No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This research presents a regional study of the implementation of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act (commonly known as the New Poor Law) and its operation in Hertfordshire up to 1847. It examines the economic costs of poor relief across the whole of this rural southern county but it also adopts a microhistory approach to examine in detail how the New Poor Law was implemented and administered in four poor law unions: Hatfield, Hitchin, St Albans and Watford. This study makes national and intra-county comparisons of poor relief data, policy and practice. This research focuses on people as well as place and examines how different groups influenced poor law policy and practice. It makes an important finding about the role played by the second Marquis of Salisbury (a prominent Hertfordshire resident) in the review of the poor laws and the legislation that followed. At the local level this thesis explores the process of implementation and gives new emphasis to the contribution made by the assistant poor law commissioners to both process and policy in the initial years of the New Poor Law. This study is unusual in the attention given to the middlemen of the poor law machinery - the poor law guardians and poor law officers including: medical officers, workhouse masters, relieving officers and schoolmasters and mistresses. This detailed examination of the local guardians challenges the existing historiography on the social demography of this body of men, demonstrates that the influence of elite personnel persisted and adds new data to support the argument that the operation of the poor laws was not just regionally but locally diverse. The workhouse, so symbolic of the New Poor Law and an essential component of the deterrent ideology, is considered in the context of attitudes around its construction and capacity as well as its everyday operation. This thesis adds to the poor law historiography with new data on a previously under-researched area of the country; it provides new information on the development of poor law policy, but more importantly it draws attention to the role of the middlemen and how their individual contributions influenced poor law policy and practice.

From 1837 the Poor Law Commission sanctioned temporary relief, at workhouses, for poor wayfarers, heralding a departure from historic attempts to control the wandering poor with criminal vagrancy legislation. A modern, detailed account is lacking, and the thesis addresses gaps in the historiography, such as the significant underestimation of women using the system, the influence of penal separation upon casual relief, and the changing attributes of recipient The origins of casual relief are traced to local initiatives, c.1800-1830, adopted, subsequently, in the reformed Poor Law system. The assumption, by administrators, that the justice system would retain the mandate for the suppression of vagrancy, was never eradicated, partly because criminal legislation remained in force, alongside casual relief. The deterrent principle of the New Poor Law was applied in casual wards, characterized by an absence of rehabilitative elements. The reluctance of Poor Law officials to engage fully with vagrant relief was reflected in repeated attempts to transfer responsibility to the police. Contemporary views are examined to ascertain whether Poor Law vagrancy policy was based upon rational assessment, or was the product of myth and prejudice. Ignoring evidence that the majority of casual relief users were in search of employment, and that others were rendered destitute by age or ill health, officials insisted upon the intrinsic deviancy of recipients. The traditional belief in the ‘undeserving’ poor was undiminished. Phases in casual relief are identified, summarized as a gradual transition from primitive provision (‘stables and straw’) to purpose-built cells. However, notwithstanding the strengthening of central regulation, from 1871, uniform implementation of policy was never achieved. Casual relief remained a protean experience for applicants in this period. Inasmuch as most itinerant poor avoided the wards, New Poor Law deterrence succeeded; as a measure to control vagrancy, it failed.

Although there have been many studies of the operation of the new poor law in a variety of unions little research has been done on the East Midlands. This region shared features with both southern agricultural areas and northern urban ones and is interesting to study because unions were established there before the onset of the 1837 trade depression which contributed towards the difficulties encountered in establishing northern unions. The Leicester union adds a new dimension to poor law studies: it began fairly successfully but when the trade slump hit the town in 1837 its administration became overwhelmed with the problems facing it and appeared to lurch from one crisis to the next. After several years of poor employment prospects the town's improving economy from about 1850 led to a substantial reduction in the number of paupers. The pressure on the union decreased so that by the beginning of the 1860s it was able to maintain the workhouse test quite successfully. It is the intention of this thesis to show that the improving economy was the single most important reason for the success of the union. It affected many of its actions and was a prime factor in the amount of political activity generated by the board of guardians. The individual chapters discuss various aspects of the union's business and show that, while there may have been some improvement in its finances and staff, these would have been insignificant on their own. The union faced a number of problems throughout the period of this study, some of them found in other unions but some unique to Leicester. Without the drastic amelioration of the town's economy the Leicester union would not have been a success.

No description available.

This thesis breaks new ground in Poor Law Studies. It isolates for detailed scrutiny the treatment of a particular social group, the aged poor. Traditional sources have been approached for new answers to new questions, and in so doing, new methods of source exploitation have been evolved and utilised. The sources have been asked to provide information about dependent old age; the relationship between poverty and the length of the working life; sex differences; the proportion of the population which ended life as parish paupers. Key research has centred around the parish pension, its function, size and real value; crucially, the ability or otherwise of the pensioner to subsist on it. Consideration has also been given to the other components of the network of relief measures adopted by the parishes; relief in kind; housing and the standard of living; medical and nursing care; the role of the workhouse. The investigation has been carried beyond the limits of relief provided by the mechanisms of the Old Poor Law alone, to include external supportive agencies, such as the support of family and charity, which includes both charitable trusts and indiscriminate giving. Some light is thrown on ways the aged contributed to their own maintenance. The thesis tests the general hypothesis that all these various supportive systems produced an interlocking apparatus which involved the whole community in the support of the old, while to discuss their treatment within the limits of the poor law only, results in a narrow, incomplete and distorted narrative, serving only to perpetuate the traditional historical view of a harsh, punitive treatment, needing reassessment in the light of recent historical developments.

No description available.

No description available.