Category: Timeline

Before the passage of the 1598 Act for the Relief of the Poor and the 1601 Poor Relief Act, there existed many iterations of legislation regarding how to address the problem of poverty in England. However, the Acts of 1598 and 1601 marked the completion of the Elizabethan poor laws. These laws established parishes as central administrative authorities, which were charged with setting local tax rates, relieving the impotent, setting the able-bodied people to work, and apprenticing poor children. Each member of the community was required to pay a poor-tax or risk punishment, and all begging and almsgiving became illegal unless sanctioned by the parish. Unpaid officials called Overseers of the Poor saw to the daily operations of the poor law, such as providing the necessary materials to put paupers to work, while supervised loosely by Justices of the Peace. These Justices also oversaw the construction of places of habitation for those who could not care for themselves and houses of correction in order to incarcerate criminals, vagabonds, and those able-bodied people who refused employment. There currently does not exist a definitive explanation for the rise of English poor laws, which distinguished England from countries without similar systems (such as France). However, likely contributing factors include rising population pressure, an evolving conception of what governments should do for the poor, driven by humanism, Protestantism or Puritanism, and the political ambitions of various members of the government who wished to control their subjects.

Sources:

Slack, Paul., and Economic History Society. The English Poor Law, 1531-1782. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1990.

Smart, Hentry. “THE ELIZABETHAN POOR LAWS.” The Practical Teacher 25, no. 11 (1905): 572-574.

In the early nineteenth century, the relationship between skilled workers and factory and machinery owners was very strained. During and after Britain’s wars with Napoleonic France, there were many attacks on machines by a group of skilled workers called the Luddites. They were skilled workers protesting the labor economizing technology because it threatened their position in the factory. In their view, it would lead to the loss of their jobs and the hiring of less skilled workers to operate this new machinery. They posed an internal danger to Britain after the war in 1812, and they would attack machines and machinery owners, and such hosiery centers in Derby, Leicester and Nottingham.

The Swing Riots, occurring in 1830-1832, grew out of the ongoing unrest and struggle between workers and owners over wages and working hours. This unrest lead to riots in the south and east of Britain, in places such as Bedfordshire, Flitwick and Maulden, which resulted in incendiarism, machine breaking, wage riots, assaults and threatening letters.

These two displays of unrest in Britain were significant because they lead to movements of reform in British politics. As a result of the Luddites, the government may have responded with military force and draconian laws, but it was the beginning of demands for reform in Britain. As for the Swing Riots, better bargaining positions were gained for workers, and the Swing riots are viewed as the final straw in removing the old Poor laws and the ushering in of the new Poor laws.

Sources:

Williams, Samantha. Poverty, Gender and Life-Cycle Under the English Poor Law 1760-1834. The Royal Historical Society: The Boydell Press, 2011. 98-100.

Brundage, Anthony. The English Poor Laws, 1700-1930. New York: Palgrave Press, 2002. 44-45.

Beginning in 1536, King Henry VIII dissolved over 800 monasteries, friaries, abbeys, and nunneries. This political move continued his rejection of the Roman Catholic Church in favor of greater autonomy by creating the Anglican Church. The dissolution of the monasteries aimed to further diminish papal influence in England and silence any domestic opposition to the English Reformation, while also collecting wealth from the institutions themselves to line his own pockets. Numerous monastery libraries were destroyed, and many impressive buildings left to ruin. Beyond the political and religious implications, the king’s actions had important social consequences. Prior to their dissolution, monasteries and the other religious institutions were a major provider of welfare to England’s poor, and monasteries alone provided nearly £6,500 a year in charity before 1537. After these religious institutions were disbanded, England lost a significant part of its poverty relief infrastructure, leaving a vacuum in society. This vacuum allowed greater government involvement in social welfare, as well as the development of new forms of poverty relief.

Sources:

British Library. “Dissolution of the Monasteries.” Learning Timelines: Sources from History. Accessed January 11, 2016.

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

Slack, Paul. (1990). The English Poor Law, 1531-1782. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education.

Slack, Paul. (1988). Poverty and policy in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Longman.

Agrarian Justice is considered to be Thomas Paine’s last great work before he passed away in 1809. He was born in England in 1737, spending time in America and France, and contributed ideas to mark the Age of Revolution. His most popular work, “Common Sense” was published in 1776, followed by other pamphlets, concluding with Agrarian Justice in 1797.

He argues that poverty is created by civilized life. If those who have wealth cause others to descend into poverty, Paine believes that this may be remedied by taxing inherited property, intended establish a national fund to benefit those who did not own land. While land may be cultivated and such improvements are considered to be owned, the natural land itself belongs to no one. And so, those who do not own property should not be sent into poverty because of this.

Paine proposes that from this national fund, a stipend be granted to young adults reaching the age of 21 to compensate for their lack of a natural inheritance. Furthermore, Paine introduces yearly social security for those upon reaching age 50 and above. He considers these grants and pensions to be rights rather than charity, hoping that by “organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys that the whole weight of misery can be removed.”

Sources:

Jones, Gareth Stedman. An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

Paine, Thomas. Agrarian Justice. 1797.

Social Security Administration. “Thomas Paine.” Accessed January 10, 2016. https://www.ssa.gov/history/tpaine3.html.

“Thomas Paine.” History.com. Published 2009. http://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/thomas-paine.

1697 saw the passage of an “Act For supplying some Defects in the Laws for the Relief of the Poor”, which amended the previous Settlement Acts of 1662. Part of the new revisions included a requirement for those receiving parish relief to wear badges marked with the initial of their parish and a “P” for pauper. Like many other famous badges of shame from history, these badges were instantly recognizable and served as another way to separate the wearers from the rest of society.

Much of English poor law was concentrated on making sure those who were able to work did so. The goal of policymakers was to stigmatize and shame the use of poor relief and make it the absolute last resort of those in need. It was theorized by policy makers that while many would gladly receive parish aid if it was a secret process, badging the recipients and making them publicly known would push the able bodied poor to work before seeking relief. Thus, only the most desperate and truly needful poor would bear the shame of wearing the badge.

 
The badges were made of red or blue cloth and pinned on the right arm or shoulder of the wearer. Occasionally, workhouse inhabitants would be forced to wear their own workhouse specific badge. Not every parish would employ their use and they would be legally discontinued in 1810.

Higginbotham, Peter. “The Workhouse.” The Old Poor Law. Accessed January 9, 2016. http://www.workhouses.org.uk/poorlaws/oldpoorlaw.shtml#Badging.

By the 1770s, residents of East Anglia were fed up with the system of social welfare they had inherited from their Elizabethan ancestors.  Their commitment to assisting the “deserving” poor (the old, disabled, orphaned) remained undiminished, but costs were skyrocketing; they reckoned England was spending 3 million pounds per year on poor relief.  At the same time, they felt a growing frustration with their inability to assure that the able-bodied poor were gainfully employed, and that the children of the laboring classes were brought up in the values of hard-work and deference to authority that were the bedrock of the social and economic order.  “Our domestic safety and comfort, our private wealth and prosperity, and our national riches, strength, and glory, are greatly dependent upon an industrious and well-ordered poor…” wrote local author R. Potter in January 1775.  In a major effort to reform the basis of their social welfare policies, fifty parishes in the county of Norfolk joined together to apply for an Act of Parliament that would incorporate them into a union for the purposes of attending to the needs of the poor.  When this Act was passed, and following in the footsteps of dozens of similar endeavors in the region, the Hundreds of Mitford and Launditch opened a massive “House of Industry” at Gressenhall, in the summer of 1777, with space for about 600 paupers. Here, the poor of all ages and conditions would, for the next century and a half, be confined: put to work or school, and cared for in their old age.

Sources:

Eden, Frederick Morton, Sir. The State of the Poor: Or, an History of the Labouring Classes in England, from the Conquest to the Present Period.  Volume 2. London, 1797. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. Carleton College. 5 Jan. 2016.

Pope, Stephen. Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse: A History of the Buildings and the People Who Lived and Worked in Them. Norfolk: Poppyland Publishing, 2006.

Potter, R. (Robert). Observations on the Poor laws, on the Present State of the Poor, and on House of Industry. London,  M.DCC.LXXV. [1775]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. Carleton College. 5 Jan. 2016 .