LAW AND POVERTY
Professor Bill Quigley
Historical Development of
Law and Poverty
English Poor Laws
Map of England
Feudalism
From Murraystate poor law show
Edward III 1327-1377
1349-1350 Statutes of Laborers
Edward III
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prohibition of begging
prohibition of almsgiving
compulsory work for all under 60
maximum wages
people restricted to own town
Categorization of poor on ability
to work
• Able-bodied?
• Disabled?
1531 - 1536 Poor Relief Statutes
• positive obligations and negative sanctions
1531 - 1536 Negative Sanctions
• punishment of beggars and vagabonds
• worries about the wandering poor
• only licensed poor were allowed to bet only
aged and disabled were given licenses
• begging without a license was a crime
• crime to give $ to non-licensed beggars
• poor begging children (5 to 14) could be
taken from families as apprentices
1531 - 1536 Positive Obligations
• local responsibility for disabled or aged
poor
• local financing and administration
• punishment for those who refused to work
• assistance limited to three year residents
1563 Statute of Artificers
• compulsory work for poor
• could not leave community without written
permission
• poor children as young as 1 were
apprenticed
Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601
• Local Responsibility (parish)
• Primary Family Responsibility
• Settlement and Removal
Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601
divided poor people into four
groups:
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needy neighbors who could not work
needy neighbors who could work
needy strangers who could not work
needy strangers who could work
Only help was for first group
Settlement and Removal
• only helped worthy residents who were
settled in jurisdiction (parish)
• outsiders, even worthy, were removed
1822 English poor rate summons from www.workhouses.org.uk
1747 English poor rate settlement document from www.workhouses.org.uk
English poor rate removal notice 1836 from www.workhouses.org.uk
Colonial Poor Laws
Colonial Poor Laws
• came from English Poor Laws
• built on Puritan Ideology
• use Public-Private Partnership
Key Elements of Colonial Poor
Laws
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Local Responsibility (parish)
Inter-generational Family Responsibility
Settlement Laws
Forced Imprisonment for the Idle
Colonial Settlement
• Followed English Law
• Especially poor arrivals by ship
Ship from Sailing Ships and Their Stories by E. Keble Chatterton
Who Were the Poor in Colonies?
• Apprenticed children (Including those
working off parents’ debt)
• Indentured servants
• Slaves
• Widows, orphans, abandoned women and
children
• Mentally and physically disabled
United States of American until
Civil War
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followed mostly colonial poor laws
local responsibility (county or town)
settlement and removal
family responsibility
anti-immigrant poor
7 year indenture of John Broad to George Washington,
December 21, 1773
April 19, 1809 contract between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison for sale
of remainder of the terms of service for indentured servant, John Freeman, likely a
indentured free black man, for term of 76 1/2 monts for $400. (Carter Woodson
collection)
Slave pen in Alexandria, VA 1862
Slave auction poster
Slave pen in Alexandria, VA
Native Americans homestead in Sandhills
Debtor’s prison in Accomoac, VA made from a picture postcard by Mayrose Co., Linden, NJ
Movement Towards Institutional
Relief
• Outdoor relief: assistance in own homes
• Indoor relief: assistance in governmental
setting
1834 Poor Law Reforms in England
(and others in USA)
• helping poor people was hurting them
• poor people were lazy and immoral
• $ was going to drink and wild lives
So…
• Less Eligibility (make lowest paid worker
better off than best poor person)
• Stigmatize poor relief
• Consolidate and centralize poor relief
Institutional Poor Relief
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Houses of Correction
Almshouses
County Poor Houses
Poor Farms
Workhouses
Asylums
Civil War to New Deal
• Who were the poor?
– Victims of war, widows, orphans
– Disabled
– Freed Slaves
• What were the changes?
– More institutions
– Increase in private philanthropy
– States starting to accept responsibility
– State laws on minimum wage, preventing child labor,
etc.
American Memory/Library of Congress-Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American
Engineering Record
Catalog No.: HABS.RI.4-PROV.131-1
American Memory/Library of Congress-Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic
American Engineering Record
Catalog No.: HABS.RI.4-PROV.131-2
American Memory/Library of Congress-Historic American Buildings
Survey/Historic American Engineering Record
Catalog No.: HABS.RI.4-PROV.131-3
State lunatic asylum, Buffalo, NY, built 1871
Catalog No.: HABS No. NY 0 5606
Southern Ohio lunatic asylum, Dayton, Ohio. Erected 1855
Catalog No.: HABS No. OH-2222-3
New Orleans female orphan asylum and Margaret Monument, pic
taken 1890
Orphan asylum, Charleston, SC
Rendering of St. Elizaeth’s Orphanage, 1314 Napoleon Ave.
Cook Co. Poor Farm, Oak Forest, IL, east view
Library of Congress Call No: Illinois, no. 21
Collection: Panoramic photographs
Door to poorhouse
Old poorhouse, Germantown, c 1807
brynmawr.edu
Workhouse
rules, 1831
Aylesburg,
England
Poorhouse by Charles Hoffman, c 1865, National Gallery of Art
Men in workhouse
Mealtime at St. Pancras from www.workhouses.org.uk
Lewis Hine, photographer
Lewis Hine, photographer
Child workers, factory, Baltimore 6/7/09, Lewis Hine, photographer
W. A. Rogers cartoon
(look for British flag and
small boat coming out
from NYC dynamite)
from
virginia.edu/~eas5e/sadlier
Causes of New Deal
• 25% of workforce unemployed
• Many displaced, urban and rural
• State and locals unable to shoulder burden
of poor
• People could see the poor
Migrant family in auto camp in California, 1936
The Library of Congress/American Memory
Archival TIFF versuib
Dispossessed Arkansas farmers in Bakersfield, CA 1935
Squatter’s Camp, 1936
1937, Mississippi sharecroppers in Cleveland, MS
Www.nara.gov: depression; social security poster; children getting working papers, 1908, Lewis Hine ,
photographer; 9:00 p.m. in glass factory, Indianapolic, 1908, 1 Hine photo; slave dealer, Alexandria,
VA, c 1860
Breadline on Times Square, December 8, 1930
from AP photo file
Soup kitchen sponsored by Al Capone, ssa.gov
Responses of New Deal
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Federal effort to address some poverty
Social security for aged
Child labor laws
Unemployment compensation
Aid to Families Dependent children
Bismarck
Franklin Roosevelt
Unemployed workers signing up for unemployment comp
Iowa family, federal relief 1936
War on Poverty
• Medicare
• Medicaid
• Food Stamps
First medicare card, 9/1/65 - ssa.gov
Retrenchment
• Cutbacks in mothers and children in welfare
• Cutbacks on immigrants
THE END
George
Washington
Lyndon
Johnson