Examine the extent to which the new Poor Law was more effective than the system it replaced?

Authors Avatar

Examine the extent to which the new Poor Law was more effective than the system it replaced?

Firstly, the word ‘effective’ needs clarification- more effective for whom? There were two groups who could have benefited from the reformed Poor Law- the ratepayers, and the poor. Unfortunately, the interests of the two groups were mutually exclusive. I will test the four basic terms of the new Act for their effectiveness and benefits for both groups. The Royal Commission that investigated the Old Poor Law had strong Benthamite influences, such as Edwin Chadwick, the secretary. The key principle behind Benthamism was that if a law or institution was not useful and/or efficient, it must be changed or scrapped. Because the report became the Act, it was heavily influenced by the Benthamite doctrine of ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number’, and in this case, the greatest number was the taxpayers.

What needs to be looked at in order to gauge the effectiveness of the replacement system is what problems the old system caused, and how/if the new measures solved them. Firstly, the old Poor Law Act had existed since 1601 and although it had gone through several alterations during the Tudor and Stuart eras, it was already over two hundred years old. The system was not centralised, but shaped through local practice and varied widely in over 15,000 parishes. Although the system had existed for such a great length of time, its cost was increasing. While this increase had previously been accepted as a natural by-product and necessary consequence of the 1793-1815 war with France, after 1815, there came mounting displeasure with the rising costs and poor operation of the Law. The criticisms mainly came from the ratepayers, who felt that the current system was outdated, and poorly administered, becoming too much of a burden on them and strongly advocated cutting the costs of the systems. Another major problem was that although measures had been put in place with the intention of helping the jobless poor, increasing numbers of able-bodied workers were depending on public charity, due to outdoor relief schemes, which gave allowances to ‘top up’ wages (known as ‘outdoor relief’). This encouraged many employers to pay their workers less, because they knew the parish would supplement their wages.

Join now!

One example of such a scheme was the ‘Speenhamland System’ where the supplement was a sliding scale dependant on the size of the family and the current price of bread. It was copied, with some variation, throughout most of Southern and Eastern England, aimed at stopping the gap and preventing mass poverty and starvation while prices were extremely high during the war. However, this depressed already low wages, and encouraged the workers to depend on charity, rather than their pay. The supplement also increased with the size of the worker’s family, so this system also encouraged larger families, overstretching ...

This is a preview of the whole essay