The Poor Law Bill was proposed by William Pitt the Younger to parliament in 1796. The law was put forth in order to ostensibly aid the plight of the poor citizenry while also quelling concerns of proletariat uprising. The revolution in France worried many, but others were concerned about the effect that the law would have on inflation. The law was based in large part on the Speenhamland System that was being practiced locally across the nation.  The law failed to pass parliament and while the Speenhamland system would persist in certain areas for decades, this failure at a national level would delay other poor law changes until 1834. The proposal also included allowing children to work at the age of five years old with long hours which was controversial at the time leading to the failure of the bill as well.

Sources:

Deane, Phyllis, The First Industrial Revolution (Cambridge Press, Cambridge; 1965)

Nicholls and Mackay, A History of the English Poor Law (1899)

1782 saw the passage of The Poor Relief Act of 1782; it is widely known as Gilbert’s Act after Thomas Gilbert (1720-1798), a political figure who championed its passage. Gilbert’s Act was a reaction to an increase of poor and unemployed paupers, increased food costs, and low wages in England. The legislation was created to enable a parish- township formed through its affiliation with a local parish church- to operate workhouses; multiple parishes can form unions in order to share the financial cost of operating a workhouse. These workhouses were restricted to those who are not able-bodied, such as children, the elderly, and the sick. Able-bodied paupers were not allowed to enter the workhouse and were forced to find employment; nonetheless, they were able to receive outdoor relief if they could not able to find a job or found a job with inadequate income. Parishes gave employers employing the able-bodied paupers allowances in order to provide a subsistence wage and decrease poverty. Gilbert’s Act changed also how workhouses were managed: a member from each parish was elected to be on the Board of Guardians and regulated by the Visitor, an official elected my the magistrate.

This Act became significant regarding outdoor relief and participation of the gentry in poor relief politics. The Act reflected changing opinions towards outdoor relief held by both the government and people, which was motivated by the belief that it is more humane and less expensive than indoor relief. Local gentry were allowed to be members of the Board of Guardians of the workhouse, which made them influential in workhouse managements and regulations.

Sources:

Bloy, Marjie. “Gilbert’s Act (1782.)” Accessed January 10, 2016. http://www.victorianweb.org/history/poorlaw/gilbert.html.

Boyer, George. “English Poor Laws.” Accessed January 10, 2016. https://eh.net/encyclopedia/english-poor-laws/.

Higginbotham, Peter. “The 1782 Poor Relief Act (Gilbert’s Act.)” Accessed January 10, 2016. http://www.workhouses.org.uk/poorlaws/1782intro.shtml.

Higginbotham, Peter. “The History of Poor Law Unions.” Accessed January 10, 2016. http://www.workhouses.org.uk/unions/index.shtml.

Higginbotham, Peter. “The Old Poor Law.” Accessed January 10, 2016. http://www.workhouses.org.uk/poorlaws/oldpoorlaw.shtml#Gilbert.

Queen Mary I, despite the controversial reigns of Empress Matilda and Lady Jane Grey, has long been lauded as the first queen regnant of England. However, being England’s first queen may be the only aspect of her monarchy that she is praised for; following her accession to the throne in October of 1553, Queen Mary began repealing Protestant reforms promoted by her predecessor King Edward VI. Supported by the Heresy Acts, Queen Mary earned her nickname ‘Bloody Mary’ through the execution and immolation of over 250 Protestants on the stake in the span of four years.¹ Despite strong discontent from her advisors, and even husband, she continued with the practice until her death in 1558.

During Queen Mary’s time in power, she did little to promote the livelihoods of the vagrants and poor people she ruled. Over her 5 year reign, she produced two poor relief laws: one aimed to provide assistance to the deserving and the other to add structure to poor relief. The first provision required beggars to be licensed if they wanted to beg outside of their parish’s jurisdiction; beggars who could not produce their badge upon request were beaten or lashed. The second provision mandated wealthy parishes to donate to the funds of their less affluent counterparts at a rate ‘according to their ability’. Compared to her predecessors, Queen Mary’s impact on social welfare matters was negligible. Given her deathly strong Catholic convictions, it is surprising that Queen Mary I did little to embrace her religious role as patron to the poor.

¹ The Heresy Acts outline how to respond to the presence of different, provocative theories that challenge ones own religious beliefs. The original act called for the arrests of heretic preachers.

Sources:

Fideler, Paul A. Social Welfare in Pre-industrial England: The Old Poor Law Tradition. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

“Mary I (r.1553-1558)”. The Official Website of the British Monarchy. British Government, n.d. Web. 10 Jan. 2016.

“Mary I: Queen of England.” Tudor History. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Jan. 2016.

Modelled after the London Corporation of the Poor of the Interregnum, a welfare experiment begun in 1647, the later Corporations of the Poor in Exeter, Bristol, and Norwich among others were projects between 1698 and 1712 that worked to centralize the systems of poor relief under the direction of parliament. The corporations were entrusted with the responsibility of creating and managing workhouses for the poor as well as hospitals. They involved many men forming committees to make decisions about how to allocate the money from taxes, building centralized workhouses designed to house many people and put them to work. These workhouses kept meticulous records and employed paid officials to administer the workhouses in an effort to curb discretionary charity.

The previous system of welfare in place before the corporations was the parish and the churchwardens. These parishes collected taxes from locals and redistributed them to the poor at the discretion of the churchwardens by means of face-to-face charity, unlike the corporations which distanced the people in power from the ones receiving aid. The taxes collected by the parishes had been rising and one effort of parliament was to set a ceiling on the parish tax rates. Members of parliament created the corporations as an experiment to make poor people productive members of society, minimizing the costs of their welfare. Many of the churchwardens were opposed to this new system of welfare and worked to bring down the corporations.

Carey, John. An account of the proceedings of the corporation of Bristol, in execution of the act of Parliament for the better employing and maintaining the poor of that city. F. Collins in the Old Bailey, 1700.

Slack, Paul. The English Poor Law, 1531-1782. London: MacMillan Education LTD, 1990.

Some considerations offer’d to the citizens of Bristol: relating to the Corporation for the Poor in the said city. Bristol, 1711.

The commission’s principal proposal, which was included almost verbatim in the law, was that “all relief whatever to able-bodied persons or to their families, otherwise than in well-regulated workhouses…shall be declared unlawful.” This reflected the efforts to centralize and streamline management of the poor. As part of the establishment of workhouses, the so-called workhouse test was unofficially implemented: any person willing to accept relief in the workhouse was assumed to lack the willpower to survive outside of the system, as well as to completely lack the means to retain personal autonomy (i.e. children, the elderly and disabled); in many cases this belief simply confirmed pre-existing biases and assumptions about the general lack of industriousness among the poor.

In some respects the New Poor Law resembles the suggestions made by Locke in his An Essay on Poor Law. Under the newly passed legislation, children were treated as dependents of their parents until the age of sixteen, as opposed to Locke’s suggested fourteen. The law also grouped parishes into Poor Law Unions (which resemble Locke’s hundreds and corporations), each run by two commissioners, which oversaw the administration of workhouses. Additionally, the law proscribed residents of the workhouses (they are referred to as inmates in one particular clause) from engaging in normal everyday activities, and they were always under the watchful eyes of the managers.

Sources:

Higginbotham, Peter. “New Poor Law.” Accessed January 9, 2016. http://www.workhouses.org.uk/poorlaws/newpoorlaw.shtml
Higginbotham, Peter. “1834 Poor Law Amendment Act (full text).” Accessed January 9, 2016. http://www.workhouses.org.uk/poorlaws/1834act.shtml
Locke, John, and Mark Goldie. 1997. Locke: Political Essays. Cambridge University Press.

The English civil wars, which spanned from 1642-1649, stemmed from a conflict between King Charles I and Parliament. Since neither Charles I nor Parliament could agree on how to handle their political and religious differences, war was seen as the only viable solution to settle the disagreement. Thus England was divided into two armed camps: the Royalists and the Parliamentarians.

Charles the I, however, was not very popular as a king due to his views on religious conformity, which poorly served the needs of  many.  Social change during this time period included a decline in the influence of the aristocracy alongside the rise of the wealth and influence of the middle class of gentry and merchants. The middle class desired to do away with financial and commercial restrictions and to have a say in religious matters. This meant that parliament found allies in the middle class.

After beheading King Charles, the Commonwealth was created. The Commonwealth was a government administration that claimed legitimacy from the consent of the people, and allowed much more religious diversity. Parliament was able to gain a tremendous amount of political influence during this time period with the expansion of trade, industry, shipping, etc. This republican government lasted until 1653 where it was taken over by Cromwell’s protectorate, another type of government rule that lasted until 1659. The eventual settlement of the dispute between the king and parliament would be further resolved during the Great Revolution in 1688.

Works Cited

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia®. S.v. “English Civil War.” Retrieved February 3 2016 from http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/English+Civil+War.

Kreis, Steven. “The English Civil War.” History Guide. 2002. Accessed February 2, 2016. http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/lecture7c.html.

Onnekink, David. Ideology and Foreign Policy in Early Modern Europe: (1650 – 1750). Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2011.

The Glorious Revolution was a revolution that happened between 1688 and 1689 in which King James II was overthrown from power William of Orange ascended to the throne of England. The Glorious Revolution is important because it produced the Bill of Rights of 1698, which made the Parliament the permanent ruling power of England and significantly reduced the monarchy’s power to interfere with and affect laws.

James II was disliked by many Parliamentarians and Protestants for being an overt Roman Catholic. James II issued a Declaration of Indulgence, which suspended laws that punished individuals for leaving the Church of England and granted religious freedom to different denominations of Christianity. This led Bishop Crompton along with other politicians to invite William of Orange to come to England and help address James II actions. William came with an army and, after James II fled to France for his safety, called for a Convention Parliament that determined that, by fleeing to France, James II had abdicated to the throne. In January 22, 1689, the Convention Parliament passed the Bill of Rights of 1689, which made William the King, and established Parliament as the permanent ruling power.

The Bill gives Parliament the power to suspend and execute laws, it makes the raising of an army without consent of Parliament illegal, it gives freedom of speech and debate within parliament and outlaws cruel and unusual punishment, and it also states that “[the] election of Parliament members ought to be free.”

Sources:

Eveline Cruickshanks, British History in Perspective: The Glorious Revolution (New York: St. Martin’s Press, INC, 2000).

“Glorious Revolution” Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Last Accessed: January 10, 2016.          http://www.britannica.com/event/Glorious-Revolution.

“English Bill of Rights 1698” The Avalon Project. Last Accessed: January 10, 2016.         http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/england.asp.

In 1798, under the Pseudonym of Joshua Johnson, British political economist, Thomas Malthus published the first edition of An Essay on the Principles of Population. Widely read and circulated, Malthus’s essay illustrated a pessimistic outlook on the future due to the repercussions of overpopulation.

In An Essay on the Principles of Population, Malthus highlights that the rate of population growth grows geometrically, while subsistence grows arithmetically. Therefore this inequality in rates would cause the population to outpace food output causing devastating effects such as famines and wars. 

Malthus identified two types of population checks to prevent overpopulation. The first type of check was called the “preventive check”, which advocated that individuals should use self- restraint, such as marrying at a later age or sexual abstinence. The second type of population check was called the “positive check”. Positive checks were checks that occurred naturally due to overpopulation, such as famine, disease and war.  

Written in a period of astounding development and social change, Malthus’s controversial works were extremely influential to British policy-makers. His writings were pivotal in the creation of new enactments that would help shape Britain’s 20th century social policy, such as the creation of the first modern, national UK census, which was conducted in 1801, and the influential passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. 

Sources:

On July 31, 1547, Edward VI issued a royal injunction which decreed that parishes would furnish a chest for the collection of donations to the poor, to be placed near the high altar. This injunction was reflective of the post-Reformation climate in England; while the post-Reformation closing of hospitals and almshouses had left a void in local charity, money from these alms chests proved a more consistent form of aid for the poor, especially given that lay-people were encouraged to donate the money which they would have previously spent on newly banned Catholic practices. Official collections took place on Sundays and holy days, thus integrating almsgiving as a part of the churchgoer’s routine. In 1552, a new statute was passed which emphasized almsgiving further, assigning several parishioners each year to act as Collectors, who were to go about and seek donations from their fellow parishioners. Those who were financially able yet refused to donate were reported to parish officials, who would then continue to pressure the person into donating. In this way, almsgiving became an expected practice, rather than an exceptional outpouring of generosity. These changes would lay the basis for aid practices that would continue in the latter half of the sixteenth century and beyond.

In sharp contrast to the apparent goodwill of almsgiving acts, though, The Vagrancy Act of 1547 imposed a punishment of two years slavery upon vagabonds (a notoriously vague term in the first place). Although this was soon repealed in 1549 for being too harsh, this repeal only marked a regression to the vagrancy statute of 1530-1, which dictated that vagrants were “to be tied naked to a cart” and “whipped out of the town.”

Davies, C. S. L.. 1966. “Slavery and Protector Somerset; the Vagrancy Act of 1547”. The Economic History Review 19 (3). [Economic History Society, Wiley]: 533–49.

Bridewell Prison was the first house of correction in England. Originally built as a royal palace for Henry VIII in 1515, Edward VI gave Bridewell to the City of London in 1553. Bridewell was established to be multipurpose, with a “keeper’s side” serving as a correctional facility and a “steward’s side” for housing orphans. The prison held those who committed minor crimes; usually vice, vagrancy, or prostitution. Rather than a place of incarceration, it was meant to be a place to punish and correct inmates through whippings and hard labor, and most offenders were released within two weeks of their arrival. Bridewell changed greatly during the prison reform era, with the open prison system – prisoners being allowed to interact and possessions allowed in and out – being replaced by a stricter regime.

The orphanage aimed to provide a home for deserving children and offer them a basic education and training in some skill. The program was smaller than the prison, and it was reduced with the decline of apprenticeships in the late 1700s and prison reformers’ concerns about inmates’ corrupting the students.

A Court of Governors and various Committees, who jointly ran Bridewell with Bethlem Hospital, managed the residents and the finances of the institution. A notable aspect of Bridewell’s operations was its particularly comprehensive health system. Because Bridewell served as both an orphanage and a prison, and people wanted to care for the children, both a physician and a surgeon attended to the inmates and orphans.

Over its 300 years of operation, Bridewell became the basis for future orphanages, workhouses, and prisons. Within just three years of its initiation, similar institutions increased immensely all over Europe. The word “bridewell” became synonymous with “large prison”. Bridewell, as the first house of correction, set important precedents for inmate standards and systems of governance of correctional institutions for the rest of the country and world.

Sources:

Fideler, Paul A. Social Welfare in Pre-industrial England: The Old Poor Law Tradition. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 80-82.

Hitchcock, Tim; Sharon Howard and Robert Shoemaker, “Bridewell”, London Lives, 1690-1800. Accessed January 10, 2016. (http://www.londonlives.org/static/Bridewell.jsp#toc6, version, 1.1 17 June 2012).

Hitchcock, Tim; Sharon Howard and Robert Shoemaker, “Houses of Correction”, London Lives, 1690-1800. Accessed January 10, 2016. (http://www.londonlives.org/static/HousesOfCorrection.jsp, version, 1.1 17 June 2012).

Hitchcock, Tim; and Robert Shoemaker. London Lives: Poverty, Crime and the Making of a Modern City, 1690–1800. Cambridge University Press, 2015. Kindle Edition. 306.