relief: Responses to the Poor in Southeastern Massachusetts, 1740-1800” Historical Journal of Massachusetts Volume 31, No
Jennifer Turner, “Almshouse, Workhouse, Outdoor Relief: Responses to the Poor in Southeastern Massachusetts, 1740-1800” Historical Journal of Massachusetts Volume 31, No. 2 (Summer 2003). Published by: Institute for Massachusetts Studies and Westfield State University You may use content in this archive for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the Historical Journal of Massachusetts regarding any further use of this work: [email protected] Funding for digitization of issues was provided through a generous grant from MassHumanities. Some digitized versions of the articles have been reformatted from their original, published appearance. When citing, please give the original print source (volume/ number/ date) but add "retrieved from HJM's online archive at http://www.westfield.ma.edu/mhj. Editor, Historical Journal of Massachusetts c/o Westfield State University 577 Western Ave. Westfield MA 01086 Almshouse, Workhouse, Outdoor Relief: Responses to the Poor in Southeastern Massachusetts, 1740-1800 By Jennifer Turner In Duxbury, Massachusetts, local folklore emphasizes that before the current Surplus Street was named, it was called Poverty Lane because it led to the “poor” farm, and before it was Poverty Lane, local residents knew it as Folly Street, over which one’s folly led to the Almshouse.1 Although such local folklore suggests a rather stringent attitude towards giving alms to the poor in colonial society, the issue of poor relief absorbed much of the attention of town officials before and after the American Revolution. Throughout the colonial period and early republic, many Massachusetts towns faced growing numbers of needy men, women and children in need of relief. -
The Poor Law Report Reexamined Mark Blaug
Mark Blaug TheJournal Poor of Economic Law HistoryReport, vol. Reexamined 24, n° 2, June 1964 N AN earlier article, I pleaded for a reappraisal of the Old Poor I Law.1 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 rate- payers. 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 under- developed economy. It constituted, so to speak, "a welfare state in miniature," combining elements of wage-escalation, family allow- ances, 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. In the earlier article, I criticized the commissioners who prepared the famous Poor Law Report of 1834 for the manner in which they marshaled the evidence against the existing system, noting that the elaborate questionnaire which they circulated among the parishes was never analyzed or reduced to summary form. -
Almshouses 1731 to 1964
Newton’s Almshouses 1731 to 1964 Michael J Clarke 1/12/15 Time Line 1731 Vote to establish Workhouse 1734 Board of Overseers of the Poor established 1763 Vote to build Workhouse 1818 Poorhouse established in Auburndale at former home of John Pigeon 1840 Almshouse & Poor Farm moves to Waban 1842 Dorothea Dix visits Waban Almshouse 1880 Poor Department established 1881 Newton Cottage Hospital founded as part of Poor Department 1886 Newton Cottage Hospital opens as a private institution 1890 Poor Farm land purchased on Winchester St. next to Working Boys Home 1898 Poor Department becomes Charity Department 1899 Almshouse built at 525 Winchester St. 1900 Almshouse inmates move to Winchester St. 1905 Board of Overseers of the Poor replaced by a single Overseer 1909 Almshouse becomes City Home 1917 City Home expanded 1929 Charity Department becomes Department of Public Welfare Overseer of the Poor becomes Director of Public Welfare 1938 Brick and stone toolhouse built behind City Home 1941 Board of Public Welfare commences meeting 1946 City Home becomes City Infirmary 1956 City Infirmary barn and piggery destroyed by fire. New barn built. 1964 City Infirmary closes 1968 Department of Public Welfare and Board of Public Welfare abolished Infirmary Land and buildings transferred to the Recreation Commission 1974 Community Gardens established on Infirmary Lands 1980 Purchase of land from Xaverian Brothers Working Boys Home 1987 Nahanton Park established by combining Poor Farm with WBH land Cover: The Misfortunes of Old Age – On the Way to the Poorhouse, wood engraving by John N. Hyde, published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, September 9, 1882. -
The Poor in England Steven King Is Reader in History at Contribution to the Historiography of Poverty, Combining As It Oxford Brookes University
king&t jkt 6/2/03 2:57 PM Page 1 Alannah Tomkins is Lecturer in History at ‘Each chapter is fluently written and deeply immersed in the University of Keele. primary sources. The work as a whole makes an original The poor in England Steven King is Reader in History at contribution to the historiography of poverty, combining as it Oxford Brookes University. does a high degree of scholarship with intellectual innovation.’ The poor Professor Anne Borsay, University of Wales, Swansea This fascinating collection of studies investigates English poverty in England between 1700 and 1850 and the ways in which the poor made ends meet. The phrase ‘economy of makeshifts’ has often been used to summarise the patchy, disparate and sometimes failing 1700–1850 strategies of the poor for material survival. Incomes or benefits derived through the ‘economy’ ranged from wages supported by under-employment via petty crime through to charity; however, An economy of makeshifts until now, discussions of this array of makeshifts usually fall short of answering vital questions about how and when the poor secured access to them. This book represents the single most significant attempt in print to supply the English ‘economy of makeshifts’ with a solid, empirical basis and to advance the concept of makeshifts from a vague but convenient label to a more precise yet inclusive definition. 1700–1850 Individual chapters written by some of the leading, emerging historians of welfare examine how advantages gained from access to common land, mobilisation of kinship support, crime, and other marginal resources could prop up struggling households. -
The Poor Law Commission and Publicly-Owned Housing in the English Countryside, 1834–47
The Poor Law Commission and publicly-owned housing in the English countryside, 1834–47 by Roger Wells Abstract This paper addresses aspects of the Poor Law Commission’s policy of encouraging parishes to dispose of their often considerable stock of social housing, in some cases built up over many years, and a topic previously analysed in this Review by John Broad. Policy was in part conditioned by the cost of new workhouses required in many of the unions created under the 1834 New Poor Law. This fell on indi- vidual parishes’ ratepayers; sales of their real estate would lighten, and sometimes remove, the financial pain. It also arose out of the Commission’s commitment to engineering able-bodied workers’ independ- ence through the abolition of all non-medical aid funded from the poor rate, which had traditionally included the provision of domestic accommodation at no or nominal rents by overseers of the poor. But, while putting the Commission in charge of sales by parishes, parliamentarians insisted that the own- ers and occupiers of property in each parish, had to vote to sell or retain, some or all, of their housing stock. The stipulation of compulsory disposals, which Broad erroneously assumed, remained a political impossibility. In a paper published some years ago in this Review, John Broad showed how on the eve of the New Poor Law, some parishes in southern England had accumulated considerable stocks of ‘social’ housing in which they housed their poor, rent-free or at notional rents.1 In Bedfordshire 56 per cent of parishes had some housing of this sort at their disposal, in Buckinghamshire 50 per cent. -
Wage Subsidisation: Some Historical Reflections
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF WAGE SUBSIDISATION: SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS ESRC Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge Working Paper No. 201 By Frank Wilkinson Centre for Business Research, and Department of Applied Economics Austin Robinson Building Sidgwick Avenue Cambridge CB3 9DE Tel: 01223 335262 e-mail: [email protected] June 2001 This Working Paper forms part of the CBR Research Programme on Corporate Governance, Contracts and Incentives Abstract Economists explain welfare dependency of the unemployed and in-work poverty by the low labour market quality of the poor. Work can be made to pay by working family tax credits. But these might lower wages and price non- recipients out of the market, widening the eligibility for the wage supplementation and raising social welfare bills. This was precisely the effect of the Speenhamland system of wage supplementation of the early 19th Century which permanently affected labour markets, and attitudes to welfare and the poor. The possibility of working family tax credit having a similar effect cannot be ruled out. JEL Codes: J58, J78, J4, I38 Keywords: Wage supplementation, welfare to work and labour markets. 2 THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF WAGE SUBSIDISATION: SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS 1. Introduction The view in government circles is that the economy has now been bought under control by prudent macroeconomic management. A major remaining problem is the high level of poverty resulting from the persistence of high unemployment and the growth in the number of the working poor. The policy response to this is to make the payment of social welfare dependent on labour market participation by a variety of means, including topping up earnings to some minimum level by means of tax credits. -
A History English Agricultural Labourer
A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER W. HASBACH Translated by Ruth Kenyon With a preface by Sidney Webb The first edition published in German by Messrs . Duncker and Humblot in 1894. TABLE OF CONTENTS. First English edition was published in 1908 by P . S . King & Son PAO E PREFACE ... ... ... ... ... v.. ... vi i . INTRODUCTION ..a ... ... ... ....... xiii . CHAPTER I . THE DEVELOPMENT OF A FREE LABOURINO CLASS ... ... Introductory ... ... ... ... ... i. The Manor as an Organisation of Labour ... ... ii . The Transition to an Organisation based on Rent ... iii . The Break-down of the Manor ... ... ... iv . The Transition Period ... ... ... ... CHAPTER I1. THE DSVELOPMENT OF AN AGRICULTURAL PROLETARIAT ... i. The Village of the Eighteenth Century before the Enclosures. the Engrossing of Farms. and the Revolution in Prices ... ... ... ... ii . The Break-up of the Village ... ... ... iii . The Position of the Labourer. 1760 to 1800 ... ... iv . Contemporary Opinion ... ... ... ... CHAPTER 111. THE DENIORALISATION OF THE LABOURER ... ... ... i. The Laws of Settlement and Removal ... ... ii . The Labourer in the period of high Corn Prices ... iii . The Labourer in the period of low Corn Prices and the old Poor Law ... ... ... ... ... iv . The Gang System ... ... ... ... ... v . Wages and Moral Conditions up to 1834 ... ... CHAPTER IV . FROM THE POOR LAW AMENDMENT ACT. 1834. TO THE EDUCATION ACTS ... ... ... ... ... i . The new Poor Law and its effects ... ... ... ii . Allotments ... ... ... ... ..a iii . The Introduction of Free Trade ... ... ... iv . The Condition of the Labourer in the Sixties ... v. The Gangs Act and the Education Acts ... ... CHAPTER V . *~RICULTURAL LABOUR UNIONS AND THE SMALL HOLDINGS MOVEMENT. 1872 to 1894 ... ... ... ... ... i . Agricult~ralLabour Unions ... ... ... (a) Introductory ... ... ... ... ... (b The Period of Triumph ..