Welfare's Forgotten Past: A Socio-Legal History of the Poor Law. By Lorie Charlesworth (London: Routledge, 2010. 234 pp.)

While the 1834 New Poor Law and the controversies over its reform represent one of the central threads in every narrative of the history of modern Britain, the same can hardly be said of the German poor laws, whose history is far less known. This is due in large part to a historiographical tradition that sees the Bismarckian social insurance programs as the fons et origo of the German welfare state and thus marginalizes all forms of social assistance that can not be neatly fitted into the narrative pre-history or subsequent development of these programs. This contrasts with a British tradition where, as E. P. Hennock has recently argued, national insurance was primarily conceived as a means of poor law reform, and where the poor laws figure prominently in the historiography of the welfare state. On the other hand, this insurance-centered approach to the welfare state is not entirely to blame because, for their part, historians of poor relief have not been able to establish any positive connections between individualized, subsidiary, deterrent relief and social insurance or social security systems based on rights deriving from either contributions or citizenship.

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Mental Disability in Victorian England: The Earlswood Asylum 1847–1901. By David Wright. [Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001. xii, 244 and (Index) 10 pp. Hardback £40. ISBN 0–19–924639–4.]

The Cambridge Law Journal ◽

10.1017/s0008197302401699 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 61 (2) ◽

pp. 463-492

Author(s):

M. A. Stein

Keyword(s):

Mental Disability ◽

Victorian England ◽

Poor Law ◽

National Network ◽

Victorian Era ◽

Mentally Disabled ◽

Oxford University ◽

The Poor ◽

Drastic Increase ◽

History Of

Under the auspices of the 1808 Asylums Act, twelve county asylums for the institutionalised care of “dangerous idiots and lunatics” were created from 1808 through 1834. The advent of the New Poor Law in that latter year, with its emphasis on economising costs through “relieving” the poor in Union workhouses, resulted in a drastic increase in the number of mentally disabled people under the care of the Poor Law Overseers. Subsequently (and partially in consequence) the Lunatics Act of 1845 directed that all “lunatics, idiots, or persons of unsound mind” be institutionalised in county asylums. The Earlswood Asylum (formerly the National Asylum for Idiots) was the premier establishment for the care of people with mental disabilities throughout the Victorian era, and the institution upon which a national network would be modelled. This book chronicles and examines the history of the Earlswood Asylum from 1847–1901.

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Krytyka nowego prawa o ubogich w ujęciu ruchu oksfordzkiego (1833‑1845)

Politeja ◽

10.12797/politeja.15.2018.55.04 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 15 (55) ◽

pp. 57-75

Author(s):

Piotr Musiewicz

Keyword(s):

Individual Responsibility ◽

Poor Relief ◽

Poor Law ◽

Oxford Movement ◽

Poor Laws ◽

Political Ideas ◽

The Poor ◽

Personal Approach ◽

History Of

The Oxford Movement’s Critique of the Poor Law Amendment ActThe paper presents a short history of poor laws in England and Great Britain, the content and justifications of the Poor Law Amendment Act (1834), general characteristics of the Oxford Movement and its main political ideas, the state of contemporary research on the topic, and finally the Movement’s approach to the new Poor Law. This approach – the Oxford Movement’s critique – has been reconstructed into three main groups of arguments. In the first group there are arguments pointing out why a state’s responsibility, and state-organised system of poor relief, is to be irrelevant and why the Church should play a far greater role in this field. The second group of arguments underlines the impracticality of centralisation in the system and proposes the major role of the local units in poor relief, as well as more ‘personal’ approach to the poor, also by reforming workhouses. The third group of arguments undermines the liberal (and Puritan) idea of solely individual responsibility for one’s poverty and destitution – an idea underlying the new Poor Law.

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RECONSIDERING POOR LAW INSTITUTIONS BY VIRTUALLY RECONSTRUCTING AND RE-VIEWING AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WORKHOUSE

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x20000448 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-26

Author(s):

SUSANNAH OTTAWAY ◽

AUSTIN MASON

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Social History ◽

Digital Humanities ◽

3D Model ◽

Poor Law ◽

New Approach ◽

The Poor ◽

Architectural Features ◽

Permeable Walls ◽

History Of

Abstract There is a fine timber moulded cornice in a front room of the building that was once the House of Industry at Gressenhall, Norfolk, while along the eastern wing of the building one can still see the architectural features of an elegant open arcade. Why were such features included on a structure built to keep the poor at work, where residents spent their days making sacks, spinning, and working in the farm fields that surrounded the institution? Creating a digital 3D model of the 1777 House of Industry has allowed us to peel back the historical residue of the post-1834 Poor Law Union workhouse and re-engage the building's architectural features in their original context. The resulting building's peculiarly elegant characteristics reflect the emerging ambitions and defensiveness characteristic of the newly constituted ‘guardians of the poor’ who constructed it, while its permeable walls indicate considerably lower barriers between the workhouse and the outside world than is generally thought. By applying an innovative, digital humanities methodology to a significant social history topic, this article argues that virtual modelling and traditional archival research can together shape a new approach to the history of the Old Poor Law's institutions for the poor.

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From Poor Law to Positive Discrimination

Journal of Social Policy ◽

10.1017/s0047279400007911 ◽

1978 ◽

Vol 7 (3) ◽

pp. 305-328

Author(s):

Richard Batley

Keyword(s):

Social Welfare ◽

Race Relations ◽

Poor Law ◽

The Poor ◽

Positive Discrimination ◽

History Of ◽

American Poverty

ABSTRACTThe principle of positive discrimination in favour of the poor has emerged out of a tangled history of social welfare debate about universalism and selectivity. Positive discrimination, based on the idea of ‘inclusive’ selectivity, represents something of a hybrid of the two concepts. The ‘rediscovery of poverty’ and the recognition that universal benefits were not adequate or reaching intended beneficiaries contributed to the general case for specially channelled services. But the government's response has tended to be piecemeal, responding to specific pressures and criticisms with a wide array of small and separate programmes of positive discrimination. This article traces the particular pressures, in race relations, which contributed to the emergence of the Urban Aid Programme and shows what lessons were learned from the experience of the American poverty programmes.

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Fragments of Fury? Lunacy, Agency, and Contestation in the Great Yarmouth Workhouse, 1890s–1900s

Journal of Interdisciplinary History ◽

10.1162/jinh_a_01556 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 51 (2) ◽

pp. 235-265

Author(s):

Steven A. King ◽

Peter Jones

Keyword(s):

Material Culture ◽

Large Scale ◽

Research Projects ◽

Poor Law ◽

Historical Sociolinguistics ◽

Interdisciplinary Methods ◽

The Poor ◽

History Of

A methodological and philosophical focus on scandals has turned the workhouse that stands at the heart of popular and historiographical understandings of the English and Welsh New Poor Law (1834–1929) into a dark place of confinement and harsh treatment that the poor were largely powerless to resist. Yet viewed through the lens of interdisciplinary methods not often applied to the history of welfare—in particular, historical sociolinguistics and material-culture analysis—the pauper letters and “stitched” texts that have emerged from large-scale research projects reveal that inmates’ experience in the workhouse were not as dire, and their voices not as suppressed, as once supposed.

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