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Labourers are Revolting: Penalising the Poor and a Political Reaction in the Brixworth Union, Northamptonshire, 1875–1885

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Elizabeth T. Hurren
Elizabeth T. Hurren
Affiliation:
Nene Centre for Research, University College, Northampton, UK.
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Extract

Throughout the nineteenth century one of the main issues that preoccupied central government policy-makers was how poverty should be dealt with, in order to reduce poor relief expenditure. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, as Karel Williams argues, aimed to introduce a general rule against out-door relief by substituting instead a workhouse test that sought to deter paupers with its axiom of ‘less eligibility’. In practice, as Williams explains, regulations only stipulated that a workhouse test was to be strictly applied in the case of able-bodied male applicants and this gave unions the discretion to award out-door relief to other types of pauper. For example a number of unions continued to grant small out-door relief allowances to the aged, widows and infirm on medical out-door relief orders. Others found that it was not possible to follow poor relief guide-lines because they did not have the workhouse capacity to relieve all pauper applicants before the 1860s. This was because a comprehensive administrative infrastructure was not put in place in most unions until after the passing of the Union Chargeability Act of 1865. Once workhouse capacity had been improved with the creation of dispensaries and new medical wards, central government expected out-door poor relief expenditure to decrease. Consequently, in 1870 concern was expressed when they calculated that only 15 per cent of paupers were relieved within workhouses. A new discourse on the causes of poverty, as outlined by organisations such as the Charity Organisation Society, demanded that stricter poor relief regulations should be implemented.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , April 2000 , pp. 37 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

Notes

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33. PRO, MH 12/8701, see memos by – ‘Southam, Lambert and The President’, (3.1.1879).

34. Bury to Spencer, 6.3.1883, K382, Althorp MS, BLMD.

35. Spencer hoped that ex-officio guardians would enthusiastically welcome the new scheme because the C.O.S. had recently been established in nearby Leicester. See Leicester Charity Organisation Society minute books (1876–1881), DE/2340, No. 1, Leicestershire Country Record office (hereafter LCRO); Martin, Janet D., The Leicestershire C.O.S., 1876–1976: A Contemporary Review (Leicester, 1976), L361.7, LCRO.Google Scholar

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60. Northamptonshire Mercury (3.3.1893).

61. Northamptonshire Mercury (1.3.1895). Out of a total population of 12, 186, 7,475 joined the association and 5,011 supported the retrenchment party.

62. Refer to this author's forthcoming thesis “The Bury-al” board: Penalising the Poor and Poor Law Politics in the Brixworth Union in Northamptonshire, 1870–1900'. The poor called the Brixworth Union ‘the “bury-al” board’. This was a wry comment on the retrenchment party's policies of trying to remove paupers from out-door relief registers by ignoring their impoverishment until they died of starvation, and a pun based on the Chairman's surname – Rev. W. Bury.