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The Victorian Poor Law in Crisis and Change: Southampton, 1870–1895*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Ruth Hutchinson Crocker
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Extract

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 signaled a revolution that was more apparent than real. Studies of the operation of the Act have shown that enforcement was neither complete nor uniform; local authorities failed to build the workhouses required by the Act and were therefore unable to make the invidious but (according to the Act) essential distinction between paupers (people destitute enough to qualify to enter these institutions), and the merely poor, who were supposed to fend for themselves. Instead, Guardians continued to give allowances from the poor rates without requiring that the recipients become paupers and enter the workhouse. While the English Poor Law between 1834 and 1860 was characterized by a situation of administrative variety and confusion as unions failed to comply with the 1834 Act, the economic crises of the 1860s produced important reforms: the Union Chargeability Act (1865) improved financing; many unions built modern workhouses; at the same time, collateral care for the needy such as the aged began to emerge within the Poor Law. Then in 1870 the central Poor Law authority announced a policy of strict enforcement, recommending the suspension of outdoor relief to the able-bodied, a far-reaching change in Poor Law practice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , Spring 1987 , pp. 19 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1987

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Footnotes

*

My thanks are expressed to Mr. F.C. Mather of Southampton University and to Linda Levy Peck of Purdue University for help with earlier versions of this paper.

References

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2 Rose, Michael E., “The Crisis of Poor Relief in England, 1860–1890,” in Mommsen, , Emergence of the Welfare State, pp. 50–70Google Scholar.

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21 Hants. Independent, 11 December 1875.

22 Letter to The Times, 1 December 1875.

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26 Repealed by the Local Government Board's Provisional Orders Confirmation (Caistor Union etc.) Act, 1877, 40 and 41 Vict.

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28 George Lungley was a director of the Southampton Chamber of Commerce, a “shipbuilder and superintendent of the emigration department”; William Bone was proprietor of Brinton and Bone, Brick and Tile Makers and Merchants; Henry Webb was probably a cabinet maker and upholsterer. Directories on which this paragraph is based include Cox, Stevens, and Kelly's.

29 Southampton Incorporation, Printed Accounts and Abstracts. Civic Records Office, Southampton (henceafter cited as C.R.O.). Quite untypical of ex-officio members was the Liberal magistrate Major-General Tryon J.P., who publicly disassociated himself from the strict enforcement policies of the Board of Guardians and between 1876 and 1877 attended forty-one meetings of the Board. Contested elections for the Board remained rare. Local Government Board, Poor Law Unions (Contested Elections of Guardians), 1 March 1878, p. 2Google Scholar.

30 Southampton Times, 10 February 1877.

31 Southampton Times, 17 February 1877, p. 3Google ScholarPubMed. Similar bye-laws governing outdoor relief were passed in hundreds of other unions. E.P.L.H., part 2, 1:444–45.

32 Circular of Poor Law Board, Fifth Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, 1853, quoted in E.P.L.H. part 2, 1:351Google Scholar. Rose, Michael E., “The Allowance System under the New Poor Law,” Economic History Review 2nd series, 19 (1966): 607–620Google Scholar.

33 Patterson, Temple, History of Southampton, 2:96–97Google Scholar. Aid was sometimes also given in kind, such as bread, shoes, or other necessities.

34 Southampton Times, 17 February 1877, p. 3Google ScholarPubMed.

35 Thane, Pat, “Women and the Poor Law in Victorian and Edwardian Britain,” History Workshop 6 (Autumn 1978):29–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Walkowitz, Judith, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State (Cambridge, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, analyzes the economic position of part of the female under-class in Southampton.

36 E.P.L.H. part 2, 1:447–48, and E.P.L.P., pp. 174–79.

37 Cited in Memorandum from the President of the Local Government Board to all Boards of Guardians, Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1878, PP, 1878, vol. 65. Thane, Pat, Foundations of the Welfare State (London, 1982), pp. 34–35Google Scholar points out that this policy had the effect of forcing mothers out into the work-force.

38 Hants. Independent, 25 September 1875, p. 6Google Scholar.

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46 Removal Papers of the Southampton Incorporation, 1877–8. SC/AG/14/14. C.R.O.

47 Sometimes the cost of removals, including legal costs, and charges for transporting paupers are listed separately but more often they are combined. For example in the years 1876 to 1879 the entry is, “Conveyance of Paupers and pauper lunatics, visiting lunatics, tracing settlements, serving summonses, etc.” Southampton Incorporation, Accounts and Abstracts.

48 “Return to an Order of the House of Commons,” Parliamentary Papers, 25 September 1886, LXX, C. 22Google Scholar.

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50 Ashforth found that between 6%–15% of those receiving relief in urban unions were in the workhouse. Thus Southampton's 26% seems high. Ashforth, , “The Urban Poor Law,” p. 135Google Scholar.

51 Roberts, David, “How Cruel was the Victorian Poor Law?” Historical Journal 6 (1963):97–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar. E.P.L.P. pp. 235–36. For a classic statement of the difficulties of imposing “less eligibility” see “Report of the Poor Law Commissioners … 1840,” quoted in de Schweinitz, , England's Road to Social Security, pp. 132–33Google Scholar.

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55 The Webbs point out that there was no new policy of forcing the sick poor to enter the workhouse for treatment after 1870 (E.P.L.P., pp. 207–10).

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58 Hants. Independent, 18 September 1875, p. 3Google ScholarPubMed; 2 October 1875, p. 6; 9 October 1875, p. 3; The Times, 1 December 1875.

59 Annual Report of the Provident Dispensary, 1880, C.R.O.; Third Annual Report of the Southampton COS, p. 11.

60 Hants. Independent, 24 November 1880; Southampton Times, 27 November 1880, p. 3Google ScholarPubMed.

61 “Is Out-Door Relief a Curse?” Hants. Independent, 18 December 1880Google ScholarPubMed; Southampton Times, 27 November 1880, p. 3Google ScholarPubMed; Southern Observer, 27 January 1877, p. 5Google ScholarPubMed reports a discussion of eligibility for free treatment at the Dispensary.

62 Southampton Dispensary Provident Medical Institution and Humane Society, Minute Book of Annual and Quarterly Meetings, 8 April 1869–21 March 1888. D/DSP/4.5, C.R.O.

63 Annual Report of the Provident Dispensary, 1880. Lambert, Royston, “A Victorian National Health Service: State Vaccination,” Historical Journal 5 (1962): 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. After 1885 the Medical Relief (Disqualifications Removal) Act further removed the stigma of pauperization from recipients of poor law medical services.

64 These fluctuations of course reflected changes in the numbers of unemployed, not only in degrees of “strictness.” Southampton Times, 8 September 1879, p. 5Google ScholarPubMed. For the revival of labor yards, see Ashforth, , “The Urban Poor Law,” pp. 136–37Google Scholar.

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66 Chamberlain's Circular from the Local Government Board, dated 15 March 1886, noting “increasing privation in the ranks of those who do not ordinarily seek Poor Law relief,” recommended that the Guardians organize public works as a condition of giving relief to the able-bodied.

67 Southampton Times, 15 January 1876, p. 8Google ScholarPubMed. COS reluctance to give material help is indicated by the occasional entry in its reports that the society gave “bread to be eaten in the office.”

68 Southampton Times, 10 February 1877, p. 2Google ScholarPubMed. “The Guardians would not have discontinued outrelief to the old and respectable people, if the COS had not taken it up,” Evidence of John Jones, Stepney Union, Select Committee of the House of Lords on Poor Law Relief, Parliamentary Papers, 1888, IX, C.363, p. 134Google Scholar. The Webbs wrote, “In the urban Unions an immediate reaction was a great development of unorganized and indiscriminate charity of one sort or another, of which the COS and its adherents entirely disapproved, but which they were unable to check” (E.P.L.H. part 2, 1:462).

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70 Board of Guardians Minutes, April 1876, p. 10; 25 May 1876, p. 20; Southampton Times, 29 April 1876, pp. 8, 10Google Scholar; Report of the Workhouse Committee, Southampton Board of Guardians, 10 March 1876. This committee agreed to the exchange of information requested by the COS. Board of Guardians, Minutes, April 1876, p. 20. Southampton Times, 29 April 1876, p. 8Google Scholar.

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75 Southampton Times, 10 February 1877, p. 2; 28 April 1877Google ScholarPubMed.

76 Southampton Times, 28 April 1877. But in 1891 COS organizers announced themselves “surprised and grieved, after sixteen years' strenuous advocacy of principles which they all genuinely hoped would have been adopted by … their fellow townsmen to find that their supporters numbered less than one hundred, and that the pecuniary aid they received had not yet reached £100 a year.” Southampton Times, 19 December 1891, p. 3Google ScholarPubMed.

77 Southampton Times, 21 December 1878, p. 8Google ScholarPubMed.

78 Southampton Times, 12 December 1885, p. 3Google ScholarPubMed; Tenth Annual Report of the Southampton COS, (1885).

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91 W.E. Darwin, presiding at the seventeenth annual meeting of the Southampton COS complained that there was “still much laxity on the part of the Board of Guardians as to the giving of outdoor relief.” Southampton Times, 3 December 1892, p. 3Google Scholar.

92 The orders of the Local Government Board, the Webbs wrote, “have nominally the force of law; but they do not accurately reveal what, in the administration of the Board of Guardians, has, from time to time, been prescribed or forbidden, sanctioned or tolerated, by the Central Authority.” E.P.L.H. part 2, 1:205.

93 Southampton Times, 24 May 1890.

94 Southern Reformer, 26 November 1880, pp. 4–5Google Scholar (C.R.L.). Mrs. P.H. Mather kindly drew my attention to this valuable, though short-lived, periodical.

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