Appendix: General Notes on Poor Law and Organized Charity Data

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Appendix: General Notes on Poor Law and Organized Charity Data Appendix: General Notes on Poor Law and Organized Charity Data I. Poor Law data has in the main been extracted from Parliamentary Accounts and Papers, or from the PLB and LGB Annual Reports and Appendices. For references to individual years: Peter Cockton, Subject Catalogue of the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, 1801-1900, Part 111 (Cambridge, 1988), pp.580-1 and pp.591-8. 2. Poor Law outdoor relief financial data are for the twelve-month period ending Lady Day, 25 March, unless otherwise stated. 3. The tabulated number of outdoor paupers shown in the various tables has generally been calculated from the sum of the one-day count on 1 January that year, plus the number counted on 1 July of the previous year. This assessment is justified by evidence compiled by the LGB in 1881 and 1892, and by the 1905-8 Royal Commission on the Poor Law. Each of these sources indicate that the total number of paupers relieved in a particular twelve-month period can be conservatively assumed to equal twice the average of the succeeding one-day counts (BPP 1908, XCII, p.359). The data from I July of the previous year has been used so that the tabulated number of paupers in any twelve months is more closely equivalent to the financial data. 4. Poor Law costs and numbers are exclusive of lunatics, idiots and the insane in mental institutions. However, these paupers were classified by the LGB as outdoor paupers and their cost had to be borne by their settlement union. In 1871 the number in these mentally disadvantaged categories was nationally around 4.5 per cent of the outdoor pauper total. Over the next two decades there was a marked percentage increase to 9.8 per cent. This growth partly resulted from the crusade against outdoor relief for the mentally sound, and partly because of the increasing tendency to care more professionally for the mentally ill in asylums designed to suit multi-union needs. In cities and towns committed to anti-outdoor relief policies, the proportion of mentally inadequate paupers cared for in this way increased dramatically. For example, at Birmingham the total from the one-day counts for 1.7.89 and 1.1.90 was 1725, compared with the total of 2823 mentally sound outdoor paupers. 5. Data for the provincial COSs, the Liverpool CRS and the Manchester and Salford DPS were compiled from their annual reports, minute books or other documents relating to the particular society. Supplementary information and comments were derived from COS documents and publications including the Charity Organisation Reporter (COR), and the Charity Organisation Review (COReview). 6. (a) In the data from organizing societies, the category tabled as 'not relieved' includes those who were 'ineligible', 'undeserving', 'found not to be requiring relief, 'guilty of providing false information especially an incorrect address', and in the second half of the 1880s those 'not likely to benefit'. 175 176 Appendix (b) Those who were 'referred' include applicants sent with a favourable message to other charitable agencies, committees, private persons, guardians and to other COSs. (c) The 'relieved' category includes those receiving grants, loans, pensions and other forms of assistance debited directly to the local COS accounts. Notes CHAPTER 1 1. Samuel Smiles, Self-Help (1859); Harriet Martineau, Illustrations of Political Economy (9 vols, 1832-4). 2. M. Simey, Charitable Effort in Liverpool (Liverpool, 1951). 3. Thomas Hawksley, The Charities of London and some of the Errors in their Administration (1869), p.l3. 4. Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People of London, 17 volumes (1902); Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty: A Study of Town Life; and J. Rae, Contempormy Socialism (New York, 1884), pp.57-8. 5. T.R. Malthus, An Essay on Population, Vol. II (1914 edn), pp.143 and 177. 6. C.L. Mowat, The Charity Organisation Society, 1869-1913, (1961), pp.10-19; also K. de Schweinitz, England's Road to Social Security (1975 edn), pp.135-8. 7. 17th Annual Report, COS Council (1886), p.l. 8. BPP 1870, 22nd Annual Report, Poor Law Board, Appendix 4 (c123), XXXV.I, p.9. 9. Charity Organisation Reporter, 24 February 1881, p.50. 10. BPP 1870, ibid., p.11 11. Charles Murray, The Emerging British Underclass (1990), p.22 and pp.1-35. 12. Russell D. Roberts, 'A positive Model of Private Charity and Public Transfers', Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 92, No. 1, February-June (1984), p.147. 13. C. Murray, In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government (New York, 1988), p.112. 14. J. Moore, 'Welfare and Dependency', speech to Conservative Constituency Parties Ass., September 1987; cited in R. Jowell, S. Witherspoon and L. Brook (eds), British Social Attitudes, 7th Report (Aidershot, 1990), p.lO. 15. C. Murray (1988), op. cit., pp.260 and 289. 16. Michael B. Katz, ln the Shadow of the Poorhouse (New York, 1986), p.280. 17. They include: C.B.P. Bosanquet, The History and Mode of Operation of the Charity Organisation Society (1874); T. Hawksley, Objections to 'The History' of the Society (1874); H. Bosanquet, Social Work in London 1869-1912: A History of the COS (1914); C.L. Mowat, The Charity Organisation Society, 1869-1913: Its Ideas and Work (1961); D. Owen English Philanthropy, 1660-1960 (1965), pp.211-46; K. de Schweinitz, England's Road to Social Security (South Brunswick, 1975), pp.140-53; M. Rooff,A Hundred Years of Family Welfare (1972), pp.22-63; A.F. Young and E.T. Ashton, British Social Work in the Nineteenth Century (1956), pp.92-114; K. Woodroofe, From Charity to Social Work (1968), pp.25-55; Judith Fido, 'The COS and Social Casework in London, 1869-1900', A.P. Donajgrodzki (ed.) Social Control in Nineteenth Century Britain (1977), pp.207-30. 18. H. Bosanquet, op. cit., p.392. 177 178 Notes 19. COR, 26 May 1881, p.l24. 20. Jose Harris, 'Political thought and the Welfare State: ... ',Past and Present, 135 (May 1992), p.l21. 21. David Owen, op. cit., p.215. 22. Attributed to G.V. Rimlinger in foreword to Chapter 6: Andrew Vincent and Raymond Plant, Philosophy, Politics, and Citizenship (Oxford 197 4 ), p.94. 23. C.L. Mowat, op. cit., p.91 et seq. 24. A.F. Young and E.T. Ashton, op. cit., p.lOl. 25. Jose Harris, Unemployment and Politics (Oxford 1972), p.l 05. 26. A. W. Vincent, 'The Poor Law Reports of 1909 and the social theory of the Charity Organisation Society', Victorian Studies, 27 (1983-4), p.347. 27. Christopher Harvie, The Lights of Liberalism (1976), pp.l95~; and A.F. Young and E.T. Ashton, op. cit., p.lOl. 28. K. Woodroofe, op. cit., p.39. 29. First AR, LGB, Appendix 20, BPP 1872. (c516), XXVIII. pp.63-8. 30. W. Hanna, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D. D., 4 Vols (Edinburgh 1849-52); A. Doyle,'The Poor Law System of Elberfeld', Poor Laws in Foreign Countries, Reports by H.M Sec. of State for Foreign Affairs, BPP 1875 (cl255), LXV.!; Doyle's paper also published in: BPP 1872 (c516), XXVIII, Appendix 35, pp.244-65. 31. 'Why is it wrong to Supplement Outdoor Relief?', COS Occasional Paper No. 31 (1893), p.l. 32. For example, Francis Peek, The Uncharitableness of Inadequate Relief, COS pamphlet dated 20 May 1879, p.l; and Sophia Lonsdale, The Evils of a Lax System of Outdoor Relief, COS pamphlet dated 30 Aprill895, p.4. 33. Francis Peek, ibid., p.IO 34. A.J. Taylor Laissez-faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth-century Britain (Basingstoke, 1988 reprint), pp.50-l. 35. W.L. Bum, The Age of Equipoise ( 1964), pp.22~ and pp.289-91. 36. Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism, (Oxford, 1878); Helen M. Lynd, England in the Eighteen Eighties (1968), pp.237-98; Henrietta Barnett, Canon Barnett: His Life, His Work, His Friends (1919); and Gillian Darley, Octavia Hill ( 1990), p.l28. CHAPTER2 1. The Poor Law Report of 1834, re-published with introduction by S.G. and E.O.A. Checkland (1974), p.334. 2. W. Chance, The Better Administration of the Poor Law, Charity Organisation Series (1895), p.l. 3. The Poor Law Report of 1834, op. cit., p.429. 4. K. de Schweinitz, England's Road to Social Security (South Brunswick, 1975 edn), p.131. 5. A. Digby, The Poor Law in Nineteenth-century England and Wales (1982), p.27. 6. The Poor Law Report of 1834, op. cit., pp.475-6. 7. S. and B. Webb, English Poor Law History, Part II (1929), p.419. Notes 179 8. A. Digby (1982), op. cit., p.27. 9. D. Ashforth, 'Settlement and n:moval in Urban Areas: Bradford 1834-1871 ',in M.E. Rose (ed.), The Poor and the City: The English Poor Law and Its Urban Context 1834-I9I4 (Leicester, 1985), pp.61-2. 10. BPP 1909, Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and the Relief of Distress, p.83 (c4499), XXXVII. 11. K.D.M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor (1987), p. 72. 12. Second Annual Report, Poor Law Commissioners, BPP 1836 (c595), XXIX, p.43. 13. 6th AR, Poor Law Commissioners, BPP 1840 (c245), XVII, pp.16-18. 14. Report of the Royal Commission ... (1909), op. cit., p.141. 15. Letters of the Poor Law Commissioners Relative to the Transaction of Business of the Commission (1847), cited inK. de Schweinitz, op. cit., p.131. 16. Report of the Royal Commission ... (1909), op. cit., p.142. 17. M.E. Rose, 'The Allowance System under the New Poor Law', Economic Hist01y Review, 2nd Series, Vol.XIX (1966), p.610.
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