Journal articles: 'Old Poor Law'

1

Whatley, Christopher A. "Mitchison, The Old Poor Law in Scotland." Scottish Historical Review 81, no. 1 (April 2002): 134–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/shr.2002.81.1.134.

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Hitchcock, Tim. "Vagrancy in Law and Practice under the Old Poor Law." Social History 38, no. 4 (November 2013): 518–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2013.842769.

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LEVENE, ALYSA. "Poor families, removals and ‘nurture’ in late Old Poor Law London." Continuity and Change 25, no. 2 (August 2010): 233–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0268416010000172.

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ABSTRACTThe consideration of the removals aspect of settlement law – that is, the moving on of paupers or potential paupers to the parish where they ‘belonged’ – has focused almost exclusively on working-age adults and labour migration. This article focuses on how removal law affected families with children in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in two large London parishes. It finds that children were a sizeable presence among the removed population but that there were notable differences in family type between the two parishes. Furthermore, while most young children were kept with their mothers even if they did not share a settlement, others were removed alone, even after a change in settlement law in 1795 that should have assured their common claim in certain cases. The study sheds light on attitudes to poor children and their families, as well as on the exigencies brought about by economic circumstances and employment opportunities in the parish.

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WRIGLEY, E. A., and RICHARD SMITH. "MALTHUS AND THE POOR LAW." Historical Journal 63, no. 1 (April 29, 2019): 33–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x19000177.

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AbstractMalthus was severely critical of the old poor law, especially when the payments paid to recipients were made in conformity to the principles adopted by the local magistrates in Speenhamland in 1795. He considered that it encouraged early and improvident marriage with unfortunate consequences. There have been a number of attempts to determine whether Malthus was justified in supposing that the old poor law had this effect, some concluding that he was correct in his assumption, others that he was mistaken. The information contained in the first four English censuses did not include a breakdown of the population by age, sex, and marital status, and therefore did not provide a basis for a definitive test of Malthus's assertion before the repeal of the old poor law in 1834. The 1851 census, however, did provide this breakdown for five-year age groups which makes it possible to compare marriage patterns in counties in which a large proportion of the male workforce were ‘peasants’ (Malthus's term for agricultural labourers), and the Speenhamland provisions were widely adopted, with other counties. The results show that Malthus was mistaken.

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Slack, Paul. "Old Age and the English Poor Law, 1500–1700." English Historical Review 120, no. 489 (December 1, 2005): 1435–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cei440.

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LEVENE, ALYSA. "Parish apprenticeship and the old poor law in London." Economic History Review 63, no. 4 (December 3, 2009): 915–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00485.x.

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7

Newell, D. "Vagrancy in Law and Practice under the Old Poor Law, by Audrey Eccles." English Historical Review 129, no. 539 (July 22, 2014): 978–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceu173.

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8

Patriquin, Larry. "Why was there no ‘Old Poor Law’ in Scotland and Ireland?" Journal of Peasant Studies 33, no. 2 (April 2006): 219–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066150600819195.

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9

Kelly, Morgan, and Cormac Ó. Gráda. "The Poor Law of Old England: Institutional Innovation and Demographic Regimes." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 41, no. 3 (December 2010): 339–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_00105.

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The striking improvement in life expectancy that took place in England between the Middle Ages and the seventeenth century cannot be explained either by an increase in real wages or by better climatic conditions. The decrease in the risk of utter destitution or of death from famine that was evident on the eve of the Industrial Revolution stemmed, in part, from institutional changes in the old poor law, which began to take shape and become effective early in the seventeenth century.

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10

Miller, Edgar. "English pauper lunatics in the era of the old poor law." History of Psychiatry 23, no. 3 (August 13, 2012): 318–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957154x11416547.

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Heritage, Tom, Andrew Hinde, and David Clifford. "Household Living Arrangements and Old Age Pauperism in Late-Victorian England." Genealogy 4, no. 2 (May 5, 2020): 55. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genealogy4020055.

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The fortunes of older people in late nineteenth-century England varied considerably. At the two extremes were a comfortable retirement and complete reliance on the New Poor Law, but most older people got by on some combination of part-time work, familial support, and transfer payments from the New Poor Law. This paper considers the extent to which access to resources during working age affected the risk of becoming pauperised (that is, dependent on transfer payments from the New Poor Law) in old age. We hypothesised that access to resources was an important determinant of old age pauperisation and that such access was associated with household living arrangements in earlier life. The analysis was conducted at both aggregate and individual levels and was based on a sample of small areas in England. We linked census data to New Poor Law records to assess the extent to which individuals relied on payments from the New Poor Law in their old age. We distinguished between those who, in their old age, received transfer payments while living in their own homes and those who were institutionalised through admission to the workhouse. The main finding is that people who, in earlier adult life, lived in households containing extended family members were less likely to have recourse to the New Poor Law in their old age than those who, in earlier adult life, lived with only their spouse and offspring. The results also support previous work that has found that females were more likely than males to be supported by the New Poor Law, but that males were more likely than females to enter workhouses.

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12

King, Steven. "Thinking and Rethinking the New Poor Law." Local Population Studies, no. 99 (December 31, 2017): 5–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.35488/lps99.2017.5.

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At the core of this article is the observation that, notwithstanding recent advances, we understand much less about the New Poor Law than the Old. An increasingly strong grasp of who was in workhouses is balanced by an historiography on the agency of workhouse inmates which is best described as 'thin'. The medical functions of the workhouse have, both for 'normal' times and occasions of scandal, been increasingly well researched. By contrast the religious and educational functions of workhouses remain relatively under-researched. About those on outdoor relief and those who administered their relief we know almost nothing. This article reviews the highlights of current literature and attempts to establish an agenda, in part met by contributions to this special issue, for future research.

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Cage, R. A., and Rosalind Mitchison. "The Old Poor Law in Scotland: The Experience of Poverty, 1574-1845." American Historical Review 106, no. 4 (October 2001): 1452. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2693102.

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Graham, Michael F., and Rosalind Mitchison. "The Old Poor Law in Scotland: The Experience of Poverty, 1574-1845." Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 33, no. 4 (2001): 703. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/4052948.

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15

Block, Fred, and Margaret Somers. "In the Shadow of Speenhamland: Social Policy and the Old Poor Law." Politics & Society 31, no. 2 (June 2003): 283–323. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0032329203252272.

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Williams, Samantha. "Unmarried Mothers and the New Poor Law in Hertfordshire." Local Population Studies, no. 91 (December 31, 2013): 27–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.35488/lps91.2013.27.

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Under the old poor law mothers and fathers shared responsibility for their illegitimate children: fathers were expected to provide financial maintenance and mothers to care for and rear them. The new poor law sought to shift all responsibility on to mothers. This article focuses upon the impact of the new legislation upon poor women and their children and their interactions with poor law guardians. Using data drawn from applications to guardians and workhouse records for Hertford and Hatfield poor law unions this study analyses the welfare provision offered to unmarried mothers and their infants. The article considers all forms of assistance but with a particular focus on lying-in provision in the workhouse.

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King, Steven. "Nursing Under the Old Poor Law in Midland and Eastern England 1780–1834." Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 70, no. 4 (August 26, 2014): 588–622. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jru025.

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18

Feldman, David. "MIGRANTS, IMMIGRANTS AND WELFARE FROM THE OLD POOR LAW TO THE WELFARE STATE." Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 13 (November 20, 2003): 79–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0080440103000045.

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Boyer, George R. "The Old Poor Law and the Agricultural Labor Market in Southern England: An Empirical Analysis." Journal of Economic History 46, no. 1 (March 1986): 113–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022050700045526.

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The paper examines the economic role played by poor relief in early nineteenth-century England. A three-equation model is estimated to explain cross-parish variations in per capita relief expenditures, agricultural laborers' annual wage income, and unemployment rates. Relief expenditures are found to be related to crop mix, the political power of labor-hiring farmers, distance from London, and employment opportunities in cottage industry. The results strongly support the revisionist analysis of the Old Poor Law, and reject the analysis contained in the Report of the Royal Poor Law Commission.

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DYSON, RICHARD. "WELFARE PROVISION IN OXFORD DURING THE LATTER STAGES OF THE OLD POOR LAW, 1800–1834." Historical Journal 52, no. 4 (November 6, 2009): 943–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x0999032x.

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ABSTRACTWhile recent research in the English context on the so-called ‘economy of makeshifts’ has demonstrated the importance of alternative welfare options outside of the poor law, less work has been conducted on the situation in larger towns and cities. This article seeks to remedy this imbalance by examining the different welfare systems available in one city, Oxford, during the early nineteenth century. Poor law provision in the city, while extensive, was significantly less per capita than in rural parts of Oxfordshire. There was a high degree of charitable provision, not only from the continued survival of endowed charity, but also from the creation of newer subscription charities. The contribution made by charity to medical provision for the poor was especially significant, as was the role of emergency subscriptions in alleviating short-term economic and other crises. With such a varied range of assistance, traditional assumptions concerning the importance of the poor law in urban areas may require revision, with implications not only for the scale and measurement of poverty, but also for the ways in which both poor and wealthy alike managed and negotiated the supply of welfare.

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NUTT, THOMAS. "Illegitimacy, paternal financial responsibility, and the 1834 Poor Law Commission Report: the myth of the old poor law and the making of the new." Economic History Review 63, no. 2 (May 2010): 335–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00450.x.

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SHAVE, SAMANTHA A. "THE IMPACT OF STURGES BOURNE'S POOR LAW REFORMS IN RURAL ENGLAND." Historical Journal 56, no. 2 (May 3, 2013): 399–429. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x13000034.

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ABSTRACTEngland was blighted by frequent agricultural depressions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Recurrent crises brought poor law reform to the parliamentary agenda and led to the passage of two non-compulsory pieces of legislation, Sturges Bourne's Acts of 1818 and 1819. These permissory acts allowed parishes to ‘tighten up’ the distribution of poor relief through two vital tools: the formation of select vestries, and the appointment of waged assistant overseers. Whilst previous studies have tended to represent the legislation as a failing reform in the dying days of the old poor law, we know remarkably little about the relief practices deployed by parishes operating under the auspices of Sturges Bourne's Acts. This article starts by detailing the genesis of the reforms before considering the provisions of the acts and their rates of adoption in rural England. Focusing upon administrative records from Wessex and West Sussex, the article proceeds to examine the inspection of relief claimants, and judgments made as to their ‘character and conduct’; the general measures taken to reduce outdoor relief; and their alternative strategies for allocating relief. It is argued that the reforms re-drew the distinction between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor, ultimately changing individuals' and families' entitlement to relief under the old poor laws.

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23

HARLEY, JOSEPH. "PAUPER INVENTORIES, SOCIAL RELATIONS, AND THE NATURE OF POOR RELIEF UNDER THE OLD POOR LAW, ENGLAND, c. 1601–1834." Historical Journal 62, no. 2 (June 13, 2018): 375–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x18000043.

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ABSTRACTDuring the old poor law, many paupers had their possessions inventoried and later taken by authorities as part of the process of obtaining poor relief. Historians have known about this for decades, yet little research has been conducted to establish how widespread the system was, what types of parishioners had their belongings inventoried and why, what the legal status of the practice was, and how it affected social relations in the parish. Using nearly 450 pauper inventories, this article examines these historiographical lacunae. It is argued that the policy had no legal basis and came from local practices and policies. The system is found to be more common in the south and east of England than in the north, and it is argued that the practice gradually became less common from the late eighteenth century. The inventorying of paupers’ goods often formed one of the many creative ways in which parishes helped the poor before 1770, as it guaranteed many paupers assistance until death. However, by the late eighteenth century the appraising of paupers’ goods was closely tied to a negative shift in the attitudes of larger ratepayers and officials, who increasingly wanted to dissuade people from applying for assistance and reduce expenditure.

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Lambrecht, Thijs, and Anne Winter. "An old poor law on the Continent? Agrarian capitalism, poor taxes, and village conflict in eighteenth-century coastal Flanders." Economic History Review 71, no. 4 (December 21, 2017): 1173–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12611.

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25

Blaikie, Andrew. "ROSALIND MITCHISON, The Old Poor Law in Scotland: The Experience of Poverty, 1574–1845." Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 21, no. 1 (May 1, 2001): 67–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/jshs.2001.21.1.67.

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French, Henry. "Bastardy in Butleigh: Illegitimacy, Genealogies and the Old Poor Law in Somerset, 1762–1834." Genealogy 4, no. 1 (January 22, 2020): 13. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genealogy4010013.

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Early academic histories of non-marital motherhood often focused on the minority of mothers who had several illegitimate children. Peter Laslett coined the phrase ‘the bastardy prone sub-society’ to describe them. More recent qualitative research has questioned the gendered perspectives underlying this label, and emphasised the complex, highly personal processes behind illegitimacy. By locating the social experience of illegitimacy, particularly multiple illegitimacy, within a broader genealogical and parochial context, this study tries to set the behaviour of particular individuals within a ‘community’ context in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It places illegitimacy alongside pre-nuptial pregnancy within the sample parish, but also focuses on the majority of illegitimate births that fell under the administration of the parish and became ‘bastardy’ cases. It examines the parish’s administrative responses, particularly its vigour in identifying and recovering money from putative fathers, and discusses the social circumstances of these fathers and mothers. It then goes on to reconstruct the inter-generational genealogy of a dense family network that linked several mothers and fathers of multiple illegitimate children. It highlights some significant and recurrent disparities of age and status within these family concentrations which lay beyond the limits of the courtship-centred model of illegitimacy.

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Tyson, R. E. "The Old Poor Law in Scotland: The Experience of Poverty, 1574–1845 Rosalind Mitchison." English Historical Review 115, no. 464 (November 2000): 1313–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/enghis/115.464.1313-a.

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Tyson, R. E. "The Old Poor Law in Scotland: The Experience of Poverty, 1574-1845 Rosalind Mitchison." English Historical Review 115, no. 464 (November 1, 2000): 1313–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ehr/115.464.1313-a.

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M., R. J. "ALAS, POOR MELVIN." Pediatrics 83, no. 6 (June 1, 1989): A80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1542/peds.83.6.a80.

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Sausalito, CA—Come dinner time aboard his yacht Adequate Award, and Melvin Belli really knows how to put on the dog. Tonight, his dining-room table is set with bone china and sterling silver, and browsing among the tableware is one hungry Italian greyhound. I know the animal is hungry because he has walked across the table and taken a bite of my bread plate. . . There are those who would have you believe that Mr. Belli, the King of Torts, has become so eccentric that more than dinner is becoming chaotic. . . Since summer, the 81-year-old lawyer has been barred by court order from his 25-room San Francisco mansion. His wife got the order after filing a petition for legal separation. She complained at the time to reporters and police that Mr. Belli physically and verbally abused her and their teenage daughter. Even more bizarre, she claims that he falsely accused her of having sex with a number of family friends, including celebrities of both sexes. . . Another shot fired across the bow: In a lawsuit pending in Tax Court, the Internal Revenue Service contends that Mr. Belli, in effect, back-dated documents to avoid paying gift taxes in a transaction involving his San Francisco law-office building. . . His firm, Law Offices of Melvin Belli, Sr., is on trial, too, these days. Three years ago, Mr. Belli lost a malpractice case resulting in a $3.8 million judgement against him. Since then, six more malpractice suits have been filed against him in San Francisco Superior Court. . .

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30

Waddell, Brodie. "Audrey Eccles, Vagrancy in Law and Practice under the Old Poor Law, Ashgate, Farnham, 2012. 262 pp. £65. 9781409404873." Rural History 25, no. 1 (March 10, 2014): 126–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0956793313000241.

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31

Blacklaws, Nicola. "‘Old’ and ‘New’ Welfare: The Poor Law and Social Housing in Leicestershire, c.1925-1929." Midland History 43, no. 1 (January 2, 2018): 82–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0047729x.2018.1461745.

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32

OTTAWAY, SUSANNAH, and SAMANTHA WILLIAMS. "RECONSTRUCTING THE LIFE-CYCLE EXPERIENCE OF POVERTY IN THE TIME OF THE OLD POOR LAW." Archives: The Journal of the British Records Association 23, no. 98 (April 1998): 19–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/archives.1998.3.

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Eastwood, David. "Rethinking the Debates on the Poor Law in Early Nineteenth-Century England." Utilitas 6, no. 1 (May 1994): 97–116. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0953820800001357.

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One of the more interesting developments in recent historical writing has been a reconsideration of the debates over poor law reform. In the sharply-demarcated world of post-war scholarship, the poor law fell clearly, if somewhat problematically, into the domain of social history. For obvious contemporary reasons, post-war social history devoted a good deal of scholarly energy to constructing a history of social policy. Much of this work was problematized in terms of the then orthodox agenda of the welfare state. The dominant questions concerned modes of assessing entitlements, mechanisms for delivering welfare, and the bureaucratic characteristics of the old and new poor laws. Despite its considerable empirical merits, this kind of social history was inhibited by its methodological and problematic certainties. To a large extent this was a social history which defined itselfagainsttraditional political history, offering a narrative of social policy formation which, whilst not eliminating political processes from its account, tended to marginalize their normative significance. One extreme formulation was Sydney Checkland's ‘socially innocent state’. Here the loss of ‘social innocence’ on the part of the British state is evaluated directly in terms of its willingness to develop the kind of social agenda and administrative machinery characteristic of modern wellfarism. For Checkland in particular, social policy was conceived almost exclusively in terms of state-driven programmes of ‘social improvement’. The old poor law, with its pattern of local management, discretionary administration, and paternalist social vision flatly contracted the statutorily-articulated welfarism which Checkland took to be axiomatic to a coherently-conceived social policy. In terms of statutory authority and administrative machinery, Checkland saw the new poor law as a critical move towards a more coherently-constructed state social policy.

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FRENCH, HENRY. "How dependent were the ‘dependent poor’? Poor relief and the life-course in Terling, Essex, 1762–1834." Continuity and Change 30, no. 2 (August 2015): 193–222. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0268416015000223.

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ABSTRACTDespite the volume of research on the Old Poor Law, only in the last two decades have detailed local studies begun to assess the impact of relief payments across the life-courses of individuals. Their conclusions have been mixed. While many have found that the rural labouring poor of southern England were increasingly frequent recipients of poor relief after the 1780s, recent studies have indicated that ‘dependence’ on relief was generally intermittent, not permanent. Based on a new dataset for the Essex village of Terling, this study sets individual life-histories within the broader chronology of change to show how young, able-bodied men and women became relief recipients much more often after 1795 than they had before.

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HARLEY, JOSEPH. "Material lives of the poor and their strategic use of the workhouse during the final decades of the English old poor law." Continuity and Change 30, no. 1 (May 2015): 71–103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0268416015000090.

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ABSTRACTThis article is the first to use a combination of three different types of inventories from Dorset to examine the material lives of paupers inside and outside Beaminster workhouse. It argues that life was materially better for paupers on outdoor relief, compared with workhouse inmates and with paupers in the moments before they entered the workhouse. The article also examines how the poor used admission into the workhouse as part of their economy of makeshifts. The evidence demonstrates that the able-bodied poor used the workhouse as a short-term survival strategy, whereas more vulnerable inmates struggled to use this tactic. This article therefore furthers our understanding of the nature of poor relief and adds further weight to recent historical work that has emphasised pauper agency.

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Durbach, Nadja. "Roast Beef, the New Poor Law, and the British Nation, 1834–63." Journal of British Studies 52, no. 4 (October 2013): 963–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2013.122.

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AbstractIn the early years of the New Poor Law, workhouses were explicitly prohibited from serving roast beef and plum pudding to inmates. Historians have recently begun to focus increased attention on the cultural meanings invested in specific food products and the politics of their production, distribution, and consumption. Unpacking the contentious disputes between local and central Poor Law authorities over the provision of roast beef to workhouse inmates similarly reorients the discussion of the pauper diet to address, not the amount or quality of food provided, but rather the cultural politics of what exactly a pauper was allowed to eat. A study of when and why paupers were and were not furnished with a festive meal of what was often termed “Old English Fare” provides a way of rethinking the place of the poor within local and national communities at a moment when attitudes toward poverty were undergoing profound changes.

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Robin, Jean. "The Relief of Poverty in Mid Nineteenth-Century Colyton." Rural History 1, no. 2 (October 1990): 193–218. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0956793300003319.

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The welfare state emerged in 1948 when the National Assistance Act finally abolished the New Poor Law Forty-two years later, as politicians and bureaucrats struggle to keep increasing expenditure within bounds, the existence of the welfare state in its present form is under threat. Just over 150 years ago, the Old Poor Law was presenting parish ratepayers with a similar problem of rising costs, leading in 1834 to a fundamental reorganisation into the New Poor Law It may therefore be profitable to see how effective in practice the New Poor Law was when it replaced a system widely regarded as profligate, and to consider the extent to which benefits payable through the welfare state were available a hundred years or more ago.This study examines in detail how the New Poor Law, and other forms of relief, affected the whole population of the rural parish of Colyton, in south Devonshire, during the thirty years from 1851 to 1881. It will first describe the sources from which a poor person in Colyton in the mid nineteenth century could look for relief; next discuss how widespread poverty was and who the poor were; then look at what kinds of relief were available, under what conditions; and finally assess the comparative importance to the poor of the different agencies providing assistance.

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KING, STEVE. "‘It is impossible for our Vestry to judge his case into perfection from here’: Managing the Distance Dimensions of Poor Relief, 1800–40." Rural History 16, no. 2 (September 12, 2005): 161–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0956793305001469.

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This article addresses the way in which officials in the last decades of the Old Poor Law thought about and addressed the problems posed to the poor relief process by the migration of paupers. Focusing on the so called out-parish relief system, the article uses rich overseer correspondence and supplementary pauper letters from the northwest of England to explore several key themes in the period 1800–1840: the nature of money transmission where allowances had to be paid at a distance, issues of administrative competence and incompetence, the nature of relationships between parishes and between parishes and their distant poor under the out-parish relief system, and issues of trust and reputation between parishes and between parishes and paupers. The article will show that the out-parish system was vital to the stability of the Old Poor Law and that its apparent fragility and susceptibility to fraud and mistrust is to some extent belied by the fact that robust and long term relationships developed between parishes under the out-parish system.

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GOOSE, NIGEL. "Poverty, old age and gender in nineteenth-century England: the case of Hertfordshire." Continuity and Change 20, no. 3 (December 2005): 351–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0268416005005618.

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This article examines the relative incidence of poverty among the elderly in nineteenth-century Hertfordshire with special reference to gender. Both national and local sources are employed to highlight the particular difficulties experienced by the elderly, male poor under the New Poor Law, and the short and long term problems they faced as a result of seasonal unemployment and an overstocked labour market. For elderly women, the extent to which their poverty was relieved by employment in cottage industry, almshouse accommodation, the continuing receipt of out-relief and a higher incidence of family support are examined to provide an assessment of the manner in which poverty was gendered in the nineteenth century.

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Fleming, Anne. "The Borrower's Tale: A History of Poor Debtors inLochnerEra New York City." Law and History Review 30, no. 4 (November 2012): 1053–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0738248012000533.

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When asked why he did not read over the loan documents before signing them, John Doherty explained: “I was anxious to get the money, I didn't bother about it.” In February 1910, the twenty-three-year-old railroad clerk walked into the offices of the Chesterkirk Company, a loan-sharking operation with offices in lower Manhattan. He was looking to borrow some money. Repayment was guaranteed by the only security Doherty had to offer: his prospective wages and, in his words, his “reputation.” After a brief investigation of Doherty's creditworthiness, the loan was approved. The office manager placed a cross in lead pencil at the bottom of a lengthy form and Doherty signed where indicated. He received $34.85 in exchange for his promise to repay the loan principal plus $10.15 in combined fees and interest in three months. The interest charged was significantly greater than the 6 percent per year allowed in New York State. Doherty's effective annualized interest rate, including fees, was over 100 percent.

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Walker, Stephen P. "Expense, social and moral control. Accounting and the administration of the old poor law in England and Wales." Journal of Accounting and Public Policy 23, no. 2 (March 2004): 85–127. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaccpubpol.2004.02.001.

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VAALAVUO, MARIA. "The Redistributive Impact of ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Social Spending." Journal of Social Policy 42, no. 3 (May 3, 2013): 513–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0047279413000251.

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AbstractThe welfare state literature has recently identified a shift from the protection against traditional risks to social investment. In this new future-oriented and activation-based social policy, the focus is on the redistribution of opportunities instead of income. Even if vertical redistribution from the rich to poor may be only one rationale of social action, it should not be overlooked when directing social policy from insurance to investment. This article has two objectives: first, it investigates how real this shift is in macro-economic terms, and, secondly, whether the increased focus on new social risks and social investment has possibly changed welfare states’ commitment to redistribute from the rich to poor. I compare the distribution of benefits from ‘old’ spending categories (such as retirement or unemployment) with those from ‘new’ ones (such as having care responsibilities). Analysing six European countries representing different welfare state regimes, I find no evidence that new social spending would mean necessarily renouncing egalitarian ambitions. On the contrary, in all countries the distribution of new spending is more equal or pro-poor than the spending on old social risks. Different households benefit in distinct ways: the elderly benefiting the most from traditional spending (with the exception of elderly care that is categorised here as ‘new’ social spending) and families with children and single parents from new spending.

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Green, David R. "Icons of the New System: Workhouse Construction and Relief Practices in London under the Old and New Poor Law." London Journal 34, no. 3 (November 2009): 264–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/030580309x12496474607020.

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Vernon, Stuart. "Something old, something new. Confronting poor retention among first year law students by restructuring aspects of the teaching and learning experience." Law Teacher 36, no. 1 (January 2002): 44–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03069400.2002.9993096.

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BROAD, JOHN. "PARISH ECONOMIES OF WELFARE, 1650–1834." Historical Journal 42, no. 4 (December 1999): 985–1006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x99008766.

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This article argues for a more holistic approach to understanding the Old Poor Law. Using three detailed case studies from southern England, it focuses on the dynamics of differing social groups within the parish. It also looks at the role of the law, looking beyond the statutes to the parts played by King's Bench, Quarter Sessions and individual justices and petty sessions in creating a diversity of experiences for the poor. However, it also stresses the differential access to charitable funds, common rights, and poor relief in individual communities, and the ways in which parish elites attempted to put the total available resources to what they saw as the best uses. From 1650 to 1780 these combined resources allowed a generally humane approach to the treatment of poverty and misfortune, and maintained the independence of the cottager and labourer in southern England. Only after 1780 when population rose sharply and rural employment shrank did the flexibility of combined charitable and rate-based relief founder and more drastic devices were employed to cope with basic needs. In this process the independence of the labourer and cottager was undermined, charitable sources were marginalized, and the seeds were sown for the acceptance of the New Poor Law.

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Powell, Martin. "The Eureka Moment? The creation of the British Welfare State." Social Work and Social Sciences Review 20, no. 3 (April 2, 2020): 12–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1921/swssr.v20i3.1313.

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This article explores when the welfare state was established in Britain. First it examines the definitions of the welfare state, before turning to outline the methods and criteria used in exploring the establishment of welfare states. It then discusses the criteria that have been applied to the British case (expenditure; legislation; content; social citizenship; antithesis of the Poor Law) before critically analysing the arguments for different creation periods for the British welfare state (Old Poor Law; nineteenth century; Liberal reforms; inter-war period; 1945; later periods). It is concluded that while the strongest case and the greatest number of dimensions suggest 1945, in the words of T H Marshall: ‘we may still be in doubt what was the exact combination of circumstances in Britain in the 1940's which evoked that cry of "Eureka !’

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DYSON, RICHARD. "The extent and nature of pauperism in five Oxfordshire parishes, 1786–1832." Continuity and Change 28, no. 3 (November 27, 2013): 421–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0268416013000374.

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This article examines the nature of pauperism in the south and east of England during the time of the Old Poor Law by using census material from five predominately rural parishes in Oxfordshire between 1786 and 1832. The proportion of people receiving poor relief was calculated for each parish, together with the types of people receiving such relief. While pauperism was significant in some parishes, others had relatively low levels of people receiving relief, and groups of poor hit by traditional life-cycle poverty were still common. Previous notions of widespread pauperism in the south and east during this period may thus need to be revised, with greater acknowledgement of the influence of local factors.

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Lewis, Richard, and John Wattis. "Continuing care of Old People—A Medical Viewpoint." Ageing and Society 8, no. 2 (June 1988): 189–209. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0144686x00006760.

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ABSTRACTProvision for old people who are in need of continuing care requires close co-operation between informal carers and different agencies and disciplines providing health and social care. In the United Kingdom, the present system of care has evolved from earlier patterns of care centred on the asylums and the poor law with its workhouse institutions. It lacks cohesion. Despite the designation of old people as a priority group, resources are still inadequate to provide a good quality of care. Organisational differences between health and social services can lead to inefficient use of existing resources. More specialised medical, psychiatric and social services for old people enhance the possibilities for co-operation even though they may appear to lead to greater fragmentation. The history of the development of these services in the UK, including the recent expansion of private sector care, is reviewed, with special attention from the medical perspective to the phenomenon of ‘bed blocking’. The recently published Griffiths Report on community care is briefly considered, and some principles for future developments are laid down.

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HITCHCOCK, DAVID. "Vagrancy in Law and Practice under the Old Poor Law. By AUDREY ECCLES. Farnham: Ashgate. 2012. 262 p. £65 (hb). ISBN 978-1-4094-0487-3." Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 37, no. 1 (February 13, 2014): 126. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1754-0208.12065.

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Davies, Megan J. "Renovating the Canadian Old Age Home: The Evolution of Residential Care Facilities in B.C., 1930-1960." Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 12, no. 1 (February 9, 2006): 155–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.7202/031146ar.

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Abstract Canadian historians have largely ignored the old age home. Focussing on British Columbia, this paper covers a pivotal period of institutional transformation from the 1930s through to the 1950s, when health and social welfare professionals sought to reshape the old age home from a custodial poor law facility to a middle-class medical “home” inhabited by deserving senior citizens. New names, architectural styles, décor, and professional involvement within the institution were meant to reform residential accommodation for Canada's elderly. However, professionals' ageism, divisions created by class and gender, and an increasingly frail institutional population made this process problematic.

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Journal articles on the topic 'Old Poor Law'

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