The Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834 – a summary



The Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834 – a summary

• Outdoor relief for the able-bodied to be discouraged but NOT abolished.

• Parishes to be grouped into unions under the authority of Boards of Poor Law Guardians.

• Workhouses to be established in each union.

• Conditions in workhouses to be made harsher than that of the lowest paid worker so as to discourage the idle poor from entering them. This was the concept of ‘less eligibility’ or less attractive.

• The Poor Law was centralised - Poor Law Commissioners were based in London (the Poor Law Commission) were to supervise the scheme and maintain national (uniform) standards. There were to be three men supported by a Secretary and a staff of civil servants.

Opposition to the new Poor Law

There was some opposition to the new Poor Law, characterised as the ‘Whig Starvation and Infanticide Act’. Newspapers, petitions and demonstrations, whipped up agitation in some areas but on the whole it was limited. The moneyed classes were concerned by such outbreaks of violence, while the working classes retained an intense dislike of the workhouse that has burned itself into the popular folk-memory.

The working of the Poor Law after 1834

“The first piece of genuine radical legislation or ‘social fascism’” – H.L. Beales’ 1931 summary of the new Poor Law.

In 1834, the major problem with the Old Poor Law was seen to be the able-bodied paupers who refused to work. This was far from the more complicated truth. The solution, to offer the well-regulated workhouse or nothing, was too monolithic to help the whole range of people who needed assistance. The new law remained in operation until after the First World War. It aroused great bitterness amongst its victims – the old who could no longer work, widows left destitute, the mentally or physically disabled and the orphans. It was the unfortunates that were punished in the workhouse, not the idle poor that the reformers hoped to discourage. Fear and hatred of the workhouse was commonplace.

The new Poor Law of 1834 was a great success in one unfortunate way: it stopped the poor from living off the parish rates. The poor looked on the Poor Law authorities with such fear, hatred and contempt that they would rather live on credit and charity, steal or starve rather than enter the workhouse. In 1854 the poor law expenditure was £5,282,853 or 6s per person rather than 9s per person in 1834.

In other ways the new Poor Law was a failure:

1. Chadwick, the prime force behind the Poor Law Amendment Act, was only appointed as Secretary to the Poor Law Board. None of his superiors would listen to him. (Shaw-Lefevre, Frankland Lewis & George Nicholls). By 1841 Chadwick’s influence had dwindled. The Board found it difficult to get the local Boards of Guardians to do what they wanted. Even when the Ministry of Health took over in 1919, the local Boards of Guardians carried on much as before.

2. By 1838 13,247 of the 15,000 parishes had been incorporated into 573 unions; local acts covered the remaining parishes and by 1868 all parishes were unionised. However, the unions were unnatural and synthetic and there was mutual antagonism between the larger and smaller townships.

3. Very often the Boards of Guardians were made up of the same overseers from the previous system, thus old habits and prejudices were perpetuated. The local Boards of Guardians had trouble financing the Union workhouses. Parishes paid into a common fund for the union workhouse, but parishes paid according to the number of paupers they had, not according to how wealthy they were. A rich parish with no poor paid nothing, while a poor parish with lots of paupers paid most. An Act of 1865 resolved this, but there still big differences between the unions.

4. Each union was supposed to have salaried, efficient officials to provide improved management. By 1846 there were 8,240 on a salary of about £50 a year. In 1836 the Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages Act came into being, union officials carried out these registrar duties. Where the Guardians proved impotent, the work of the union fell on the shoulders of the relieving officers. They were responsible for the applications for relief, investigations and interviews, payments, accounts and rate collection. They were untrained and poorly paid.

5. The Poor Law Commission could not compel unions to build workhouses and thus relied upon local initiative. There was no standardisation in workhouse conditions. Some, like the Manchester workhouse, were clean, well-organised and comfortable (which ran rather against the idea of the workhouse as a disincentive). Andover workhouse was probably the worst. Here, paupers fought for scraps of meat from the bones that they had to smash. Most workhouses were between these extremes. They were too small and poor to do the job properly. Workhouses were mixed – children, the old, the mentally ill and the idle vagabonds were all lumped in together. The system of less eligibility was too rigidly enforced. It wasn’t until Old Age pensions were introduced in 1909 and National Insurance in 1911 that more compassionate treatment of poverty was established.

6. Assistant commissioners, like Alfred Power and Charles Mott, overlooked 50 unions each; they simply couldn’t cope with inspections and administration.

7. The ‘workhouse test’ for the able-bodied was of no use. The concept of the workhouse to deal with a handful of country malingerers did not work with the problem of mass unemployment in the industrial towns. The majority were not lazy; they just couldn’t find work. There was no point in putting these people in the workhouse. Poor Law Guardians in the towns realised this; when there was a trade slump in the 1840s, many insisted on giving outdoor relief. In some places outdoor relief for the able-bodied continued for fear of rioting. Evasion rates were high. In 1850 of 1 million paupers, only 110,000 were in workhouses.

8. The new Poor Law failed to deal with the causes of poverty – chronic unemployment and naturally low wages. In 1854 12% of the population was registered as paupers in comparison with 10% in 1832. In the 1890s 33% of people in the towns could not keep themselves healthily fed and clothed.

9. Attitudes, traditions, personnel and buildings took years to change. The Poor Law Amendment Act did not create a social revolution. The mechanics of accounting were changed, but the root causes of poverty were neither prevented nor cured.

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