The Workhouse Population of the Nottingham Union, 1881-1882

2017 ◽  
pp. 66-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Purser
Keyword(s):  
Local Politics ◽  
Population Analysis ◽  
Seasonal Pattern ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Resident Population ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Using Data

The purpose of this article is to examine and analyse the resident population of the Nottingham Union Workhouse during a 12-month period beginning on Lady Day 1881. Using data drawn from the workhouse admission and discharge registers this study analyses the seasonal pattern of admissions and discharges as revealed by the registers, and also considers how this pattern might be related to the local economy. The Nottingham region had been a beacon of good practice in the treatment of the poor in the years leading up to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, but soon became a centre of resistance to the New Poor Law. Local politics and the textile trade cycle not only prevented the legislation from being fully implemented after 1834, but also dictated the economic and social conditions which prevailed in Nottingham in the later nineteenth century. The population analysis is based not only on the relevant admission and discharge register data, but also includes a study of the workhouse census information for 1881. The incidence of birth in the workhouse is also assessed together with the use made of the workhouse by women for giving birth and 'lying-in'.

Dickens’s National Novel

2021 ◽  
pp. 219-245
Author(s):  
Josephine McDonagh
Keyword(s):  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Bleak House ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Law ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
National Borders

Bleak House is a novel saturated with figures of unsettlement, in which characters uprooted by their social conditions operate within a plot animated by unsettlement, in an affective world dominated by feelings of pity and sympathy for those who have been displaced. Thresholds recur in the novel as privileged sites of heightened emotion. The novel’s preoccupation with unsettlement is best understood in the context of mid-century bourgeois aspirations to reimagine the nation as a place in which all citizens might enjoy freedom of movement. In framing this vision, Dickens draws on two contemporary discourses, one drawn from emigration, especially Caroline Chisholm’s popular ‘family emigration’ schemes; the other from public discussions about the law of settlement in the context of the New Poor Law. The latter were attempts to regulate where the poor could live, in the context of the bureaucratic reorganization of national geography that occurred at this time. Throughout, however, the novel displays profound ambivalence about Britain’s engagement with the wider world, expressed most clearly through its antagonism to overseas philanthropy, which it sees as a misdirection of national feeling. The novel’s vision of the nation, underpinned by its commitment to mobility and an ideology of freedom of movement within, but not beyond, the nation, produces its particular formal features and thematic emphases on mobility and movement, and its preoccupation with thresholds—doorsteps, entrances, and finally national borders—as places at which political decisions about inclusion and exclusion are made.

The Relief of the Poor in Coventry, 1830–1863

1977 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Searby
Keyword(s):  
Local Economy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Will ◽  
Law Commission

Recent writers have pointed out that the 1834 act often made little immediate difference to the practice of local poor-law authorities. The poor-law commissioners lacked the means or the will to enforce their programme. Poor law unions did not replace the township as the effective unit of administration. The same men (albeit with different titles) remained in control. Authorities continued to vary greatly in efficiency and generosity, strong determinants of leniency or harshness being the fortunes of the local economy and the strength of local impulses towards paternalism or frugality. In Nottinghamshire, for example, relief policy became steadily more stringent from the 1820s onwards, largely owing to the work of cost-conscious magistrates; 1834 speeded the current, rather than changed its course. On the other hand, in the Durham unions surveyed by Peter Dunkley, relief was generous throughout the 1830s, but stingy when the local economy was hit by slump after 1840; in the Hungry Forties, the Durham unions were as ruthless as the poor law commission in their attitude towards the poor – and sometimes, indeed, were more so, the commission protesting vainly against the overcrowding of workhouses. Even local authorities' generous phases reflected a shrewd assessment of the ratepayers' best interests: Rhodes Boyson has shown how the north-east Lancashire unions' insistence on continuing outdoor relief was due in part to a realisation that to enforce indoor relief in all cases would be much more costly.

Workhouse Populations of the Preston Union, 1841–61

2014 ◽  
pp. 33-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis Darwen
Keyword(s):  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
High Concentration ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Fertile Ground

The census enumerators' books (CEBs) have provided fertile ground for studies of workhouse populations in recent years, though it has been acknowledged that work remains to be done on different regions and periods to develop our understanding of these institutions and the paupers who resided therein. This article will examine the indoor pauper populations of the Preston union, in Lancashire, over three census years from 1841. The region, which is notable for a protracted campaign of resistance to the New Poor Law and its associated workhouse system, has been previously neglected in studies of workhouse populations focusing on the decades immediately after the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. It will be shown that the profile of the union's workhouse populations broadly mirrors those found elsewhere at the aggregate level, but that important variations reflected local and central policy. A high concentration of able-bodied paupers—in particular—seems to indicate ideas governing local policy which were not carried out elsewhere.

scholarly journals Acute Financial Hardship and Voter Turnout: Theory and Evidence from the Sequence of Bank Working Days

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
MAX SCHAUB
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Financial Hardship ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Financial Status ◽  
Definitive Answer ◽  
Financial Difficulties ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Using Data

How does poverty influence political participation? This question has interested political scientists since the early days of the discipline, but providing a definitive answer has proved difficult. This article focuses on one central aspect of poverty—the experience of acute financial hardship, lasting a few days at a time. Drawing on classic models of political engagement and novel theoretical insights, I argue that by inducing stress, social isolation, and feelings of alienation, acute financial hardship has immediate negative effects on political participation. Inference relies on a natural experiment afforded by the sequence of bank working days that causes short-term financial difficulties for the poor. Using data from three million individuals, personal interviews, and 1,100 elections in Germany, I demonstrate that acute financial hardship reduces both turnout intentions and actual turnout. The results imply that the financial status of the poor on election day can have important consequences for their political representation.

The Relief of Poverty in Mid Nineteenth-Century Colyton

Rural History ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Robin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Present Form ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poor Person ◽  
The Welfare State

The welfare state emerged in 1948 when the National Assistance Act finally abolished the New Poor Law Forty-two years later, as politicians and bureaucrats struggle to keep increasing expenditure within bounds, the existence of the welfare state in its present form is under threat. Just over 150 years ago, the Old Poor Law was presenting parish ratepayers with a similar problem of rising costs, leading in 1834 to a fundamental reorganisation into the New Poor Law It may therefore be profitable to see how effective in practice the New Poor Law was when it replaced a system widely regarded as profligate, and to consider the extent to which benefits payable through the welfare state were available a hundred years or more ago.This study examines in detail how the New Poor Law, and other forms of relief, affected the whole population of the rural parish of Colyton, in south Devonshire, during the thirty years from 1851 to 1881. It will first describe the sources from which a poor person in Colyton in the mid nineteenth century could look for relief; next discuss how widespread poverty was and who the poor were; then look at what kinds of relief were available, under what conditions; and finally assess the comparative importance to the poor of the different agencies providing assistance.

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