Poor Relief- pre-1834

 Poor Law Act 1601- placed responsibility for dealing with poverty onto the local parishes, people having to
go back to the parishes of their birth to receive this support.
 Due to the growth in population (due to industrialisation) the system needed to be reformed because of
the increasing pressure on the system, and the process of urbanisation which meant that some parishes
shouldered a far great financial burden for poverty than the agrarian parishes.
 Following the 1662 Act of Settlement, membership of a parish was formalised as either being born there,
being resident there for a year and a day, having moved there to take up an apprenticeship or for a wife’s
spouse to have been born there.
 In 1723 it was established that orphans and the homeless could enter poorhouses where they would
receive relief.
 However, the system was still highly reliant on the parochial employment relations, which meant that the
local authorities would have understood the individual claimants on a personal level.
 This was naturally a system enjoyed by the poor, but led to a haphazard national response.
 By 1776 there were more than 2000 such institutions that resembled a model workhouse, each containing
between 20 and 50 inmates.
 However they were expensive to run and in 1782 it was decreed that only orphaned children who
physically couldn't work because of age, sickness or infirmity were allowed admittance.
 This became known as the ‘Gilbert’s Act’ which dictated that all able-bodied paupers had to remain on the
streets to look after themselves.

The Effectiveness of poor relief

 The Elizabethan Poor Relief system was based upon a knowledge of the individuals who required
assistance, as it was highly localised, and therefore the authorities would understand the individual
circumstances of the claimant, and the nature of the assistance most suited for them.
 However, as society became increasingly anonymous and market relations supplanted personal relations
due to industrialisation, the system became impractical, and therefore the government saw the creation of
the workhouse as a means also of gathering information about the poor population. The workhouse “test”
was a means of determining what percentage of the population were truly needy, as they would enter the
workhouse, and how many were not as they would apply for poor relief but refuse entry to the workhouse.
 Thus the new poor law provided a mechanism that was a substitute for direct information on the poor.
 The efficacy was limited due to the inconsistent manner in which they operated- with each parish running
different systems, there was no co-ordinated country-wide response, thus reducing the overall efficiency.
 Between the original passage of the Poor Law in 1601 and 1801, the population doubled to 9 million.
 This rapid population growth magnified the inefficiency of the poor law system.
 Employment opportunities also declined with industrialisation as machines replaced the labour force.
(Although machines improved job opportunities in towns, the seasonal-dependent work in rural areas was
further decimated by the introduction of agrarian machines, such as Meikle’s 1789 threshing machine).
 The wars with France additionally placed pressure upon a struggling system due to increased living costs.
 Due to the war, foreign alternatives for items such as bread were not able to be imported, and thus market
forces enabled the price of bread to rise, which highlighted the inadequacies of the system.
 This demonstrates how those claiming relief were often whole families, and therefore outdoor relief in
order to purchase bread would often be more effective than placing an entire family in a workhouse.
 Even with the conclusion of the war, this issue was not resolved as trade was slow to establish itself once
again, government war contracts came to an end and therefore the British economy entered a depression.
 Furthermore, thousands of returning soldiers required employment, and under these conditions, poor
relief applicants were numerous and the gov’t spent approx. £6.4 million between 1814-18 on this relief.
 Not only was it inefficient, but expensive, and the predominately middle class ratepayers who assumed this
financial burden were particularly dissatisfied as it appeared one problem elicited the other; the high prices
due to the passage of the Corn Law were exacerbated by the lack of employment opportunities.
 The middle class discontent on top of the poor’s dissatisfaction with the inadequate provision led to rioting
such as the “Swing Riots” during 1830.
 In addition, the widely adopted Speenhamland system of 1795 that was tied to the price of bread placed
huge pressure on the funds available and many parishes which had adopted this system were forced to
introduce an additional rate - anchoring those having to pay this.
 It’s interesting that they were most prevalent in parishes using Speenhamland systems, which is perhaps
due to the fact that farmers reduced nominal wages to below the price of bread when the system was
introduced, believing the government would then make up the difference.
 Therefore when further cuts and employment was reduced the impact was felt much more acutely in
these parishes, and it can perhaps be suggested that this government policy contributed in part to the fall
in wages and lack of meaningful employment, although it would be too simplistic to suggest that one
informed the other (the poor relief system as informing the rise in poverty and claimants).

Urban Poor Relief

 Between 1802 and 1803, 10% of the northern population received relief whereas in the South it was 23%.
In urban areas wages were mostly very low, normally under 12 shillings per week.
 The tenability of such wages for such a significant proportion of the urban population meant that during
periods of economic decline when wages were either reduced or the workforce temporarily unemployed,
even the subtle shifts sent concentrated numbers of people into the position of applying for relief.
 Under these circumstances, the poor relied system could not sustain such demand, and then riots would
once again reappear.
 In response to riots and growing pressure the government set up the Royal Commission in February 1832
to investigate the existing system and to establish whether there was a need for change.
 Their methods, overseen by Edwin Chadwick and Nassau Senior, were scientific in nature, as they used
questionnaires send out to 15,000 parishes (although only 10% responded).
 This said, there were many complaints about this strategy, as it was claimed that many questions were
phrased awkwardly, and also that Senior began writing the report before the data had been collected.
 The findings of the report were appealing to the government, as it suggested that the greatest problems
were the lack of uniformity and the ease with which it could be exploited by unscrupulous persons.
 Therefore, it concluded the following radical changes to be made, to create a more centralised and
punishing system:
 1) Removal of outdoor relief altogether
 2) The use of more punishing workhouses to act as a deterrent for those seeking relief
 3) The grouping of parishes together so that they could manage these workhouses more effectively
 4) The creation of a central board to implement and oversee the new system.

Attitudes towards the poor

 The Royal Commission is a useful gauge to determine British feeling towards the poor, as its
recommendations suggest a cynicism towards the needy rather than a paternalistic concern.
 Two distinct viewpoints: fatalistic (which acknowledge that poverty in a society is unavoidable and
therefore a cross to bear) and moralistic (maintained that poverty resulted from weakness of character).
 The fatalistic view involved a sense of pity while the second was imbued with a greater sense of disgust,
which placed blame for the conditions of the poor on the poor themselves.
 This disassociation with the poor and general cynicism is, in part, a product of the rapid prosperity that
industrialisation had ushered in for many, and therein created a fear of its loss.
 Therefore, those who had made their fortunes sought to justify causes for poverty that were inapplicable
to themselves, in an attempt to console themselves that they would not lose their wealth.
 These views were perhaps been influenced by previous beliefs that the poor could be categorised into two
groups: ‘The deserving poor’ who were unable to help themselves - the sick, elderly, orphans, etc and the
‘undeserving poor’ who were the able-bodied men and women who simply could not or (as was the
general conception) would not find work for themselves.
 ‘the undeserving’ were believed to be poor due to weakness of character.
 For those deserving of help they were often found room in the poor house, while those less deserving were
forced to look after themselves, although outdoor relief was provided so they would not starve.
 In a last endeavour preceding the Royal Commission, the Government passed the Poor Employment Act in
1817 which made public money available to employ able-bodied paupers on public works such as road
building.
 It is interesting that when the workhouse system was far more expensive per pauper than the outdoor
relief system, and thus the only way to reduce total financial costs was to decrease the number of people
dependent upon government welfare, which suggests that the government believed most of the poor
were, in fact, not needy.
 This is perhaps a product of the prosperity enjoyed by both the middle and upper classes during the 19 th
century, which led the government to believe that poverty is self-inflicted, and all people had the
opportunity for the middle-class financial ascension.
 It was certainly the belief of Chadwick and Senior that the number of paupers at any one time reflected the
generosity of relief, rather than the incidence of poverty.
 Furthermore, society did not have an issue with the existence of poverty itself, as it was regarded as a
useful incentive to encourage individual’s to push themselves, however the existence of pauperism was
difference as it encouraged a culture of dependence that promoted indolence, and was, by contrast, a
social evil.
 This explains the mixed attitudes, as those who could not provide for themselves were examples of
genuine poverty which provided the necessary example to others, wheareas the ‘undeserving poor’ were
the social menace that needed to be challenged.

Ideological Pressures
 The cynical attitudes towards the poor were further justified by the intellectual support of individuals such
as Thomas Malthus (academic) and Joseph Townsend (physician and vicar), who both characterised the
moralistic attitude.
 Both Townsend and Malthus believed that a portion of society should suffer in poverty for the benefit of
the rest of the population.
 Townsend actually expressed his contempt for the poor relief system in his 1786 essay ‘Dissertation on the
Poor Laws’, in which he asserted that the system, by ameliorating the hardships of poverty, denied the full
extent of the lessons that poverty provided.
 Thomas Malthus’ work on population growth raised questions about the provisions of poor relief and
reflected his view that there should be no such provision at all.
 Argued that population had an inbuilt tendency to rise and outstrip all available food supplies (his
‘Malthusian catastrophe’). However, he did also claim that there were natural remedies for this
predicament, but which the provision of poor relief inhibited as it added an artificial barrier its resolution.
 He explained this by claiming that the Poor Law made the situation worse because the poor would have
more and more children so they could claim more and more relief.
 If the Poor Law were to be abolished, the poor would keep their families small because there would be no
financial advantage in them having lots of children- wages would rise as poor rate would no longer be
levied and employers could afford to pay more (lower taxes), meaning everyone would prosper.
 His views were highly influential, even in biological fields as it had an effect upon the theory of evolution.
 Furthermore, both Townsend’s and Malthus’s views prospered as industrialisation continued apace and
employment opportunities continued to rise, thus suggesting that pauperism was self-induced out of a
desire to live off the generosity of others.
 These attitudes were later embodied within the ‘New Poor Law’ in 1834.
 The growth in population exacerbated the problem and drew diverse opinion as to its management.
 Three approaches achieved prominence as potential solutions:
 1) Maintenance of the current system (which was adopted by humanitarians and paternalistic Tories who
believed in a human imperative and social responsibility to provide care for the less fortunate, and a fear of
greater dissatisfaction amongst the people).
 2) Small changes to the system (those who adopted this approach were motivated by similar reasons to
those above, but had a greater concern for the spiralling costs, which warranted some small changes).
 3) A radical overhaul of the system (broadly made up of Whigs, this group believed the poor relief system
to be outdate and ineffective within industrialising Britain).
 Groups one and two exemplified the moralistic attitude, which was the traditional perspective that had
promoted the concept of poor relief in earlier centuries (moral obligation to help the poor).
 The greatest pressure, however, came from the third group, who were responding the growing influence
of the free market.
 They adopted the arguments of economist Davide Ricardo, whose ‘wage fund theory’ saw pauperism as
the result of idleness, and asserted that the money spent on poor relief by the employer paying the Poor
Rate as reducing the amount of money that they would be able to pay their employees.
 In this analysis, the poor were taking from those who were willing to work, i.e. damaging the prosperity of
both workers and the businesses they worked for.
 Thus, there were twin costs to poor relief; the real expenditure and also the long term potential cost to
businesses.
 In the worsening economic climate of the 1830s, the merits of this argument were readily accepted by the
middle and upper classes, and thus the Royal Commission was established with the express purpose of
establishing a motive for change.

Thomas Paine and Robert Owen:

 There was also vocalisation of more progressive opinions, in the figures of Thomas Paine and Robert Owen.
 Paine’s dissemination of his radical political beliefs in his work ‘Rights of Man’ (1791) proposed that a
government should plan for the welfare of its people and also laid out a policy for achieving this, such as a
pension provision for those over 50 and child benefits in the form of £4 per year for each child under 14,
for 250,000 destitute families.
 Paine felt that it was not the fault of people themselves but rather the failure of government to support
them adequately.
 Owen did not place responsibility with the government, but instead promoted the idea that people would
help themselves if given the chance, they simply needed the opportunity.
 He believed that character was built through a person’s circumstances (which would mean that the
fatalistic attitude is given credence, as it character is in a symbiotic relationship with poverty, in that being
poor leads people to be lazy, and then cannot raise themselves out of poverty).
 The difference is that Owen believed that character could be changed, and therefore there is external
responsibility for improving the level of poverty).
 To consolidate this theory, Owen set up model communities where people were given the chance of self-
improvement, such as his model factory in New Lanark (Scotland) which provided education and good
working conditions.
 He challenged the dominant notion of indolence in his suggestion that people, if given the chance, would
seek to improve themselves.
 His co-operative practices challenged poverty and encouraged people to build themselves better futures,
and inspired a raft of co-operative movements, but which were ignored by the government, which
preferred the ideas of Townsend and Malthus.
 Thus, the real impact can only be observed from individual social progressives, such as Sir Titus Salt who
set up his own model community in Saltaire in 1848, but such influence was generally an isolated affair as
the dominant ideology lay with more conservative thinkers.
 This was due to the fact that the attitudes of Malthus and Townsend were more in line with the laissez-
faireism that the government preferred.

Utilitarianism – Jeremy Bentham

 Jeremy Bentham proposition that human nature was only motivated by pleasure and pain gained
prominence in the early 19th century was increasingly popular with the middle class.
 On this foundation, Bentham therefore maintained that the government should act to promote the
‘greatest happiness for the greatest number’, and there ought to be an in-depth investigation into the
needs of the poor with reference to his happiness principle that he first expounded in 1789.
 This led Bentham to propose the establishment of a National Charity Company in 1796, which would be
entirely entrusted with the responsibility of the country’s poor.
 Workhouses would be set up using the panopticon prison model (a single guard would watch the entire
prison without the inmates knowing they’re being watched) and the company would be able to bring in
anyone who was unable to prove their ability to look after themselves.
 After admittance, the workhouse inmates would be put to work to pay for their maintenance and also
provide a profit for shareholder.
 (This naturally would appeal to the free market ideology as it places responsibility with private operations).
 The assistance provided by this company would not be more than subsistence level provision, in order to
provide motivation for poor individuals to improve themselves.
 The harsh approach was rationalised by working on the principle that prevention of starvation is essential
to secure happiness for everyone.
 This system would further contribute to Bentham’s utilitarianism by producing infrastructure to the benefit
of all society, and also addresses the financial cost concerns of the existing poor relief system.
 This view later manifested itself into the centralised National Charity Company proposal (and the ‘industry
houses’) that offered a clear blueprint for the workhouses from 1834.
 The real influence of Bentham’s philosophy lay in the simple enumeration of need that it was founded on,
and gained popularity due to the simplicity of the principle that it was founded on (hedonic calculus).
 This analysis formed the basis of the Poor Law amendment drive which took place after 1815 and added
intellectual weight to the findings of the royal commission.
 Edwin Chadwick later capitalised upon Bentham’s ideas, and believed able-bodied poor should be kept in
workhouses in conditions worse than those of the poorest free labourer outside, so only the genuinely
desperate would ask for relief.
 This, with a centralised, controlled authority would reduce the poor rate, giving relief only to the genuinely
needy and ensure that the economy flourished by allowing wages and prices to find their true levels.

Financial Pressure
 During the Napoleonic Wars, poor relief became extremely costly, and even after peace had been
established, costs continued to climb, on average rising by 62% from 1802-3 to 1832-3.
 This then added to the misery the poorer members of society faced due to ending military contracts (which
had a serious detrimental impact upon manufacturing) as well as returning unemployed soldiers.
 At the time, contemporaries believed these high costs were due to abuses of the system, and that relief
ended up in the pockets of shopkeepers and publicans, which suggests that part of the attitude towards
the poor was founded upon a distrust of the middle class.
 The cost of the old poor law eventually reached 2% of GNP and between 1815 and 1833 it did not dip
below £5.7 million.
 This became an issue as this cost was financed by ratepayers who typically voted in general elections, and
therefore they became increasingly vocal about the need to address the problem of pauperism.
 Their arguments were given credibility by David Ricardo’s ‘wage fund theory’ which appealed to the middle
classes.
 While poor relief expenditure declined after 1824 due to a rise in prosperity, so the cost per head was 9s
2d compared to 11s 7d between 1819 and 1823.
 However, the overall cost was rising as claimant numbers increased due to the rise in low paid workers due
to industrialisation.
 The shift towards a factory system created a dense working population of poorly paid individuals who
could not afford to insulate themselves from economic downturns.
 As such, they were at the mercy of the economy, and when trade declined, vast numbers of workers were
laid off, thus highlighting the tenuity of their situation, and the poor rate was their only source of support.
 A similar issue existed within agriculture, but worse as there were even fewer employment opportunities
and they were increasingly replaced by machines.
 These problems only served to reinforce the critical opinion of the old poor law, and therefore due to its
limitations, and the findings of the Royal Commission, the government adopted many of Chadwick and
Senior’s recommendations which became known as the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act.
 It outlined a more punitive approach to relief and reflected the belief that pauperism was a social evil.
 The provisions of the new poor law included setting up a central authority (the Poor Law Commission) to
oversee the new legislation, grouping parishes together and establishing a cluster workhouse within each
one to be the main source of relief.
 The conditions within the workhouses were intended to be worse than the conditions of the poorest
independent labourer, which was the principle of ‘less eligibility’, combined with discouraging outdorr
relief for the able-bodied poor.
 Less eligibility is the terms applied to the government concept of deliberately making relief so harsh so that
only the most destitute and those who truly need it will apply for it.
 Ultimately its central feature was the concentrated use of workhouses (or poorhouses) although it did not
specify how they were to be fully utilised, and the specific guidelines for adoption were left up to the Poor
Law Commission, which was also established by the same Act.
 The 15,000 English parishes were grouped together into 600 Poor Law Unions, which suggests
organisational cohesion.

The workhouse regime

 Workhouses had been in existence prior to 1834 but under the 1872 Gilbert Act they were only to house
those unable to take care of themselves.
 However, under the new legislation they were to become the principle means by which to relieve poverty.
 This was rationalised by the ‘indolence’ view of pauperism which had gained prominence during the early
decades of the 19th century.
 It was this view that led people to believe that allowance systems such as the Speenhamland system were
too easy to exploit, particularly in this case by rewarding larger families.
 Under the new provisions, claimants would be denied all outdoor relief and would instead be offered entry
to the workhouse, which became known as the ‘workhouse test’, which worked on the idea of deterrence.
 It was believed that this test would significantly reduce the number of people reliant on poor relief, and
thus reduce the burden upon ratepayers.
 In order to implement this policy the government set up a Poor Law Commission established to oversee
the construction and operation of the new system.
 In this it organised 15,000 parishes into 600 larger unions so as to allow for larger workhouses to be built.
 It also appointed local men as governors of these unions, called ‘guardians of the Poor Law’ and were
responsible for finding the funds to build the workhouse, as responsibility for the paupers was still left with
the parish under the Amendment Act.
 Funding was still raised by the Poor Rate, and by 1839 had instituted the building of 350 workhouses.
 Construction was extremely expensive, e.g. the 1835 Banbury workhouse, which housed 300 people cost
£6,200 to build.
 This meant that guardians attempted to keep running costs as low as possible, and furnishings were
minimal, with only bare essentials and no comforts. Although this had financial motivations, this suited the
hard-line policy to maintain the principle of ‘less eligibility’.
 Inmates worked 10 hours a day, only taking time out for meals and prayers, and the work very much
depended on the workhouse, and what the inmates were physically able to do.
 For example, ‘The Spike’ in Guildford, inmate were forced to break stones for road building, and in the
Newbury workhouse in Berkshire inmates were made to operate the various manufacture processes
involved in the manufacture of textiles.
 Furthermore, due to the moral drive of the workhouses, items such as beer, snuff and tobacco were
banned in Southwell under the direction of Reverend Thomas Beecher.
 In return for work, inmates would receive a basic diet of bread, cheese, gruel and water as well as a bed.
 They were also dressed in uniform, gender separated and sometimes were distinguished between the
deserving and the undeserving poor.
 Even if families entered together, they would not see each other until they left.
 Even though it was viewed as a last resort, people would still flood into the houses due to cold winters and
fluctuating economic conditions, which left them with no choice.
 This demonstrated that the government extremely underestimated the numbers of the truly needy, and
therefore their financial calculations were significantly off.
 In 1860, it has been estimated that outdoor relief cost £2.50 to £5.50 per pauper per annum, whereas
indoor relief average between £5.50 to £20 per pauper per annum.
 Even in 1840, it has been estimated that indoor relief cost between 1.7 and 3.4 times more than outdoor.

The continuation of outdoor relief

 Even though outdoor relief was effectively banned, in practice it still existed, as the delivery of relief
remained substantially at the discretion of the locally appointed guardians, and thus the system was not as
centralised and uniformly distributed as the government had intended.
 The loyalty these officials felt towards claimants they likely knew meant that outdoor relief was often
granted, and also the financial cost as previously referenced (which the guardians were responsible for and
therefore if the costs were too high they could be reprimanded).
 By 1862 it would cost 4s 8d to keep a pauper in the workhouse, and only 2s 3d to maintain outdoor relief.
 Furthermore, many northern guardian resisted investing in the workhouses as the unemployment in these
rapidly industrialising towns was cyclical and therefore institutions were unsuited to northern poverty.
 Building a workhouse for £6,200 that would be empty for half the year is nonsensical.
 Similar resistance occurred also in the rural areas because of the consistent vulnerability of employment
opportunities, due to the financial argument, and George Boyes (an economic historian) has estimated that
the cost of indoor relief was between 50 and 100% more expensive than outdoor provision.
 Therefore despite the legal objections, farmers would often provide some form of short-term employment
rather than paying for the same individual to remain in the workhouse.
 Due to this divisive attitude that was prevalent throughout the country, and also from those who were
imagined to support the measure (the guardians of the Poor Law), the success wanted by its advocates was
not achieved.
 It also did not resolve the issue of pauperism as it saw no marked reduction in the immediate term.
 The system was not watertight, and the existence of opposition meant there were lots of loopholes.
 The opposition was so significant in Lancashire and Yorkshire that by 1838 the Poor Law Commission had
sanctioned the use of traditional methods should the need arise.
 H. Longley’s study of the Poor Law Commission in 1876 suggested that if those entrusted with upholding
the law did not wholly support it, then it would struggle to achieve its intended goal.

Opposition to the Poor Law

 While the Amendment Act passed through parliament without friction, the Act itself was a product of
ideological prejudice, in that it ignored some significant criticisms regarding the financial implications of
building such large-scale infrastructure, and promoted a message that antagonised people who believed
that the system was excessively severe and did not recognise the problem it sought to resolve.
 There was internal opposition from the Tories due to a sense of partisanship as the Whigs were the ones
who passed the Act, and also to the centralised nature of this system, which meant that new legislation
from the Boards of Guardians which they felt undermined the authority of local magistrates.
 The Times openly proclaimed their opposition to the Act publicly on 30 April 1834 and ran an ongoing
debate on the legislation with the Morning Chronicle.
 Furthermore, despite high-profile supporters such as Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington, most Tories
believed that there shouldn’t be that level of government intervention.
 They also believed this system punished and ignored the ‘poor unfortunates’ who had not had the same
advantages as the best in society, which did not coincide with the paternalistic sense of morality that had
led to the attempt to nationalise the Speenhamland system in 1796.
 William Cobbett claimed the act removed the right to relief by making the claimants for it seem like
criminals, and that the act illustrated that those in power had little regard for the poorest in society.
 The poor themselves believed that the government wanted to save money rather than offering help, they
strongly opposed it initially in rural areas such as East Anglia where there were a series of riots in 1835.
 There was a particularly violent riot in Bedfordshire in May 1835 where 300-500 people demanded ‘money
or blood’ and attacked officials in the area.
 It resulted in the ‘Riot Act’ being read an four people being arrested, and similar riots occurred across the
country in East Kent when the parish workhouse was attacked by a mob of 200 in December.
 While disaffection with the New Poor Law was evident, the southern opposition had little significant effect,
and by 1836 the workhouse system was generally well established in the South.
 This was due to the lack of a unified aim and poor organisation within the riots that took place, as although
the various riots shared a sympathy or the Old Poor Law, it had varied between the rioting areas and thus
what they sought to re-establish greatly differed.
 Thus the riots were simply an emotive reaction to change, which evaporated in the face of strong
authority.
 However, the north weren’t as submissive as the south, and their opposition was organised far better.
 The north saw the new system as irrelevant as their problems were very different from those of the
agricultural south.
 The cyclical unemployment experienced in the North was dealt with sufficiently by the existing outdoor
relief system (brief situations of high unemployment rendered the permanence of the workhouse system
entirely unsuitable for the issues faced by the Unions in the North).
 The opposition was coordinated mostly by Michael Sadler and Richard Oastler, who had both been
prominent in campaign for factory reform in the 1830s.
 Their experience gave the northern opposition a more organised means of challenge, which significantly
delayed implementation.
 In West Riding the act was effectively attacked through emotive public speeches and printed articles.
 The campaigns used a lot of propaganda to push for opposition against the new poor system, an extreme
example of which was the banned pamphlet - the ‘Book of Murder’ which suggested the system was
commissioning infanticide to reduce the cost of poor relief, and circulated in the late 1830s.
 While examples like this were entirely fictitious, these methods became very effective once a mass
employment set in due to a trade depression in 1837.
 There were riots in Bradford during in 1837 and in Dewsbury and Todmorden in 1838, and following this,
Lord John Russell urged the commission to come to a compromise.
 The reason northern opposition was seen as threatening (more so than Southern opposition) because the
middle and working classes were allied.
 The working class had evident motives, but the middle class felt that the highly interventionist act was an
encroachment on their authority.
 At Huddersfield they refused to appoint an administrator for the new amalgamated union of parishes I
opposition the system, and even the local magistrate would not intervene to force appointment.
 This was in spite of strong pressure from Edwin Chadwick, the secretary of the Poor Law Commission, and
no clerk was every appointed.
 Due to such resistance, the Poor Law Commission acknowledged the independence of local guardians to
make situations relative to their own area and circumstances in 1838, by allowing the board of guardians
to give outdoor relief to the able bodied.
 This meant that the amalgamated parishes of Lancashire and West Riding were able to never enforce the
workhouse test and grant outdoor relief even in several cases of inadequate wages being earned.
 After this, the anti-poor law movement began to fracture, as the ‘sting’ of the law (the prohibition of
outdoor relief) had been removed, and new movements such as Chartism arrived in 1839, and middle class
complaints had been resolved.
 Furthermore, the intractability of the Poor Law Commission, driven by its sense of moral right maintained
the necessary momentum to impose changes, which were eventually accepted by the masses.
 The final product was not what had been originally envisioned, but was still less accommodating for the
undeserving poor, even though outdoor relief remained popular and was most commonly used throughout
the century.

The Andover Workhouse scandal

 The effectiveness of the workhouse model demanded that the regime created a deliberately harsh
environment, in order to serve as a deterrent, however some institutions overstepped themselves in their
zealous endeavour to reform the poor.
 However, this only produced fuel for campaigners seeking a more humanitarian approach.
 The Andover workhouse was established in 1836 and gained national attention in 1845 for the way Colin
McDougal (former sergeant-major) was running the workhouse, and the darker side of the new regime was
exposed.
 The workhouse was run like a prison camp between McDougal and his wife, who emphasised minimal
expenditure through starvation, long gruelling hours of crushing bones for fertiliser and a general
atmosphere as if the inmate had committed a crime.
 Talking between spouses would result in isolation in purpose-built cells, and the humiliation was further
reinforced by inmates being forced to eat with their fingers.
 The food restriction was so great that costs were very low, and even special occasion luxuries such as
Christmas and Victoria’s coronation were withheld, but meaning that the Board of Guardians were happy
as the Poor Rate could be kept to a minimum.
 Such was the cruelty in the workhouse that between 1837 and 1846, 61 paupers were sent to prison
having deliberately committed offences to escape the institution.
 The scandal itself came from the conditions and the starvation diet, inmates had to supplement their meals
by eating rotten meat off of the animal bones, or failing that, cracking them open to suck out the bone
marrow.
 Fights would even break out over bones with greater amounts of meat left on them.
 During 1844-5 rumours surrounding these conditions circulated, but were dismissed by the guardians who
simply voted to ban bone crushing in hot weather, demonstrating the little concern those in authority took
over those in the workhouse.
 The events were finally reported when a local farmer and poor law guardian himself (Hugh Mundy) took
their concerns to the local MP (Thomas Wakely).
 On the 1 August, Wakely asked the home secretary to verify the rumours, which then led to a full
investigation undertaken by assistant Poor Law commissioner Henry Parker.
 The conclusion found not only that the allegations were true, but that many were worse than thought.
 The findings caused public outcry and the poor law commission was attacked by the public, press and
parliament for failing to supervise its institutions and allowing such horrors to occur.

Impact of the Andover Scandal

 The Andover Scandal was not an isolated incident, but generated significant criticism, including John
Walter, a write for The Times who covered the scandal in great detail.
 The exposed scandal led to the dissolution of the Poor Law Commission in 1847 and replaced by the Poor
Law Board, which stopped the broadly independent administration of relief.
 It was brought under government control, as several cabinet ministers sat as members of the Board, and
the president was also a MP.
 This also marked a shift in the attitude towards poverty, and there was a growing sense of social
responsibility once again after the Andover Scandal and generated the realisation that deterrence is not
the best method to resolve pauperism.
 However, Andover was not the seminal moment in this shift, as this social responsibility had endured
throughout in some areas of society, particularly in non-conformist churches.
 It also didn’t end the use of workhouses, as they remained a central provision of poor relief, as between
1851 and 1866 a further 100 were built, to augment the 402 that had been built after 1834.
 Contempt still existed towards those unwilling to help themselves in Victorian society, as the prosperity
that had been created meant that most middle class individuals lost touch with their working class origins.
 Because the middle class had been accepted by the upper echelons of society and had been granted the
vote in 1832, and therefore sense of conservatism existed in the class to secure its newfound decision.
 It can therefore be argued that the drift towards social responsiveness was motivated by a desire to secure
middle-class interests, rather than a desire to improve the poor.
 After 1834, society essentially ignored the issue of poverty as paupers were simply forced into workhouses
were the problem could be overlooked.
 However, in the wake of the scandals, the issue was once again brought under investigation and the
workhouse conditions were tempered.
 After 1846 better attention was applied to the system and workhouse conditions, although it was a slow
process, and scandals such as Huddersfield in 1848 are a reminder that a vigilant eye was still needed.
 Groups such as the ‘Workhouse Visiting Society’, established in 1859, undertook the task of making
unofficial checks on workhouses, as an aspect of their broader purpose of distributing extra food and
words of encouragement to those inside them.
 The information this group collected was then used to protest for better treatment of the sick and elderly.

The growth of charity

 An aspect of the move towards social responsibility was the growth of private enterprises, organised by the
middle classes, on behalf of the poor.
 In part this was due to the fears of instability if the conditions of the poor worsened, however they were
also imbued with a well-meaning attitude and Christian philosophy that prosperity can sometimes foster.
 Middle classes became far more conscious of the poor and started many Christian-led philanthropic
movements with a more well-meaning attitude to help the poor.
 The activities centred on the organisation of charity work with the intention of investigating the needs of
those suffering in poverty, and alleviating the greater discomforts of poverty by supplementing relief.
 The formal end to outdoor relief for able-bodied men in 1844 also triggered the development of charity
work and other philanthropic activities.
 In 1852, a further order (the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order) was passed that even limited the outdoor
relief available to the sick or infirm, as the original opposition that had existed had died down.
 However, the government had miscalculated, and protest once again arose when the Boards of Guardians
felt that their discretionary powers had been infringed on by the state, and was later rescinded.
 The Victorian belief that poverty and pauperism was the result of inherent flaws of character remained
prominent, however in the 1850s individual’s took a more proactive approach rather than punitive.
 Another potent force behind the rise in charity work was that it presented an opportunity for affluent
women to become involved in public affairs.
 The roles undertaken by the women on behalf of the poor later promoted their own campaign for greater
recognition in the late 19th century and contributed to their political acceptance in 1918.
 Angela Burdett-Coutts was a leading figure in this movement, who took a particular interest in raising the
prospects of pauper children by finding them employment in the military.
 In 1847 she founded Urania cottage with Charles Dickens which acted as a hostel for poor women who had
turned to prostitution, and also funded educational projects to teach children employable skills.
 Burdett-Coutts was not an isolated case, and remains representative of private charitable forces.
 Much charity work also featured the collection of statistics by organisations such as the Workhouse Visiting
Society who collected information on the experiences of the poor.
 This allowed for a more formal approach for private relief to be organised, and with solid information,
blanket approaches motivate by a ‘do-gooder’ mentality could be rejected.
 Through investigations it was found that the young and elderly featured most highly in the workhouses,
leading to a more concerted effort on those age groups in the 1860s.
 In 1865 the medical journal The Lancet investigated medical care in London’s workhouses and the findings
led to the passage of the Metropolitan Poor Act 1867, which demanded that medical facilities be separated
from the workhouse itself.
 Further, the Metropolitan Asylum Board was created, whose responsibility it was to care for sick paupers.
 This paved the way for specialised care for the sick and to modernise the administration of poor relief, and
beginning to involve the poor with decisions for the direction of poor relief, rather than treating them as
the problem, and as such demonstrated that dependents would have to contribute to finding solutions.

The growth of self-help

 The concept of self-help had not only been present in the 18th century, but had also fuelled much of the
entrepreneurial aspects of industrialisation.
 The embodiment of placing responsibility for reducing the high levels of pauperism with the paupers
themselves was the 1869 Charity Organisation Society.
 The purpose of this organisation was to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor, then
recommend the best means by which to help the deserving poor to get back on their feet.
 It rejected the practice of excessive assistance which its founder believed was detrimental to society .
 It conducted interviews in order to determine the best course of action for each indivual pauper.
 The organisation was a product of a growing British fear that the rise of charity was contributing to the
levels of dependence rather than combatting it.
 The society aimed to be more objective an only grant relief after rigorous investigation into the claimant’s
circumstances, thus echoing the ‘less eligibility’ doctrine.
 However it was more constructive rather than punitive, and typically resulted in the working poor being
directed towards the Poor Law Board, thus demonstrating a more rational and less emotive approach.
 However there were also charities dedicated to the abolition of oudoor relief, such as the CSO which led
the effort for the “Crusade against Outrelief”, which attempted to return to the “principles of 1834”.
 In general, it would appear that the role of charities was more effective in reducing reliance upon outdoor
relief, as up until 1870, costs of outdoor relief had in total risen by 24% from 1840, yet after this costs fell
by 32%.
 Therefore, the intentions of the New Poor Law came closer to realisation after the “Crusade against
Outrelief” than before this episode.
 It rejected the practice of excessive assistance and conducted interviews with paupers to judge their
worthiness. The establishment of the COS was in response to indiscriminate poor relief which was seen as
less effective in reducing poverty.

The significance of key individuals in challenging attitudes

 In 1834 both public and political attitudes began to change in regard to poverty and especially pauperism.
 The intention behind the New Poor Law was vastly different to the beliefs held in 1870.
 The cause of this constant social evolution is often free thinking individuals, and the enormity of the issue
of poor relief meant that many people openly voiced their opinions, including authors and journalists.
 Thomas Carlyle - His 1843 work ‘Past and Present’ drew attention to the growing class divide and
particularly to the plight of workers.
 In this discussion, he referred to workhouses as ‘Poor Law prisons’.
 Carlyle had interest in the spiritual growth of Britain and used the issue of the treatment of the poor to
show how far removed from each other we had become, and how disattached society was becoming.
 His work was immensely popular among middle class reformers and were influential among those
concerned with social stability.
 Henry Mayhew - His work was empirical in nature, in comparison to the intellectual style of Carlyle, and his
work consisted of four volumes which catalogued the experiences of Britain’s poor.
 His work was the first investigative piece undertaken by a private individual, and its conclusions challenged
the existing idea that pauperism was a result of laziness, and instead it was low wages that caused a
reliance on relief.
 By paying such low wages the employers did not give their workers sufficient income to allow them to set
aside money for when they cannot find employment.
 Mayhew was therefore one of the first to provide evidence of the poor wanting to earn money but not
being able to do because of the parsimony of their employers.
 His publication, ‘London Labour and London Poor’ forced Victorians to rethink the way they treated the
poor and also caused an immediate rise in charity work in workhouses and new systemic inspections.
 Charles Dickens – He knew the realities of pauperism from his own experiences after being forced to work
as a shoe blacker aged 12, after his parents had to enter the workhouses due to debt problems.
 Due to this, Dickens developed a strong social conscience and dedicated much of his life into giving a voice
to the poorest sect of society.
 His most famous work Oliver Twist, which was written between 1837 and 1839, detailed a treacherous
image of workhouses where charity was twisted into punishment for those who needed and asked for
help.
 The themes of poverty, hunger and overbearing masters continued throughout his works, such as ‘Hard
Times’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’.
 Consequently, Dickens made sure people were aware of pauperism through Dickens’ novels, which were
promoted as a serial meaning they were made available at monthly intervals for the price of a shilling.
 Elizabeth Gaskell - Her novels, like Dickens, provided a larger awareness of the realities of poverty in
Britain.
 Her 1848 book ‘Mary Barton’ gives an insight to the lives of the poor amidst the backdrop of Manchester.
While the book was based on truth, it was fictional meaning it offered no threat to the established order
and therefore wasn’t the subject of controversy.
 Samuel Smiles - Smiles’ 1859 publication Self Help emphasized the importance and value of doing things
yourself .
 This was a popular idea amongst Victorians mid-century and one that was put into practice by many
middle class social reformers.
 Smiles thought if they were able to become wealthy, then so could the poor if pointed in the right
direction. He believed that every single person had potential.
 The reason Smiles was so successful was due to the fact, that he published self-help around the time when
Pauperism was again becoming a debated issue.
 His work offered a different perspective on how to provide relief and offered a framework for
organisations such as the Charity Organisation Society.
 His suggestion of self-help also gave the possible benefit of a reduction in costs to ratepayers - people were
encouraged to help themselves rather than to seek help in a workhouse.
 In 1862 it cost 4 shillings and 8 pence a week to keep someone in a workhouse, whereas the cost of
supporting a person outside was less than half of that.