Thankfully the liberal welfare system took action and made important contribution to reduce the pauperism after 1910 and evidently they were successful. With its help the outdoor pauperism fell by 45% and the indoor by 25%. In addition female, widows and unmarried ladies pauperism decreased as they were applying for jobs more than ever before and employers were not in a position to discriminate them. (M.A CROWTHER 1981, 92)
Nevertheless war also had a positive impact on the population of workhouses where it removed the unemployed and other types, but did not imply on the other groups which are the old, mentally disabled and the helpless. In 1920 the 30% of the workhouses paupers were over the age of 70. However the introduction of Pension Act 1908 was illustrated to keep people out of the workhouses but some people were refused to receive pension because they never worked during their life and were classified as non-deserving. Only those that are over the age on 70 were eligible to receive 5s a week or 7s 6d to married couples. The pension money kept elderly happy and thanked Lord George for its efforts to overcome poverty. (Gazeley I, 2003)
Speenhamland system was another effort which was created to relieve the worrying problems of poverty. The relief would vary depending on the pauper for example the relief would be calculated on the number of children a man had and the market price of bread. However along with this system continuous arguments had emerged. The commissioners identified Speenhamland system as ‘unfair’ because the wages could not increase as the food prices had ascended during the French war. (M.A CROWTHER 1981, 12)
In addition to that the commissioners had found another important issue which had to be solved. It was argued that ‘the pauper claimed relief irrespective of his merits’ which came in to attention of Malthus to comment that working paupers was taking advantage of this regulation by encouraging public to have an imprudent marriages by all means families with number of unwanted children just to get more relief. The development was crucial in order to reach the goal of ‘…relieve the aged and helpless, to bring up unprotected children inhabits of industry and to provide work for all those capable…’ (M.A CROWTHER 1981, 11)
Manual workers were not motivated towards work because they knew that the remaining wage would be paid out by the parish. This attitude brought other improvident behaviours to the workforce such as lack of respect to the employer and no incentive to work hard. For the reason that parish were contributing to the wage, the employers kept wages as low as possible. The majority of the public wanted to take advantage of the poor law. (M.A CROWTHER 1981)
Before 1834, the cost of looking after the poor was increasing year by year. The cost was billed to the middle and upper classes of each town. It was added on to their local taxes. It eventually brought arguments amongst the payers for the reason that paupers were very lazy and unwilling to work despite their physical fitness. Besides that further evidence shows that after the French war southern counties had to pay more poor relief than any other region across the country. This was because of the depression and the nature of the labour market. (M.A CROWTHER 1981)
The current average life expectancy of a male manual worker is much higher than it used to be in 19th century which meant that there used to be high proportion of widows with children which were dependent on poor relief despite that they were employed it was still not enough to meet their essential needs. (M.A CROWTHER 1981). The sickness had always been a major problem for the poor. The industrial revolution brought problems to the poor. The decline of smaller villages communities that were considered to be effective due to closeness of personal relationships made it difficult for the poor to afford doctors. Wages were very low that savings did not exist; the money was more or less enough for their essential needs such as food, water, and clothing. The best prescription for the poor would be high-quality food, which was again far away from the financial possibility. The most glorious help would be from society to intervene and offer help which was not very commonly seen as the pauper had pauper friends. (Derek Fraser, 1976, Chapter 2).
The situation of health service before 1945 was insufficient for the majority of public. Only 1/3 of the public had health insurance which enabled them to receive valuable health care. The wealthy did not struggle as they had the financial potential for the best doctors and the hospitals. The demand for the infirmary was opposed by the governors because of deliberate emphasis on the shame of pauperism. There were few paupers who had the vote before the extension of the franchise in 1867 and 1884 but after the extension the number of pauper voters had increased radically. Then in 1885 the law that sought people to be a pauper to use the infirmary had been brought to an end, which worked remarkably well for the poor. (Anne Digby, 1989)
There have been many acts and reforms of parliament that related to the poor law such as the Medical Act 1858. This act meant that a medical man had to be qualified in both medicine and surgery in order to be employed by the Guardians and also the poor law doctors had to be registered and must hold two formal qualifications. (Office of Public Sector Information) This enabled the poor to receive treatment from more experienced staff. Their essential needs were better met.
Metropolitan Poor Act 1867 was another attempt to relieve the difficulty of the paupers. It was aimed to spread the expense of indoor relief amongst all London parishes and to provide separate administration for infirmaries but apart from the workhouses. (Office of Public Sector Information)
An act to allow free school meals was another action implemented by the government in 1906. McMillan and Jowet the members of the School Board managed to persuade parliament to commence a legislation to make it compulsory for education authorities to provide meals for children. Despite that a report had been produced that highlighted the fact that 50.000 students were attending school just for food, this legislation had not been dropped because ‘ the hungry children had problem in learning and needed food for them to perform better. However it took very long for schools to react to this legislation i.e. in 1939 less than 50% of the schools country wide were providing this service. (L Andrews, 1972). This had positive impact on poverty as there would be less expense to buy essential product for the parent’s point of view.
In relation to free school meals, The Children Act 1908 was another attempt to improve the poverty by preventing poor children accessing workhouses and to protect them from abuse. This law also includes the children to purchase cigarettes. (Harry Hendrick, 1994) Children were the priority issue of the government because they were the future leaders of United Kingdom.
Aneurin Bevan was the key person in the establishment of the NHS. He was the minister for health in1945. He really cared for the working class people because he was very affected of his father’s death who was a miner and died of pneumoconiosis, he had literally seen the lack of healthcare that was provided for paupers. The health service was not the priority concept for the labour, where the housing and the full employment came first. The Beveridge report that was written for the welfare state plan in Britain did not contain much data about the National Health Service. It was Bevan’s plans to nationalise all hospitals under government authority and fund them through taxation, not through insurance. Ultimately NHS now has a reputation as one of the best health care systems in the world. Despite Bevan’s dismissal from the Labour Party in 1930 for his left wing views he had in the end won the backing of the labour cabinet for his plans to bring good healthcare to all public with no segmentation. With his initiative hospitals, doctors, nurses, opticians, dentists and pharmacists are brought under one organisation which the principals are clear: it will be available for everyone in the UK, and the public will pay into it depending on their capital. (Marvin Rintala 2003)
Conclusion
There have been so many actions to tackle the poverty but the commissioners did not realise the poor law itself was the cause of poverty.
As it was stated on the first paragraph of this essay that social policy is “shaped by attitudes and institutions formed under very different conditions in the past”. Therefore it can be said that in the past the Political, Economical, Social and Technological factors were the main influential contributing factors that forced the Liberal government to introduce reforms.
There have been many studies that enlightened ideas such as Seebohm Rowntree’s which found out that in 1901 nearly 1/3 of the population did not have the minimum to live on some time during their life time.
The public was vulnerable to decisions that had been implemented by the government. When Britain went to ‘The Boer War’ it was found that shockingly 2/3 of the men that applied to the army were unfit. The poor law did affect the citizens of UK which had implications in many areas. One of the reasons that Liberal government had started to concentrate more on reform was that the Labour party was growing stronger by attracting working class voters of its determination for welfare reform.
References
- Anne Digby, 1989. British Welfare Policy: Workhouse to Workfare. Faber and Faber LONDON BOSTON
- M.A CROWTHER 1981, The workhouse system 1834-1929, Batsford Academic and Educational LTD. London
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Derek Fraser 1976, The new poor law in the 19th century, The Macmillan Press London and Basingstoke
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(Marvin Rintala 2003), Creating the National Health Service: Aneurin Bevan and the Medical Lords, Frank Cass Publishers. London
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Office of Public Sector Information -
- L Andrews 1972, The School Meals Service, in British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1 (February, 1972), pp. 70-75
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(Harry Hendrick 1994, Child Welfare: England 1872-1969, Taylor & Francis ( page 177)
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Gazeley I 2003) Poverty in Britain 1900-1945, , (2003)
