English Poor Law History

English Poor Law History PDF Author: Sidney Webb
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Local government
Languages : en
Pages : 478

Get Book Here

Book Description

English Poor Law History

English Poor Law History PDF Author: Sidney Webb
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Local government
Languages : en
Pages : 478

Get Book Here

Book Description


Report of the Poor Law Commissioners

Report of the Poor Law Commissioners PDF Author: Great Britain. Poor Law Commissioners
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Charities
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Get Book Here

Book Description


Poverty, Gender and Life-cycle Under the English Poor Law, 1760-1834

Poverty, Gender and Life-cycle Under the English Poor Law, 1760-1834 PDF Author: Samantha Williams
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 0861933141
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Get Book Here

Book Description
Social welfare, increasingly extensive during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was by the first third of the nineteenth under considerable, and growing, pressure, during a "crisis" period when levels of poverty soared. This book examines the poor and their families during these final decades of the old Poor Law. It takes as a case study the lived experience of poor families in two Bedfordshire communities, Campton and Shefford, and contrasts it with the perspectives of other participants in parish politics, from the magistracy to the vestry, and from overseers to village ratepayers. It explores the problem of rising unemployment, the provision of parish make-work schemes, charitable provision and the wider makeshift economy, together with the attitudes of the ratepayers. That gender and life-cycle were crucial features of poverty is demonstrated: the lone mother and her dependent children and the elderly dominated the relief rolls. Poor relief might have been relatively generous but it was not pervasive - child allowances, in particular, were restricted in duration and value - and it by no means approximated to the income of other labouring families. Poor families must either have had access to additional resources, or led meagre lives. Samantha Williams is a university lecturer in local and regional history at the Institute of Continuing Education, Cambridge, and a Bye-Fellow in History, Girton College, Cambridge.

The Solidarities of Strangers

The Solidarities of Strangers PDF Author: Lynn Hollen Lees
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521572613
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Get Book Here

Book Description
A study of English policies toward the poor from the 1600s to the present, showing how clients and officials negotiated welfare settlements.

Pauper Capital

Pauper Capital PDF Author: David R. Green
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317082923
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Get Book Here

Book Description
Few measures, if any, could claim to have had a greater impact on British society than the poor law. As a comprehensive system of relieving those in need, the poor law provided relief for a significant proportion of the population but influenced the behaviour of a much larger group that lived at or near the margins of poverty. It touched the lives of countless numbers of individuals not only as paupers but also as ratepayers, guardians, officials and magistrates. This system underwent significant change in the nineteenth century with the shift from the old to the new poor law. The extent to which changes in policy anticipated new legislation is a key question and is here examined in the context of London. Rapid population growth and turnover, the lack of personal knowledge between rich and poor, and the close proximity of numerous autonomous poor law authorities created a distinctly metropolitan context for the provision of relief. This work provides the first detailed study of the poor law in London during the period leading up to and after the implementation of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources the book focuses explicitly on the ways in which those involved with the poor law - both as providers and recipients - negotiated the provision of relief. In the context of significant urban change in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, it analyses the poor law as a system of institutions and explores the material and political processes that shaped relief policies.

The Upper Limit

The Upper Limit PDF Author: François Bonnet
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520973305
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Get Book Here

Book Description
Since 1993, crime in the United States has fallen to historic lows, seeming to legitimize the country’s mix of welfare reform and mass incarceration. The Upper Limit explains how this unusual mix came about, examining how, beginning in the 1970s, declining living standards for the poor have defined social and penal policy in the United States, making welfare more restrictive and punishment harsher. François Bonnet shows how low-wage work sets the upper limit of social and penal policy, where welfare must be less attractive than low-wage work and criminal life must be less attractive than welfare. In essence, the living standards of the lowest class of workers in a society determine the upper limit for the generosity of welfare and for the humanity of punishment in that society. The Upper Limit explores the local consequences of this punitive adjustment in East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood where crime fell in the 1990s. Bonnet argues that no meaningful penal reform can happen unless living standards and the minimum wage rise again. Enlightening and provocative, The Upper Limit provides a comprehensive theory of the evolution of social and penal policy.

Welfare's Forgotten Past

Welfare's Forgotten Past PDF Author: Lorie Charlesworth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135179638
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 561

Get Book Here

Book Description
That ‘poor law was law’ is a fact that has slipped from the consciousness of historians of welfare in England and Wales, and in North America. Welfare's Forgotten Past remedies this situation by tracing the history of the legal right of the settled poor to relief when destitute. Poor law was not simply local custom, but consisted of legal rights, duties and obligations that went beyond social altruism. This legal ‘truth’ is, however, still ignored or rejected by some historians, and thus ‘lost’ to social welfare policy-makers. This forgetting or minimising of a legal, enforceable right to relief has not only led to a misunderstanding of welfare’s past; it has also contributed to the stigmatisation of poverty, and the emergence and persistence of the idea that its relief is a 'gift' from the state. Documenting the history and the effects of this forgetting, whilst also providing a ‘legal’ history of welfare, Lorie Charlesworth argues that it is timely for social policy-makers and reformists – in Britain, the United States and elsewhere – to reconsider an alternative welfare model, based on the more positive, legal aspects of welfare’s 400-year legal history.

Social Welfare in Pre-industrial England

Social Welfare in Pre-industrial England PDF Author: Paul A. Fideler
Publisher: Red Globe Press
ISBN: 0333688953
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Crossing period boundaries separating late medieval, early modern, and long eighteenth-century England, Paul A. Fideler offers a coherent overview of parish-centered social welfare from its medieval roots, through its institutionalisation in the Elizabethan Poor Law, to its demise in the early years of the Industrial Revolution. The study: - incorporates the latest scholarship - weaves together social, economic, demographic, medical, political, religious and ideological history - offers fresh treatments of the contextual importance of Christian moral theology in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, humanist and protestant thought in the sixteenth century and neo-Stoic benevolence and political arithmetic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - explores two competing approaches to social welfare: societas (voluntary, rooted in custom and tradition) and civitas (mandatory, embedded in policy and law) - concludes with a detailed examination of the first histories of social welfare in England undertaken in the late eighteenth century.

Malthus and His Time

Malthus and His Time PDF Author: Michael Turner
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349182184
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Get Book Here

Book Description


Vagrancy in Law and Practice Under the Old Poor Law

Vagrancy in Law and Practice Under the Old Poor Law PDF Author: Audrey Eccles
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409404870
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Get Book Here

Book Description
Drawing on extensive archival research and in-depth study of both statute law and local administrative records, this book examines the complexities of vagrancy law and the realities of its practice during the long eighteenth century. As the first full-length study of vagrancy law and practice in the eighteenth century, this book will constitute an essential item in any collection of books on the old poor law.