Introduction: pauper policies

Abstract

The opening chapter explains the book’s purpose, to understand the practice of the poor laws in England. It provides a history of the main poor laws, paying particular attention to the period 1780 to 1850. The introduction will explain why this research does not follow the direction of recent research about individuals’ experiences of welfare receipt, instead making the case for the rethinking and repositioning of the importance of relief administration. The book unpicks the dynamism of pauper policies: how they emerged, were taken up, implemented and developed in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. This is achieved using a ‘policy process’ approach developed by social scientists, which allows for an understanding of the dynamism of policy, as well as for the identification and examination distinct parts of the policy process. The chapter then introduces the context of the research, southern England, an area of varied employment opportunities but immense poverty in the late eighteenth century. The introduction finishes with descriptions of the remaining chapters, guiding the reader through the book.

Paupers Behaving Badly: Punishment in the Victorian Workhouse

“…156 Samantha Shave has shown how Boards of Guardians, assistant Poor Law commissioners, and the Poor Law Commission transferred locally derived knowledge in "knowledge networks" through correspondence, visits, and publications. 157 This was evidently not the case in Norfolk, however, where Mitford and Launditch and Norwich operated very differently.…”

Cottages for farm labouring families: plans, exhortations and realities (1825–50)

“…96 Earlier law-making attempts had allowed local areas to establish select vestries and appoint overseers to control poor relief expenditure. 97 These had, however, widely been viewed as inadequate to lessen the national 'poor rate burden'. Initiating 1834 'poor law amendment' proceedings, Lord Althorpfor the governmentportrayed an existing situation injurious to 'landed proprietors, the farmers, and the poor themselves'.…”

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

“…For reasons outlined below the Great Yarmouth Poor Law Union has an iconic place in poor law history alongside places like Bridgewater, Poplar, Atcham, Andover and Brixworth, though it remains less well-explored than all of these places. 19 It is also notable for the scale of its pauper lunatic population in relation to other workhouse groups, a matter to which we return below. The article runs broadly from the early 1890s, just prior to the coming of democracy in local poor law elections, through the Liberal Welfare Reforms and to the eve of the First World War.…”