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 resentful of having to pay huge amounts of tax to supplement the poor.
The idea of the workhouse was to ensure that the poor did not go in search of relief elsewhere. The way to stop this from happening was to reduce the fifteen thousand parishes into six hundred Poor Law unions. There was a great willingness to keep the poor in one place and so by 1843 there was one hundred and ninety seven thousand one hundred and seventy nine poor incarcerated into the workhouses. The workhouses were often described as bastilles.
“I do not agree with those who say that every man must look after himself, and that intervention by the state, will be fatal to his self-reliance, his foresight and his thrift…. It is a mistake to suppose that thrift is caused only by fear; it springs from hope as well as fear. Where there is no hope, be sure there will be no thrift”. (Winston Churchill, Liberalism and the Social Problems, 1909, p. 209).
Many administrators were outraged at the idea of Central Government becoming involved in the Amendment Act because as far as they were concerned the old system was more than sufficient for the needs of the poor. The Poor Law Guardians then set about obstructing the Poor Law Amendment Act, as they thought it was an unnecessary addition to the current act. The worst of the activities to block this new act was in Huddersfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire. (As was).
The Amendment Act was supposed to help the poor but instead all it did was alienate those people and cause distress. They were forced to wear pauper uniforms and had the right to vote taken away from them.
In 1839, Thomas Carlyle wrote:
‘The New Poor Law is an announcement…. that whosoever will not work ought not to live. Can the poor man that is willing to work always find work and live by his work? A man willing but unable to find work is…. the saddest thing under the sun.’
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Although the New Poor Law did reduce the amount of relief that was paid to individuals, in the long term it created a greater amount of poverty stricken families. It also showed that the New Law was heartless and gave more to the rich than the poor. The hierarchy soon realised that outdoor relief could not be totally abolished, so separate poor law institutions were set up for the young and the sick and in some parishes, boards of guardians paid small weekly amounts to those who were unable to work.
‘Two nations: between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts and feelings, as if they 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 England and 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.