‘Great inhumanity’: scandal, child punishment and policymaking in the early years of the New Poor Law workhouse system

Abstract

New Poor Law scandals have usually been examined either to demonstrate the cruelty of the workhouse regime or to illustrate the failings or brutality of union staff. Recent research has used these and similar moments of crisis to explore the relationship between local and central levels of welfare administration (the Boards of Guardians in unions across England and Wales and the Poor Law Commission in Somerset House in London) and how scandals in particular were pivotal in the development of further policies. This article examines both the inter-local and local-centre tensions and policy consequences of the Droxford Union and Fareham Union scandal (1836–1837), which exposed the severity of workhouse punishments towards three young children. The article illustrates the complexities of union cooperation and, as a result of the escalation of public knowledge into the cruelties and investigations thereafter, how the vested interests of individuals within a system manifested themselves in particular (in)actions and viewpoints. While the Commission was a reactive and flexible welfare authority, producing new policies and procedures in the aftermath of crises, the policies developed after this particular scandal made union staff, rather than the welfare system as a whole, individually responsible for the maltreatment and neglect of the poor.

District schools and the erosion of parental rights under the Poor Law: a case study from London (1889–1899)

“…Samantha Shave explains how the Poor Law Commission assumed that between one third and 45 per cent of the workhouse population were under 15 years of age but also felt that children were 'vulnerable and blameless for their poverty'. 12 The Victorians viewed parental authority as absolute and felt parents were responsible for providing for their children in all circumstances including their own deaths. Such absolutist thought meant that child poverty was inherently understood as a form of defective parenting.…”