From Sin to Laziness: Early Modern Views of the Poor and Poor Relief Teresa Cribelar

From Sin to Laziness: Early Modern Views of the Poor and Poor Relief Teresa Cribelar Teresa Cribelar, a history graduate student at Eastern Illinois University, was inducted into Phi Alpha Theta in 2000 and is the current Epsilon Mu Chapter President. This paper was written for Dr. David Smith’s graduate seminar in fall of 2001 and was also the co-recipient of the Lavern Hamand Graduate Writing Award. Views of the poor in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England and France change from that of the poor as sinners to the poor as lazy. Poor relief reflected this change through law and ideology. In the seventeenth-century, the poor were in need of moral reform. They led a life of sin, which caused their state of poverty. Fixing this required charity for all while reforming their morals through spirituality. Once the poor were cleansed of their sins, they could help themselves. The eighteenth century, bringing with it the Enlightenment, changed these beliefs. The crime of the poor became laziness rather than sin. Training and support, it was believed, would make the poor self- supporting. If they could not work and support themselves, then they were lazy and required confinement and forced labor. Charity became reserved for those who could not work. A dramatic shift in the perception of the poor and the function of poor relief occurred during the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries. This essay presents the thesis of changing poor relief as argued in the historiography of poor relief in France. This thesis of changing poor relief remains, if applied to actual laws and events in England’s history of the same period. --France— Histories of poor relief in seventeenth and eighteenth-century France often begin with the hopitaux generaux, which started in 1614 under the ancien regime. Secret societies started these hospitals for the confinement of beggars and the poor, as they were unruly and possibly dangerous. Under Louis XIV, the state took an active interest in the hospitals through edicts. In 1724, the state began an intensified role through a royal edict requiring all beggars imprisoned. Beggars had two weeks to find a job before they were thrown in the hospital. Numbers in hospitals rose, and the government provided money for their maintenance. By 1733, the edict had proved a failure and arrests of beggars became less frequent.[1] By the mid-eighteenth-century, repression of beggars and vagrants once again began. Due to proletarianization, rural impoverishment, and mobility, begging and vagrancy became a severe problem in the eyes of the elites and authorities. The laws of 1764 and 1767 set up aggressive confinement of beggars in depots de mendicite, basically workhouses, by policing agents of the state. The depots differed from the hospitals in several ways. They were established as a repressive deterrent for the imprisonment of beggars. The state also supervised and financially supported the depots considerably more than the hospitals. Over all, the depots were unhealthy and not well liked by possible inhabitants or social reformers.[2] Kathryn Norberg takes a broad look at the treatment of the poor in Rich and Poor in Grenoble, 1600-1814.[3] She provides a good overview of one city, much like others, which allows for generalized conclusions about the treatment of the poor. Norberg compares the changing treatment of the poor to changing society. As modernity arises and social relationships change, the treatment of the poor mirrors that change from a personal, paternal relationship to one of distant, bureaucratic poor relief. Norberg begins by explaining the early poor relief of the seventeenth century by confraternities in Grenoble. Confraternities were small religious associations for lay people, often secretive. Women confraternities worked modestly, often in hospices or hospitals. They started their own systems of confinement solely for women. Often, they helped house destitute women who many times were unwed mothers. They also set up a house for reforming prostitutes. The prostitutes were not always willing inhabitants of this house. Important for the women’s confraternities was the spiritual reform of the poor. Their goal was making the poor better people through Christianity. As the records of the confraternities repeatedly state, the ladies acted “like perfect mothers to the poor” by providing the poor with food, clothing, spiritual instruction, and moral support.[4] Men also formed confraternities and took on much larger tasks, often referred to as “Great Works.” These men were very secretive and discreet while providing what Norberg calls “seventeenth-century charity at its fullest.”[5] They worked in hospitals, in the streets, and in people’s homes. For example, brothers of the confraternity would visit the homes of the poor, inquire about their circumstances, and report on these weekly so they could decide the best ways to benefit the poor.[6] Confinement became the centerpiece of their program, as most people believed in the seventeenth-century that confinement in workhouses and hospitals would eliminate begging. In order to make mass confinement a realization, the brothers infiltrated institutions and governing boards, as they could not openly voice their opinions if they remained secretive.[7] The confraternities believed in confinement and the spiritual and moral reform of their charges. Confraternities generally thought of the poor as sinful. The confraternities “saw in the poor not Christ but the Devil himself.”[8] The outlook of the common person of Grenoble differed. The poor were not completely bad. Many adhered to a set of values and morals just like their more wealthy counterparts. While the confraternity laid the blame on men and women alike for crimes like prostitution and illegitimacy, the general public tended to blame soley women. This treatment of the poor as a whole was harsh, but when it came to individuals there was a sense of paternalism and caring.[9] General attitudes toward the poor revolved around sin and crime, yet were contradicted by the treatment of individual people. The close contact with the poor mirrors society at this time when all relationships, especially those of work, were personal ties. The employer often knew his workers as people with lives and families and treated them as such. Relationships in society at this time reflected these personal ties. Norberg suggests contemporary views about the poor started changing between 1680 and 1729. The rich still maintained personal ties with the poor, who were increasingly confined, but they began to search for a more systematic approach to poor relief. The rich learned that the poor were not all criminal and sinful, and indeed crime overall decreased. The rich began to forgive rather than reform. Basically, a more humane attitude towards the poor began, while charitable giving and services increased.[10] Attitudes towards beggars changed in part due to an ordinance in 1724, which required the arrest and confinement of beggars. Records were kept and thus, the beggars became recorded people. A human face was given to them, and people, especially the directors of the hospital, began to see this. Records of paupers receiving bread provide proof of the change to a systematic approach to poor relief.[11] As the eighteenth-century began, the poor took on a new image. They began the journey to becoming the misfortunate who must be dealt with in a systematic and soon bureaucratic way. Training the poor to help themselves became the goal. By the 1720s, the French government realized that the local enforcement was not working. The state passed more laws and used state resources for poor relief and repression. A royal declaration of July 1724 aimed at helping the labor force by forcing beggars to work in hospitals, on public works projects, or as laborers. Local hospitals were relied upon for confining beggars and paupers. This enlarged the hospitals repressive duties. This did not completely work as hospitals had trouble coping with the numbers. Of the hospitals chosen, the program worked well at times, depending on the money received from the state. The demographics of the hospitals changed from infirm, aged, and children to men and women who were capable of work.[12] The time from 1724-1733, referred to as the “Great Confinement,” saw unprecedented numbers of people confined by the royal police. All in all, some relief was provided for cities in need due to mendicity.[13] The state began taking more control of its citizens. This time, it came in the form of regulating and policing the poor with the use of state funds. Later, in the 1760s, more people came under the veil of vagrant and the enforcement became greater. As urbanization increased along with impoverishment, the need to control vagrants and beggars grew as well. By 1769, all vagrants and beggars were subject to arrest as the program initially used for arresting vagrants enlarged itself. This was in response to the increasing working class, the growth in the numbers of poor, and increased vagrancy in the countryside. The government was alarmed by the assaults on property and people in the countryside, thus creating depots, or workhouses, in which all forms of repression were carried out by the government.[14] As the government saw a need for increased security, it provided it through more arrests and the use of state funded institutions, rather than using institutions already in place. Thomas McStay Adams describes the depots in great detail, ranging from their institution in the 1760s up to the French Revolution. For the most part, the focus remains on government bureaucratic endeavors in the construction and implementation of the new far-reaching social policy of confining all beggars in a systematic form. Adams uses a great deal of writing in explaining the intricate workings of the processes by which laws and edicts were decided upon.[15] In 1764, the intendants received jurisdiction over beggars and vagrants, thus relieving the local authorities of the duty.

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