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Contrary to the traditional account, there was a turnaround after the 1867 Metropolitan Poor Act and a popular reaction against expensive refonns. Moreover, poor law medical officers (PLMOs) were regularly charged with negligence from then. This thesis explains why those events were connected, how charges were brought against PLMOs and builds a framework for understanding negligence in the New Poor Law. First, the power of judiciary is located: lay inspectors. Second, a concept of standard(s) of care is articulated by reconstituting contemporary expectations of 'care' and 'duty'. Third, a textual analysis of the rules of PLMO employment demonstrates that the Local Government Board (LGB) framed them so that medical officers were legally culpable for system faults and a handy 'fall-guy'. In short, the LOB practiced a 'culture of blame' and, for the first time, this study explains why and how this impacted on New Poor Law medical welfare. An original methodology was created to research a wide-range of records. Quantitative, qualitative and comparative analyses, together, reconstitute poor law practice, avoiding the misleading aspects of policy documents. Database analyses maps the spatial and temporal incidence of negligence and, from this, provides evidence of a regionally-nuanced New Poor Law. The highest density of negligence occurred in North-West England, Wales and the Welsh-English border counties. Most of those 'charges' stemmed from salary or attendance issues. Part-time contracts and low salaries resulted in PLMOs prioritising private over public duties: they were compelled to ignore some medical orders. That clash of prerogatives caused a fault-line in the poor law medical welfare system and was the root cause of most negligent practice. F~om 1870, those tensions were strained by a shift in policy, known as the crusade against out-relief The 'crusade' lowered the standard of care by increasing PLMOs' workload, withdrawing vital expenditure and not investing in medically trained staff. A decline of care in the community during the 'crusade' caused higher numbers of incarcerated mental-health patients and systemic negligence: incurables, such as the disabled, were ignored by PLMOs. The thesis, thus, culminates with a case study, examining the negligent treatment of a disabled workhouse patient; restoring the 'lost' perspective ofpauper patients.

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This thesis argues that research on residential mobility within individual nineteenth- ... Abstract 11 .1 analysis that has been undertaken on intra-urban mobility has in the main concentrated on large Victorian cities, which it is argued, has led to a restricted view ofthe • processes ofchange in past urban societies. With this in mind, the research examines at the micro-scale the processes ofchange within nineteenth-century Lancaster, a small industrial town in the north-west of . England, between 1850-1890. A range ofstructural and agency related differentials were identified which impacted upon stability rates within Lancaster. However, although factors such as housing, socio-economic structure, occupation and life course were found to contribute to some ofthe differences in persistence rates when comparing individual locales, they provide an inconclusive explanation when analysing variations in overall stability across the full period. It was found that occupational changes within nineteenth-century Lancaster encouraged disruption ofpre-existing family networks. The greatest surprise was the total lack ofcoherence within Lancaster's society, especially within the lower socioeconomic groups. This scale ofdisruption within community life has not been demonstrated within research undertaken in other nineteenth-century urban centres. Thus, it is suggested that Lancaster's economic history was the most important influence on the low stability rates that have been recorded, although it has been h~d to provide a conclusive causal link. Individual mobility histories were also analysed to understand some ofthe motivational factors underpinning mobility decisions. Personal characteristics were found to be important in structuring the decision making process in areas relating to cost, size and business considerations. Overall this thesis contributes to the understanding of stability and mobility during the nineteenth century, and demonstrates that it cannot be understood fully without reference to individual motivational concerns.