Late Victorian Pauperism and the Poor Law in Leicester by S.J

Late Victorian Pauperism and the Poor Law in Leicester by S.J. Page INTRODUCTION Poverty and pauperism are issues which have produced a large and sustained literature from the classic study of Booth1 to the detailed contemporary review of Townsend. 2 A common feature of poverty is its persistence, in one form or another, from generation to generation which has provoked a number of radical critics such as Harvey3 and Peet4 to argue that a discussion of historical processes and antecedents is vital to the recognition of its dynamic characteristics. In other words, it is only after a consideration of Victorian poverty that we can begin to understand the nature of the poverty associated with industrial capitalism and its perpetuation from one generation to another. Apart from the philanthropic work of Booth5 and Rowntree6 in London and York respectively, the study of Victorian pauperism is limited and much of what has been undertaken is concerned with the nature and the role of the institutions that were involved with poverty .7 In other words there is little information on 'who were the poor in the Victorian city?', 'where did they live?' and 'where did they come from?'. This paper attempts to redress this imbalance by focusing on poverty in Leicester during the Late Victorian period. For the purpose of such a study, Leicester is particularly pertinent since it experienced an exceedingly rapid transformation of its economic base between 1851 and 1891 which resulted in the trebling of its population from 60,642 to 174,624. Such massive changes immediately raises the question as to what effect this had on the 'well-being' of the city's residents; in other words, did it accentuate socio-economic inequality and increase the levels of poverty? Furthermore, did it concentrate poverty among certain socio economic groups within the city? In order to assess these issues this paper will adopt a spatial perspective by focusing on the 'who' and 'where' of urban poverty, but it will also draw attention to the impact of the Poor Law and the life experiences, attitudes and beliefs of those in poverty. In any discussion of Victorian pauperism this cannot be overlooked since the Poor Law principle of 'less eligibility' enforced feelings of dependency and personal failure on the recipients of relief. THE POOR LAW IN LEICESTER As a prelude to a consideration of the way in which these records were used, a brief consideration of the Union itself, must first be undertaken. In the Leicester Poor Law Union there were two Relieving Officers (more commonly referred to as the RO's by the working classes) who were responsible for the administrative units set up after the Act of Union in 1834. As elsewhere, the financing of the Poor Law was derived from the Poor Rate levied by a local Board of Guardians, who were elected by the local ratepayers and were ultimately responsible for the running of the Union. On the other hand, the day-to day responsibilities rested with the workhouse administrators under the auspices of a Master and Matron. The Relieving Officers administered the Out-relief, commonly in the form of a dole and food vouchers and additional necessities, while the Master and Matron Transactions LX 1986 48 N• t Evington ··::::::::::. Built-up ~~it ]J{J Main roads - Railways =-ic: 2 Fever Hospital .:::::::::. 3 Borough Asylum J}:Blaby 4 County Asylum 5 Prison 6 Royal Infirmary 7 N. Evington Poor Law Infirmary 8 Cottage Homes 0 Mile 1 Countesthorpe Fig. I The location of Poor Law Welfare Institutions in Leicester (1905) LATE VICTORIAN PAUPERISM AND THE POOR LAW 49 administered In-door Relief in the Union Workhouse. The changes which took place in the structure of society and the space economy had by the late nineteenth century manifested itself in changes in the Poor Law and welfare services provided in Leicester (Figure 1). For example, in the 1890s there was a spatial separation of Poor Law facilities into specialised institutions. 8 The Board of Guardians' decision in the early 1880s to remove orphans from the uncongenial surroundings of the workhouse, led to the building of the Countesthorpe Cottage Homes complex. The scale of welfare provision in this Home can be measured from the 1891 Census, where 30 staff cared for 99 male and 70 female orphans which compared with 679 inmates in the workhouse, 497 inmates at the Borough Lunatic Asylum (compared to 447 in the County Asylum), 151 people in Leicester prison, 30 cases in the Fever Hospital at Groby and 172 people in the Leicester General Infirmary. A more professional approach to the provision of social welfare facilities characterised this part of the Victorian era, with a total of 227 officers employed in those institutions. The nature of the Poor Law records have been outlined by several researchers9 and, therefore, a detailed rehearsal of their strengths and weaknesses need not be undertaken here. However, this study encountered three difficulties with the use of these records which are worthy of comment. The first involves the definition of poverty. The official concept of pauperism adopted by the Poor Law is based on the idea of 'less eligibility' which differentiated between those who were perceived as 'deserving' of relief outside the jurisdiction of the Workhouse, 'Out-relief, and those who were 'undeserving' and offered the Workhouse, 'In-door relief. Unfortunately such a distinction cannot always be regarded as an accurate assessment of the levels of poverty because the offer of the Workhouse was quite often refused by certain groups of people due to the stigma attached to pauperism, while those who made the distinction (the Relieving Officers) did not necessarily act in the same way. The second difficulty concerns the Leicester Records themselves. Unfortunately no records survive for 'Out-relief for the Leicester Union, apart from occasional abstracts sent to the Local Government Board by the Leicester Union clerk. 10 However, this is partly compensated by the fact that in 1905 a clerk employed by the Union did provide a brief glimpse of its relief practices. The clerk estimated, for example, that for every one person receiving 'In-door relief another four received 'Out-door relief, and this would appear to be quite representative of relief practices of the period. Within Leicester, the absence of Out-relief records does reduce the possibility of assessing local-central relations of the Leicester Board of Guardians and the Local Government Board (responsible for the Poor Law after 1870) during a period immediately following the aftermath of the 'crusade against Out-relief in the 1870s, which has been discussed at length by Williams.11 Nonetheless, recent institutional and behavioural research has in part facilitated a reconstruction of local central relations and major issues in the administration of the Leicester Poor Law Union in the 1880s and 1890s.12 The third difficulty also involves the records, in particular the fact that after 1895 they are weakened by a failure to identify the parish of origin of the inmates and, after 1900, to record the occupations of the inmates. Some of these difficulties can, in part, be overcome by the linking of these records to other sources, such as the census, pool books, directories, newspapers, and the minute books of the Leicester Union.13 Inevitably then, this study has had to focus primarily on the Admission Discharge Registers for the six years between 1890 and 1895. In order to avoid the likely effects of seasonality the months of January, May and September of each year, and the mid week of each of these months, were selected for sampling. This procedure provided 18 independent samples which resulted in 928 cases. For the purpose of this paper Leicester is taken as a case study since the changes it had so experienced by the Late Victorian era were economically and socially traumatic. As previously mentioned, the population of Leicester rose at an almost exponential rate between 1861 and 1891 which seems to have been overwhelmingly dependent upon an in-migration of workers and their families, largely from the surrounding villages and adjacent counties. The processes behind this growth in population has been documented by Pritchard.14 The built-up area of the town expanded dramatically, not only eastwards TABLE 1 - LEICESTER POPULATION, 1891 Leicester 174,624 East Leicester 111,791 Belgrave 11,405 West Humberstone 3,284 North Evington 4,173 St Margaret 92,929 West Leicester 62,833 St Leonard 3,409 All Saints 6,807 Black Friars 2,512 St Martin 1,362 St Nicholas 1,670 Augustine Friars 81 Castle View 136 The Newarke 1,776 St Mary 30,828 Aylestone 5,381 Leicester Abbey 76 Knighton 6,075 Newfoundpool 2,160 SOURCE: British Parliamentary Papers, 1891 Census, Volume 28 but also for the first time to the west of the river Soar (Table 1). The effect of such develop ments were several-fold, including the extension of the administrative area by means of the Leicester Extension Act, 1890. This involved not only the consolidation of outlying areas of growth which acted as satellites for the growing town, such as Knighton, Belgrave, West Humberstone and Aylestone, but also land for further development, particularly that from Barrow-upon-Soar, Billesdon and Blaby districts. A further corollary to this population growth was several changes in the form of its distribution. Even though St. Margaret's parish remained by far the largest parish in 1891, it is surprising that it contained an even greater proportion of the town's residents than it did in 1851. For example, in 1891, St Margaret's parish contained 53% of the town's population, followed by St Mary's with 17.5%.

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