What was the impact of the Poor Law Amendment Act on the relief of poverty?

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Veena Jeebooah

According to Englander (1998) “The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act is one of the most important pieces of legislation ever enacted” (Ch. 1 p. 1). Its principles and systems dominated attitudes to welfare provisions for the next eighty years as well as having a serious impact on the relief of poverty in Britain.

This was an era where poverty was widespread. Being without work, pensions or unemployment benefits resulted in serious consequences. In 1849, Henry Mayhew divided the labouring poor into those who will work, those who cannot work and those who will not work. There were the able-bodied poor who undertook a variety of jobs, the able-bodied poor who could not work because there was simply no work for them and the poor who chose not to work. Briscoe (2011) noted this when writing about categorising the poor.  “These were people who often turned to crime to make a living such as highwaymen or pickpockets, migrant workers who roamed the country looking for work, and individuals who begged for a living”. (British History in Depth: Poverty in Elizabethan England).

Charles Booth set out to determine the causes of poverty. He saw that eighty five percent of those living in poverty were poor due to problems such as unemployment, short-time working and low pay. Seebohm Rowntree built on Booth’s work by investigating poverty in York. His results showed that twenty eight percent of the population were living below the poverty line and ten percent were in primary poverty. When writing about the causes of poverty, Briscoe (2011) agreed by saying, “As the standard of living dropped, the problem of vagrancy worsened and this was to have repercussions for the country as a whole”. (British History in Depth: Poverty in Elizabethan England). Rowntree went on to establish the poverty line as having insufficient funds to purchase a basket of food.

The fear of poverty was the main drive of identifying the different groups of poor. People wanted to make sure that they were receiving the right treatment and it was also to determine those who were deserving of help and those who were not. It was feared that if too much help was provided, the undeserving poor would see no reason to look for work and perhaps the deserving poor might see the attractions of an idle life with adequate support and become immoral too.

The 1601 Elizabethan Poor Law divided the poor into two groups. The impotent poor were helped by outdoor relief and the able-bodied paupers were set to work in workhouses. Those who refused to work were punished in houses of correction. Each parish was responsible to administer relief to it’s own poor as Slack (1990) noted, “this had become a legal entitlement under Elizabethan statutes” (Ch. 3 (ii) p. 35) but the law stated that a person claiming relief had to return to their place of birth in order to receive it. An issue that arose in the administration of relief was the entitlement of it. Not everyone within a parish have a legal right to settlement. The Settlement Law of 1662 clarified a person could claim relief based on their birth, marriage, apprenticeship or inheritance. Further legislation in 1697 prevented people entering a parish without a settlement certificate. However, the legislation was not popular and did nothing to prevent migration into the emerging cities.

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Outdoor relief remained the most common method of support to the poor because it was easy to administer and could be applied flexibly. It provided payments for a range of needs, or relief in kind such as clothing and food, with the intent of enabling the able-bodied poor to remain at home. The workhouse was described by the Cotton Times (2007) as “a public institution which housed and fed people who were unable to support themselves”. (Cotton Times – Workhouses). However, from about 1750, industrialisation, a sequence of bad harvests and the Napoleonic wars almost brought the Poor Law system ...

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