The Aims and Principles of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act
In the decades prior to the national reform of the Poor Law in 1834,
the characterisations of the administration were of variety rather
than uniformity. The social and economic changes at this time produced
many problems for those that were responsible for the social welfare.
Many areas throughout the country though found solutions to this
problem within the legal frame-work of the Elizabethan Poor Law of
1597-1601.
In the initial stages the amendment act was set up to reduce the
amount of poor rates that were being paid. In the first ten years of
the amendment act the amount of relief being paid was reduced to a
national average of four million to five million a year.
One of the principles of the amendment act was to encourage the 'poor'
to work for what they received because poverty was looked upon as the
fault of the individual, so therefore the amount of relief that was
payable was set at a rate that was lower that the lowest paid
labourer. This was enforced to dissuade people from claiming benefits,
so in the mid to late 1800's many workhouses were built to house the
poor and thus forcing them to work, often in squalid conditions.
This is a quote by the assistant poor law commissioner:
"Our intention is to make the workhouses as like prisons as possible…
our object is to establish therein a discipline so severe and
repulsive as to make them a terror to the poor". (Thompson, 1963, p.
295).
Although in previous years the able bodied would wander from parish to
parish to gain more relief for themselves, the taxpayers wanted this
to stop. They were very re...
... middle of paper ...
...hey were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different
planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a
different food, are ordered by different manners and are not governed
by the same laws.'
'You speak of -'said Egremont hesitatingly, 'the rich and the poor.'
(Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil 1845, book 2, chapter 5).
Bibliography.
Digby, A. (1982) The Poor Law in 19th Century Englandand Wales.
London: Chameleon Press ltd.
Fraser, D. (2003) 3rd Ed. The Evolution of the British Welfare State.
Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stitt, S. (1994) Poverty and Poor Relief: Concepts and Reality.
Surrey: Avebury.
Timmins, N. (1996) 2nd Ed. The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare
State. Glasgow: Fontana Press.
Lecture notes.
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There was a growing sense that the poor did not deserve assistance and so in 1834 the ‘Poor Law Amendment Act’ was introduced. This was designed to make conditions more severe and to even further force self-improvement amongst the poor. ‘The central objective…was to withdraw poor relief from men judged ‘able-bodied’ in Poor Law terminology’. (Thane: 1978: 29) Alternatives such as the work-house were introduced. The notion that you should only ask for help if you desperately needed it as a last resource loomed. The Charity Organisation Society was ‘a body w...
Have you ever thought about how it would be to live in poverty or how would life be if you didn’t know where your next meal was coming from? , well these were the questions that would haunt kids, adults and elderly people in the nineteenth century.
Mary Poovey, “Domesticity and Class Formation: Chadwick’s 1842 Sanitary Report,” in Making a Social Body: British Cultural Formation, 1839-1864 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 115-131
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Wohl, Anthony S. The Eternal Slum: Housing and Social Policy in Victorian London. London: Edward Arnold, 1977.
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