Poor Law
Amendment
Act, 1834
AS British History
Depth Study - Poverty
By Mr R Huggins
Government Response to Poverty
Throughout history governments have debated about how they should deal with
poverty and decide who should be entitled to help from the community.
Today everyone in Britain pays into the National Insurance scheme. If someone
loses their job they are entitled to receive unemployment benefit for six months
so long as they are looking for work. Once your six months are up you then
transfer to another benefit which is based upon your income and takes into
account how much savings you have. Whilst you are unemployed you can
receive all sorts of benefits and discounts ranging from housing benefit to
reductions in Council Tax. The government closely monitors your attempts to
find work through a network of job and benefit centres. If you become what is
called ‘long term unemployed,’ the government will link your benefit to
attendance on work training schemes that are aimed to get you back into work.
This system has its critics. On the one hand people object to the high social cost
and taxes of providing benefit for people who are unemployed, whilst others
argue that unemployment levels can make it very difficult to find work. They
point out that if you don’t help the unemployed and people living in poverty
then it leads to social unrest and high levels of crime.
During the twentieth century this debate was particularly intense during periods
of economic depression. For example, during the Presidential Elections of 1932,
the two main political parties were split between the Republicans on the Right,
led by Herbert Hover, who believed in Rugged Individualism; and the
Republicans on the left, led by Roosevelt, who believed in Government Action
to end the Depression. A famous Republican quote from this period said ‘If you
want a dog to hunt let it go hungry, if you want a man to find a job, let his
family go hungry and he will soon find a job.’ A similar attitude could be found
amongst some politicians today.
This ‘liaise faire’ attitude towards economics and poverty began in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth century when the population of Britain began to
rapidly increase along with the cost of providing for the poor. The focus for the
debate was how to reform the existing Poor Law, which had been passed during
the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, to deal with the threat of ‘able bodied beggars.’
The key principle which had underpinned this system was that the local
communities were responsible for the poor and unemployed from their own
town or village. Three hundred years later, this system was in need of reform
and not suit the needs of a country moving away from agriculture towards a
largely urban, industrial economy.
One of the features of this period is the changing attitudes towards change. In
the past people respected the traditions of the past and were unwilling to make
significant changes. The new scientific revolution and age of enlightenment led
to people questioning everything in a bid to find better ways of doing things.
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Government Response to Poverty
The Age of Reform
The age of reform is a term used to describe British politics during the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with special focus on the years
between the fall of Lord North in 1792 and the passing of both the Great Reform
Act of 1832 and the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834.
Politics in this period were dominated by two political parties, the Tories and the
Whigs. Opinion was often split within these two groups, but as a rule Whigs
were advocates of change as well as civil and religious liberty, whilst the Tories
were defenders of court, Church and established institutions. Both groups
clashed on critical issues of the time such as Catholic emancipation,
parliamentary and economical reform, the royal prerogative, ministerial conduct
and public order.
The French Revolution had a profound impact on British politics. Initially, the
French experimented with a constitutional model similar the British Monarchy.
Many politicians, especially amongst the Whigs welcomed these changes.
However, with the execution of Louis XVI, The Reign of Terror and Napoleon’s
attempt at world domination, there was a conservative backlash against radical
change, which benefited the Tories. With the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, both
the industrial the agricultural sectors of the British economy went into
depression with the import of cheaper goods from abroad. At the same time
over 400,000 troops were demobilization and along with the introduction of new
machines, this led to an increase in unemployment and social unrest. This
prompted the government to introduce the Corn Laws and various import duties
(tariffs), which tried to protect British farmers and industries. These changes
resulted in higher prices which were unpopular with working class people.
The French Revolution had let the genie out of the bottle. High prices and low
wages led for increased calls for change amongst the working and middle
classes. There was a real fear amount the upper class that unless the middle
classes were given the vote, this social and economic unrest could turn into
revolution. This fear helped to drive the 1832 Reform Act through Parliament
and led to a new age of reform based on utilitarian and humanitarian ideas.
These two competing ideas led to debates in Parliament that introduced laws
which regulated factories, new housing, mines and changed the administration
of the Church of England and local government. The Key focus of these
changes was to find ways of reforming British society to make it work smoothly
and to avoid a potential revolution in the future. Both the Poor Law
Amendment act of 1834 and the later Public Health Acts were key pieces of
legislation which were designed to reform British Society for the benefit of
everybody, although they were very controversial at the time,
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Government Response to Poverty
The Elizabethan Poor Law
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the government was frightened by the
emergence of what was termed the ‘able bodied beggar.’ The changes to
religion, agriculture and society had increased unemployment and poverty.
Large bands of men used to roam the countryside in search of work. This led to
all sorts of social problems including high levels of crime and begging.
The 1601 Elizabethan Poor Law divided the poor into two groups
1. The impotent poor - the sick, elderly, those unable to work due to the
seasonal nature of agricultural work - who were to be helped via outdoor
relief or either almshouses or poorhouses. These people were classed as
'would work but couldn't'.
2. The other group was labelled as the 'able-bodied beggar' who could work but
wouldn't'. This group was to be put to workhouse or house of correction and
severely beaten until they realised the error of their ways.
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Government Response to Poverty
Key Features of the Old Poor Law
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It relied on the parish as the unit of government, and therefore on unpaid,
non-professional administrators.
Parishes were small and their finances were feeble so unusually heavy
burdens such as those experienced between 1815 and 1821 would be
disastrous at parish level
Overseers or Justices of the Peace might be petty despots.
Elizabethan Poor Law’ aimed to provide social stability, to alleviate
discontent and distress and to prevent riots and disaffection through
outdoor relief.
As the system of poor relief developed, not all parishes had a poor-house or
house of correction. It soon became obvious that some parishes were more
sympathetic and generous towards their poor. This led to economic migrants
and resulted in paupers moving from less generous parishes to ones which were
more generous. To prevent this, parliament passed the 1662 Settlement Act
which stated that a person had to have a 'settlement' in order to obtain relief from
a parish. This could be secured by:
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Being born in the parish
Marrying someone who came from that parish.
Working in the parish for a year and a day
Under this new law, if a labourer moved away from his parish of origin in search
of work, then his local JPs had to issue him with a certificate of settlement
saying that if he fell on hard times, his own parish would receive him back and
pay for him to be 'removed'.
The 1662 Settlement Laws caused problems:
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They hindered the free movement of labour, which is vital to an
expanding industrial economy.
They prevented men from leaving overpopulated parishes in search of
work on the 'off-chance' of finding employment.
They led to short contracts of, for example, 364 days or 51 weeks. A man
might live in a parish for 25 years, working on short contracts, and still
not be eligible for poor relief later in life.
Improvements to agriculture meant that fewer people were needed to
work on the land in the countryside.
The new factories and coalmines were desperate for labour during times
of prosperity.
During times of depression, some of the unemployed had to return home
to parishes, which could barely afford to support them.
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Government Response to Poverty
1782 Gilbert's Act – Early Poor Law Unions
Under the Elizabethan Poor Law, some parishes struggled to find the money to
build a poorhouse or house of correction. In 1782, after 17 years of campaigning
an MP called Gilbert finally managed to persuade Parliament to pass a law
which allowed parishes, if they wished to form a Poor Law Union to share the
costs of building a workhouse or a house of correction for the poor in their area.
These Poor Law Unions were successful in helping to cut costs in the areas
where there were set up, but the workhouses they set up were not always very
well run or regulated as the Royal Commission found out during its
investigation under Edwin Chadwick in 1833:
Report from the Commissioners Inquiring into the Administration
and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws, 1834, p. 303
In parishes overburdened with poor we usually find the building
called a workhouse occupied by 60 or 80 children (under the care,
perhaps, of a pauper), about 20 or 30 able-bodied paupers of both
sexes, and probably an equal number of aged and impotent persons,
the proper objects of relief. Amidst these, the mothers of bastard
children and prostitutes live without shame and associate freely with
the youth, who have also the examples and conversation of the
frequent inmates of the county gaol, the poacher, the vagrant, the
decayed beggar, and other characters of the worst description. To
these may often be added a solitary blind person, one or two idiots
and not infrequently are heard among the rest, the incessant raving
of some neglected lunatic. In such receptacles the sick poor are often
immured.
One of the many arguments put forward by the Royal Commission was that
these poor houses should be properly regulated and controlled under a new
uniform workhouse system.
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Government Response to Poverty
The Speenhamland System
Another attempt to modify the Elizabethan Poor Law was the Speenhamland
System. This idea first saw light of day in 1795. The magistrates in the
Berkshire village of Speenhamland introduced it in an effort to relieve the
poverty that was caused by the low wages and seasonal nature of agricultural
work by topping up workers wages.
This system was so popular that it was adopted widely in southern England. It
offered any one, or several forms of relief:
1. Wages were supplement or 'topped up' depending upon the size of the
family. The amount of relief to be given was calculated on the price of a
gallon loaf of bread (weighing 8lb. 7oz.) and the number of children a
man had. Some areas allowed between 1/6d and 2/6d per child. This
method was later criticised by Malthus who commented that poor
labourers had large families so they could claim more relief (benefits) on
the poor rates.
2. The Roundsman System, the able-bodied unemployed worked in
rotation. They were sent in turn to farmers who paid a part of the wages
and the parish paid the rest. In this way the unemployed were put to work.
However, some unscrupulous farmers deliberately paid their workers low
wages knowing that the local tax payer would top up their wages. The
Roundsman System was heavily criticised by the Poor Law Commission
for artificially keeping wages low and wasting tax payers money.
The Speenhamland system became widespread in southern England and was
extensively used in the so-called 'Swing' counties. When the Swing Riots broke
out in 1830, some people linked the generous benefits under the Speenhamland
System in the south of England with the rioters.
Critics of the old system claimed that the Old Poor Law had created an army of
unemployed people who depended on benefits who were idle and prepared to
break the law. They called for changes to the system to cut taxes and punish the
less deserving poor until they found themselves a job.
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Government Response to Poverty
Conflicting Views of the Old Poor Law
The Speenhamland System was widely adopted during the French Wars.
However, it had the unintended effect of increasing the cost of poor relief. In
1815, there was a sharp increase in the numbers of unemployed. Farmers were
also struggling as they had got themselves into debt by investing in new
machinery and farming techniques to increase production using fewer people.
Once the war with France was over, cheap imports from Europe flooded the
market and many of them started to go bankrupt. This alongside the increased
taxes to pay off the national debt and the cost of local taxes to pay for poor relief
started changing attitudes towards the poor.
There was a growing belief in the rural south that charity, over and beyond the
relief of dire necessity, led to idleness and vice. There was also a belief that
allowances and subsidies that had evolved under the Speenhamland System
and the Gilbert Act, encouraged people to have large families which in turn
increased poverty, unemployment or and crime. These subsides or ‘benefits’
then had to be paid for by rate payers who were unhappy at the constantly
increasing cost of the Poor Law. See the chart below:
However, in the industrial north, attitudes towards poor relief were different
from those to be found in the south. As industry developed, there was a need for
workers and if there was work, then most people were employed. If there was no
work, then everyone was unemployed. This was particularly true in the textile
districts where the anti-Poor Law campaign was at its strongest. It was generally
believed that the existing poor relief were more than adequate to meet the needs
of the unemployed and others in need of relief.
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Government Response to Poverty
Movement for Reform
The Swing Riots of 1830 focused attention upon the question of law and order
and its relationship to poverty. Amongst the people singled out for attack by the
rioters were the parish overseers of the poor relief.
One connection made by some politicians at the time was that the worst riots
had occurred in places were relief payments were at their highest.
It could be argued that it was precisely in these districts that unemployment and
social deprivation were at their peak and therefore the cause of the working class
or labourers acute desperation that led to the riots in the first place. However, in
official circles this coincidence-reinforced dissatisfaction with the existing Poor
Law and stereotypes of the causes of poverty and the growing cost of paying
poor relief.
In 1817 and 1819 national expenditure on poor relief had reached a peak of
almost £8 million per year, compared to less than £2 million a year spent from
1783 to 1785. Although the figure then fell back again, the amount spent
remained around about £7 million a year.
It was felt amongst the propertied classes that the labouring men no longer
regarded the receipt of relief as a social stigma. Some argued that the current
levels of poor relief undermined their desire or efforts to find themselves a wellpaid job.
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Government Response to Poverty
The Royal Commission
It was against this background that a Royal Commission on the Poor Laws was
appointed in 1832. Many historians have argued that the Royal Commission
was prejudiced right from the start, but there is little doubt that the ‘facts’ it
presented were accurate. However, the commissioners did ignore data or facts
which did not agree with their interpretation of the working of the old Poor Law.
For example, at Swallowfield in Berkshire, it was customary to ‘make up’ wages
out of the poor rates to what was considered an adequate sum, bearing in mind
the price of bread and the size of a man’s family. ‘The bread money is hardly
looked upon by the labourers in the light of parish relief,’ the Report declared:
‘They consider it as much their right as he wages they receive from their
employers, and in their own minds make a wide distinction between “taking
their bread money” and “going on the parish”.’
The ‘bread scale’ policy had been initiated by magistrates meeting at
Speenhamland in Berkshire during 1795, as a response to the shape rise in food
prices caused with the war with France. This system was soon adopted in a
number of adjoining counties and later approved by Parliament. Only in the
north of England, where competing employment in manufacturing and mining
kept wages high, did such devices prove unnecessary.
The problem of with this system was that some unscrupulous employers would
deliberately underpay their labourers knowing that they could top up their wages
using the poor relief or ‘bread money.’ The deduction made by the Royal
Commission was that the Speenhamland system was suppressing wages at the
expense of both the local taxpayers and the labourers. Abolishing this system
would result in labourers demanding higher wages and a reduced tax burden.
Another system investigated by the Royal Commission was the ‘roundsman’
system under which the unemployed were sent from one ratepayer to another
until they found someone willing to engage them, at a wage subsidised by the
parish. Not surprisingly, the workers concerned took little interest in the tasks
they were given as they were paid or given relief whether they performed well
or not.
For example, at Pollington in Yorkshire:
‘They send many of them upon the highways, but they only work four
hours per day; this is because there is not employment sufficient in that
way; they sleep more than they work, and if any but the surveyor found
them sleeping, they would laugh at them.’
The deduction made by the Royal Commission was that the work being set was
inappropriate, encouraged laziness and not cost effective.
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Government Response to Poverty
When the commission’s report appeared in 1834, it led to immediate demands
for widespread reform. The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act was designed to
address the problems of the old system. |A Central Board was to oversee the
whole poor law system, while at the local level outdoor relief, save for medical
attention, was to be ended for the able-bodied. Instead they were to receive
indoor aid only, within a workhouse, with paupers classified and separated
according to age and sex and with families divided.
The primary objective of the Poor Law of 1834, was to make the paupers’
position ‘less eligible’, that is more unpleasant, than that of any independent
labourer and as a result put people off from applying for assistance or help. The
Workhouse was to become known as the ‘New Bastilles,’ a place of last resort
where the discipline and hard work would encourage none but the truly
desperate to willingly enter its gates and seek help.
The Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834
The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, embodied the main recommendations
of the Royal Commission’s Report and provided for the creation of a national
system of poor law administration. At the local level parishes were reorganised
into poor law unions with resources sufficient to maintain a well regulated
workhouse with elected boards of guardians and paid permanent officials. Each
parish remained responsible for the care of its own paupers. Overseeing this
system was a central board of three Poor Law Commissioners, guided by
Secretary Edwin Chadwick and supported by an inspectorate of assistant
commissioners, which sought to impose national standards and practices.
The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act led to immediate and visible savings and a
rapid fall in the cost of relief in most areas because conditions deliberately were
made harsh. The national poor rate expenditure fell from £7 million in 1831 to
between £4.5 and £5 million per annum in the decade following its implantation,
while for twenty years after that, it fluctuated between £5 and £6 million.
However, some of the 'evils' it was designed to destroy were made worse. It
started a new administrative structure but probably harmed the relatively
defenceless, rather than the idle able-bodied. On the positive side, it limited the
power of the local rural tyrant. The changes brought in by the poor law
administration saw the rise of the professional administrator at the expense of
the local elites. This growing professionalism reduced the role of the landed
classes and the magistracy. However, in the long run, indoor relief proved more
expensive than outdoor payments and this led to some Poor Law Guardians
keeping the old system of 'Outdoor Relief' right up to the start of the 20th
Century.
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Government Response to Poverty
Opposition to the Poor Law Amendment Act
Opposition to the New Poor Law was mixed. The new system was quickly
introduced in the south of England, which was mainly agricultural. However,
when the Poor Law Commissioners tried to implement the new system in the
north there was an explosion of opposition from all sections of society.
In the Anti-Poor Law movement was formed in Lancashire and the West Riding,
led by Oastler, Fielden (Quaker) and Stephens. The new Poor Law was attacked
in the press and on the platform.
Richard Oaster, The Rights of the Poor to Liberty and Life
What, Sir, is the principle of the New Poor Law? The condition imposed
upon Englishmen by the accursed law is, that man shall give up his liberty
to save his life. That, before he shall eat a piece of bread he shall go to
prison, under circumstances which I shall speak of hereafter, in prison he
shall enjoy his right to live, but it shall be at the expense of liberty, without
which life itself becomes a burden.
1837 also saw the beginning of a downturn in the economy and poor harvests
which began with a trade depression. Industrial workers feared the workhouse,
which they called the Poor Law 'Bastilles'. There were riots in Bradford (1837)
and Dewsbury (1838). Two failed attempts were made to build work houses in
Doncaster which were burnt down. The Poor Law Commissioners had to flee
under a hail of bricks and stones.
In 1839, Thomas Carlyle a rich land owner wrote:
The New Poor Law is an announcement ... that whosoever will
not work ought not to live. Can the poor man that is willing to
work always find work and live by his work? A man willing but
unable to find work is ... the saddest thing under the sun.
Another cause of opposition was that the administrators of the old relief system
were outraged at the interference of central government or 'London men' in local
affairs because they felt the old system worked well. They said that there were
few able bodied poor when trade was good, and too many for even the biggest
workhouse when trade was bad. The Poor Law Guardians in the north
obstructed the implementation of the Poor Law Amendment Act and often
refused to build workhouses and often knocked down old houses of correction to
prevent the Poor Law Commissioners from ordering their replacement with new
workhouses.
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Government Response to Poverty
When the Poor Law Commission sent the Assistant Commissioners into
northern England to organise the new system, they found themselves faced with
a resistance whole organisation and ferocity was unlike anything they had met
before. As the source below show, the workhouse system was never fully
enforced in industrial Unions in Lancashire and Yorkshire: outdoor relief and
supplements to incomes continued.
SE Ayling, The Georgian Century, 1714 - 1837, 1966
When the Commissioners went north in 1837 to apply the New Act there,
they were met by such a violent and organised hostility that in many areas
the principles of 1834 proved impossible to apply, and outdoor relief
continued .. its threatened abolition was regarded as a piece of upper class
vindictiveness and greed.
The proposal to introduce the Poor Law Amendment Act into these areas
increased the workers' fears since they might now have to go into the dreaded
workhouse in periods of distress rather than receive a small 'dole' from the Poor
Law Guardians. Many of the local elites agreed with these fears and could not
see the sense in building workhouses big enough to accommodate the thousands
of people who would be made unemployed when factories or mines closed due
to the ups and downs of international trade.
The northern counties not only distrusted the Poor Law Amendment Act but also
were well organised to resist it. The Ten Hour Movement of the early 1830s had
led to the establishment of a network of Short-time Committees throughout the
textile districts of Lancashire and the West Riding and these committees now
opposed the implementation of the Poor Law. Local anti-Poor Law committees
were set up and their work was co-ordinated by a West Riding anti-Poor Law
Committee and a south Lancashire anti-Poor Law Association. Meetings were
organised and petitions calling for the repeal of the legislation were sent to
Westminster. The leaders of the Ten Hour Movement - Richard Oastler of Fixby
near Huddersfield, William Busfeild Ferrand the squire of Bingley, Joseph
Rayner Stephens a Non-conformist preacher from Ashton Under Lyne, and John
Fielden the cotton manufacturer of Todmorden - now became the leaders of the
anti-Poor Law movement.
Oastler and his colleagues addressed anti-Poor Law meetings and wrote
pamphlets and letters to sympathetic newspapers like the Leeds Intelligencer and
the Sheffield Iris in which they denounced the Poor Law Amendment Act as
being cruel, unchristian and dictatorial. Most of these speeches and writings
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Government Response to Poverty
consisted of highly charged emotional outbursts full of prophetic violence and
often of lurid tales of cruelties inflicted on the paupers in workhouses in the
south of England. Most of the alleged cruelties were investigated by the Poor
Law Commission which found that although some of them were true, many
were at best half-truths and others - like the Marcus affair of 1839 - were total
fabrications. The anti-Poor Law agitators were determined to portray the Poor
Law Commissioners as inhuman tyrants.
Emotional speeches and tales of cruelty roused northern workers to fury. In
some areas, attempts to put the new system into operation were met with riots.
The job of the Assistant Commissioners was made more difficult because many
overseers, magistrates and members of the new boards of guardians were
determined to obstruct the operation of the new system. In the face of this
hostility, the Poor Law Commission was forced to tread carefully and were
urged to proceed with caution by Lord John Russell, the Home Secretary, who
was alarmed by the amount of violence in the north. Consequently, Boards of
Guardians were initially set up to carry out the provisions of the Registration
Act of 1836. Even when they were asked to take over poor relief duties from the
parishes, the regulations given to them by the Poor Law Commission allowed
then to continue to give relief under the old system.
Popular resistance to the Poor Law Amendment Act in the north did not survive
long. When the workhouse system and its alleged cruelties failed to materialise
in northern towns, many working men left the paternalistic anti-Poor Law
movement for Chartism, which seemed to have more to offer. Suspicion of the
Poor Law Commission did remain strong among many members of Boards of
Guardians, however. Having been granted considerable powers of discretion in
the performance of their duties, they were determined to defend them against
central interference. One Assistant Commissioner noted in 1838, 'The rabble are
easily quieted but where a majority of a Board of Guardians is opposed to the
Commissioners, the whole proceedings are attended with extreme difficulty.'
The new Poor Law was also attacked by many Tories who hated the idea of
increasing centralisation of government and the interference in local affairs.
Disraeli himself, as a leading member of the ‘Young England’ wing of the Tory
party, was a strong opponent of the 1834 legislation, introduced by a Whig
government. He condemned the substitution of centralised relief for the old
system based on local administration and paternalistic principles. In his novels
he painted very critical pictures of leading Whigs who supported the new Poor
Law such as Lord Marney and lord Everingham. Many Tories and traditionalist
were unsettled by what they saw as the movement away from moral economy to
political economy and from relationships regulated by custom to relationships
regulated by cash.
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Government Response to Poverty
The Andover Workhouse scandal, 1845-6
The Andover scandal of 1845-6 highlighted the hardship of the workhouse
regime. McDougal, the Master of the Andover workhouse, had a reputation for
inhumanity; rumours of excess cruelty eventually led to a public enquiry. Bone
crushing was a normal occupation for paupers. The bones of horses, dogs and
other animals (and there were hints that some from local graveyards) were
crushed for fertiliser for local farms.
The paupers were so hungry that they scrambled for the rotting bones. Bonecrushing became the focus of a case which was reported extensively by The
Times and was followed avidly by the public. Edwin Chadwick emerged
particularly well and reached the height of his prestige and power at this time.
Andover was only the most notorious example of workhouse cruelty. There
were several other major scandals and incidents, all recorded by the press in
minute detail.
Doncaster Workhouse Menu
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