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Most commentators consider these laws, and the origin of the Poor Laws in general, to be an attempt to restore the expiring status quo, a system of economic, if not actual, slavery.93 |
The laws were enacted to interfere with the supply and demand, which was then working in labor's favor, by imposing imprisonment on people who took excessive wages for their labor or workmanship, and forcing people back to work cultivating the demesnes or estates for rolled back wages.94 They were clearly "designed to make available to the feudal lords an adequate supply of agricultural workers when the Black Death and other social and economic factors had created a labor shortage."95 The effect was that workers were hurt badly by the limitation of their wages while, at the same time, the prices for what they bought to survive could continue to rise.96 |
The Statutes transformed the English law approach to labor relations, which, before these laws, regulated neither agricultural nor artisan labor, and "increased the power of central government as much as it drove economic dividing lines between the rulers and the ruled."97 The law considerably enhanced the authority of employers. The laws broadened the employers' legal options when dealing with their servants and further shifted the balance of power against the workers; e.g. a master could anticipate future hiring needs and hire a person to begin working in 6 months, if the worker did not show up for work, they could be summoned into court and ordered to work.98 |
Ultimately these laws, and the others that follow, treated laborers, vagrants and beggars very similar: workers and servants were considered only a step away from being vagrants and beggars, thus they must be compelled to work, compelled to stay at work, compelled to accept lower wages, compelled to stay where they can be put to work, and imprisoned if they disobey. Consequently, vagrants and the beggars were compelled into joining the class of workers. |
IV. The Beginning of Public Relief 1531-1536 |
Two acts of Parliament in 1531 and 1536 developed the first comprehensive English system of poor relief.99 These laws began to form the positive elements of poor relief that would continue for centuries: governmental criteria about who is legitimately in need; governmental obligation to search out those in need; government registration of need; definition of what government should do for the needy; and construction and administration of a system of contributions for the poor. These laws also continued and expanded the previous system of punishments for those who were able to work. |
The first state regulation of relief is found in a 1531 statute "concerning the punishment of beggars and vagabonds."100 Vagrancy had again become a problem all over Europe as the economy changed. Destitute poor people were reported to make up 13 to 20 percent of the English population in the 1520s, and probably doubled that percentage over the next 100 years.101 |
Tenant farmers were evicted so more-profitable sheep might be raised and the prices of food and clothing rose much more quickly than wages.102 Other feudal occupations also ceased: |
War, public and private, and service with great nobles had formerly occupied great numbers of the male population . . . . The chief occupation of the Middle Ages had become unnecessary; men whom the nobles had formerly been glad to enlist had now to seek other means of earning a livelihood. Moreover, the employment which had now disappeared was one which especially afforded an outlet for men of restless character, the kind of people who under adverse conditions became the sturdy vagabonds of the sixteenth century.103 |
The new economy was helping many but impoverishing others.104 The result was a new class of poor, the wandering ones. The preamble to the 1531 statute noted that, "[i]n all places throughout this realm, vagabonds and beggars have of long time increased, and daily do increase in great and excessive numbers, by the occasion of idleness, mother and root of all vices" bringing about continual thefts, murders and other "heinous offenses."105 |
The statute contained five strategies for addressing "these evils". First, the local officials, mayors, sheriffs and jus |
tices of the peace106 were directed to diligently and regularly search their jurisdictions for beggars. When beggars were found the local officials were directed to determine which beggars should be allowed "to beg and live of[f] the charity and alms of the people." Only "the aged poor and the impotent" were allowed to beg. Those so certified were to be officially registered and given written authorization, by letter under seal, both to beg and a designation of "the limit within which he is so authorised." If the beggar was found begging in any other place besides where authorized, the authorities could "punish such person by imprisonment in the stocks the space of two days and two nights, giving them only bread and water."107 |
Second, if any aged poor or impotent person begged without the written letter and seal, punishment was provided. He was to be either given three days and nights on bread and water in the stocks, or, in the discretion of the local officials, "stripped naked from the middle upwards, and cause him to be whipped." Then he was to be furnished with the written authorization, assigned a place to beg, and "is to be sworn to repair thither immediately."108 |
Third, if any man or woman was found begging or was determined to be a vagrant, and was "being whole and mighty in body, and able to labour" and was unable to sufficiently explain "how he doth lawfully get his living" he was to be arrested and punished. This was the three-part legal definition of a vagabond: poor, able to work, and unemployed.109 Contemporary observers point out that the vagrants, vagabonds, and beggars of that time do not resemble the current homeless population, but are rather more like the unemployed of the Great Depression or the jobless millions in today's inner cities.110 |
The punishment for being an able-bodied beggar or vagrant was up to the local justice of the peace, or sheriff, or mayor, who |
by their discretion shall cause every such idle person to be had to the next market-town, or to other place most convenient, and there be tied to the end of a cart naked, and beaten with whips throughout the same town or other place, till his body be bloody by reason of such whipping; and after such punishment he shall be enjoined upon his oath to return forthwith the next straight way to the place where he was born, or where he last dwelled the space of three years, and there put himself to labour like as a true man oweth to do.111 |
The local officials were under a statutory duty to punish beggars. The statue explicitly provided that parishes or townships which failed to punish beggars could be sued and made to forfeit specific amounts of money for each beggar left around, with half the money to go to the king and "the other half to him that will sue the same."112 |
Fourth, the statute explicitly forbade certain people from begging without authorization, including "scholars of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge;" those who claim knowledge "in physic, physionomie, palmistry, or other crafty science," and fortune tellers.113 Punishment for the first offense was two days of whipping. For the second offense it was two days whipping and put on the pillory for two hours and "have one of his ears cut off." The third offense was more whipping, pillory, "and have his other ear cut off."114 Finally, the law made it a crime, punishable by fine, to give money or lodging to any strong or able-bodied beggar.115 |
While fragmented categorization of the poor had already begun, these acts were the first comprehensive legal attempt to distinguish between and legislate different treatment for the poor deemed unable to work and those who were able-bodied.116 |
Earlier attempts, dating back to 1388, had started to differentiate between beggars who were "impotent" or unable to work, who would be treated more leniently, and those who are able-bodied.117 "Women great with child, and men and women in extreme sickness" who were vagrants or caught begging were given more lenient punishments in 1495.118 And in 1504, "persons being impotent and above the age of sixty years" were to be given special consideration.119 |
The aforementioned law was quickly amended by 27 Henry 8, ch. 25, (1536). This was both the most vigorous attempt yet to outlaw begging and the continuation of the creation of the system of poor relief.120 The historical context for these actions was that in 1536, Henry VIII dissolved the smaller religious houses of monks and nuns, and in 1539 the larger abbeys and monasteries were dissolved.121 Because of these actions, there was an upsurge in beggars and a decline in resources to help the poor.122 Local officials were faced with taking over the responsibilities that had been previously largely church-based. |
Some welcomed local governmental control of poor relief. They thought the religious had been spoiling the poor by sheltering them and giving the beggars alms, therefore, the dissolution of these institutions, while painful for local communities around the monasteries, was, according to critics, long overdue: |
It is obvious that the habits of indolence which the monastic institutions tended so strongly to cherish had the effect of increasing tenfold the evil which they were designed to cure. Multitudes of idle and dissolute were sent forth from these haunts of profligacy; and the votaries of indolence and beggary, who were daily fed on the alms distributed at the doors of the religious houses, soon spread their debasing and demoralising influence upon the land.123 |
The 1536 act made the local officials responsible for poor relief. It ordered local church and governmental officials to: |
exhort, move, stir, and provoke people to be liberal and bountifully to extend their good and charitable alms and contribu |
tions124 . . . as the poor, impotent, lame, feeble, sick and diseased people, being not able to work, may be provided, [helped], and relieved so that in no wise they nor one of them be suffered to go openly in begging . . . .125 |
The law prohibited the giving of alms, except to a common box for the poor to be used by the local officials. Local officials were required to "render and yield account of all sums of money as by them shall be gathered and how and in what manner it was employed."126 It also, for the first time, allowed local officials engaged in the collection of alms or the execution of the obligations of the act to be reimbursed.127 |
For those not capable of working, local officials were obligated to seek them out and care for them. The act ordered officials to "find and keep every aged, poor and impotent person, which was born or dwelt three years within the same limit, by way of voluntary and charitable alms in every of the same cities and parishes, and, with such convenient alms as shall be thought meet by their discretion, so as none of them shall be compelled to go openly in begging.128 For able-bodied adults, local officials were compelled to keep them in continual labor.129 |
The principle of public responsibility for providing employment was now established. "For the first time also, the contingency that a person may be capable of work and yet not be able to obtain work is recognized."130 According to the statute, the able-bodied "may be daily kept in continual labor, whereby every one of them may get their own sustenance and living with their own hands."131 |
Children found begging were specifically addressed. Justices of the peace and other local officials were given authority to take "children under fourteen years of age, and above five, that live in idleness, and be taken begging, may be put to service . . . to husbandry, or other crafts or labours."132 For the begging children who were apprenticed, one commentator said there is ample evidence that the conditions under which they labored "were in fact hardly distinguishable from the slave trade."133 |
The penalties for unauthorized begging by the able-bodied were enlarged to include whipping, banishment back to the place where they were born, cutting off an ear, and, ultimately, the penalty for repeated offenses was death by execution.134 While these provisions were lacking relative to contemporary standards, they were the beginning of a positive national mandate for governmental action for the poor.135 |
These laws established the early principles of English poor relief: local assistance for those unable to work; local responsibility for financing and administration of relief; and strict punishment for those who refuse to work.136 These initial principles of poor relief remained in the law for scores of years; indeed, many of the underlying principles remain today. |
V. Statute of Artificers and Compulsory Assessment 1563 |
Two hundred years after the Statute of Labourers, Parliament enacted the Statute of Artificers, 5th Elizabeth, Chapter. 4 (1563), which repealed all prior acts "concerning the retaining, departing, wages and orders of apprentices, servants and labourers" and replaced them with a single comprehensive law regulating all phases of the work life.137 |
While many of the conditions of the sixteenth century were different from those of the time when the Statutes of Labourers were enacted in the fourteenth century, there were some striking similarities including a labor shortage and a prior, though not as devastating, epidemic.138 Sheep raising and the enclosure movement continued to advance causing a loss of population in the rural areas. Those who worked in rural areas had seasonal work in the growing times and unemployment in the winter. In the cities, work depended on skills. For the unemployed poor in rural areas, the outlook was bleak; for the unemployed in urban areas it was worse.139 |
The Statute of Artificers essentially reenacted core features of the Statutes of Laborers, such as controlled labor and wage ceilings, with modifications necessary to reflect the passage of time and changed conditions.140 The first principle of this law was that everyone was compelled to work. Every unmarried person, and every married person under thirty, who was had less than forty shillings and was not already employed, was ordered to become a yearly servant in whatever trade they were trained.141 Everyone between the ages of twelve and sixty was compelled to work, if they did not have a job they would be required to work for a local farmer for a year.142 Women between the ages of twelve and forty, as long as unmarried, could be compelled to become servants if local officials so decided.143 Householders were authorized to take the unemployed who are under twenty-one as apprentices (apprentices were generally not paid) for a term of at least seven years.144 Justices of the peace were allowed to order anyone, already employed or not, to work on the farms at harvest time.145 |
Duration of work was set. One year was the minimum work period.146 No one could quit work without permission from two justices of the peace.147 No one could quit a work project such as building a house or church if the project was not yet complete.148 If the master fired a worker before a year was up, there was a 40s fine.149 If the worker quit early, they went to prison.150 |
Mobility of workers was severely restricted. No one could leave their community without written authorization.151 No one could be hired without a written testimonial from the justices of the peace that the worker was licensed to depart from his previous master.152 Anyone who left was to be arrested and returned. |
The hours of work and meals were minutely set; consider the following description of the hours of work from March |
to September: |
[A]ll artificers and labourers, being hired for wages by the day or week, shall betwixt the midst of the months of March and September be an continue at their work at or before five of the clock in the morning, and continue at work and not depart until betwixt seven and eight of the clock at night, except it be in the time of breakfast, dinner or drinking, the which times at the most shall not exceed above two and a half hours in a day, that is to say, at every drinking one half hour, for his dinner one hour, and for his sleep when he is allowed to sleep, the which is from the midst of May to the midst of August, half an hour at the most, and every breakfast one half hour . . . . 153 |
Wages were set for all servants, labourers, artificers, workmen and apprentices of husbandry. Justices of the peace reset each wage category annually.154 Giving wages in excess of the limits was punishable by ten days in jail and a fine.155 Receiving excessive wages was punishable by twenty-one days in jail.156 What happened to masters who refused to pay the minimal wages is not set out in the statute but it does not appear that the worker had any real remedy.157 |
The Statute of Artificers created a comprehensive regulation of labor, a system in which the employment and wages of laborers were legally set once each year.158 This law remained in force for another 250 years.159 It assumed the central legal position for laborers that the 1601 Poor Law assumed for the nonworking poor. |
VI. The Poor Law of 1601 |
The act of 43rd Elizabeth, Chapter 2 (1601), has been called "the foundation and text book of English Poor Law."160 It "provided the framework for the poor law for the next 350 years."161 While it did not repeal any prior laws and left many local customs alone, it "fixed the character of poor relief for three centuries not only in England but in American as well."162 |
This, and other Elizabethan poor laws, enacted three principles which shaped much subsequent social legislation: the principle of local responsibility; the principle of settlement and removal; and the principle of primary family responsibility.163 Local responsibility and primary family responsibility are part of the 1601 act, the law of settlement and removal is addressed in the next section. |
The Poor Law of 1601 firmly established relief of the poor as a local responsibility of the parish, which is by now a traditional unit of English local government.164 The parish was to raise money and administer relief directly to the poor who were unable to work and to provide work for those who were able. The state filled the vacuum left by the elimination of the Church system of poor relief and adopted many of the same structures and procedures of that prior system.165 The law directed the local people to annually elect two or more overseers of the poor.166 The overseers were to work with the justices of the peace to administer poor relief.167 |
The main part of the statute was the creation of a system of general assessment to provide a consistent source of funding for the activities of local officials in relief of the poor. Taxes could be levied on every inhabitant on a weekly or other basis for the support of the poor.168 Further, if the parish or locality proved unable to raise enough funds for poor support, the justices of the peace were allowed to look to other more prosperous parishes in the same locale for support.169 Imprisonment was the penalty for refusal to pay assessments.170 |
There were four types of activities or support allowed to be performed by the overseers under the law. First was the "setting to work the children of all such whose parents shall not by the said church wardens and overseers, or the greater part of them, be thought able to keep and maintain their children."171 Second was the "setting to work of all such persons, married or unmarried, having no means to maintain them, and no ordinary daily trade of life to get their living by."172 Third, to levy taxes on everyone and everything of value in order to provide materials for the poor to work on such as "flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron and other necessary ware and stuff."173 Fourth, to levy taxes "towards the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind, and such other among them, being poor and not able to work."174 Lastly, "to do and execute all other things . . . as to them shall seem convenient."175 |
The local authorities were empowered to build housing "for the impotent and poor of the parish."176 The mutual legal responsibility of parents and children was expanded to make grandparents responsible for the support of impoverished children and grandchildren, and vice versa, by establishing the principle of primary family responsibility which stated, "[T]he father and grandfather, and the mother and grandmother, and the children of every poor, old, blind, lame and impotent person, or other poor person not able to work, being of sufficient ability, shall, at their own charge, relieve and maintain every such poor person . . . ."177 This principle of primary family responsibility became a firmly entrenched rule of law.178 |
If two justices of the peace found that a child's parents were unable to keep and maintain them, than the child could be taken from their parents and made apprentices until the age of twenty-four for males and twenty-one for |
females.179 This allowed the justices to take children for apprenticeship, without pay, whether or not their families were on poor relief; the concept of keeping families together in order to aid them was not a part of the law.180 |
This law formed the basis for poor law administration and funding, enduring for hundreds of years. Particularly in its funding scheme, it was the culmination of 250 years of experimentation and evolution by Parliament. The history of the search for a consistent source of funding is best set out in the following by Sir George Nicholls: |
[I]t is curious to trace the successive steps by which its chief enactment, that of compulsory assessment for the relief of the poor, came at length to be established. First, the poor were restricted from begging, except within certain specified limits. Next, the several towns, parishes, and hamlets were required to support their poor by charitable alms, so that none of necessity might be compelled "to go openly begging," and collections were to be made for them on Sundays . . . . Then houses and materials for setting the poor on work were to be provided by the charitable devotion of the people . . . . Next the collection for the poor, on a certain Sunday after divine service, were to be set down in writing what each householder was willing to give weekly for the ensuing year; and if any should be obstinate and refuse to give, the minister was gently to exhort him, and, if he still refused, then to report him to the bishops, who was to send for and again gently exhort him; and if still refractory, the bishop was to certify the same to the justices in sessions, and bind him over to appear there, when the justices were once more gently to move and persuade him; and if they would not be persuaded, they were then to assess him in such sum as they thought reasonable."181 |
This law represented "an enormous advance in modern government" responsibility and administration in addressing the problems of the poor.182 Despite subsequent reforms and modifications, this law "remained one of the formal bases of English relief until the great post-world War II reforms."183 |
VII. Law of Settlement |
There is scarce a poor man in England of forty years of age . . . who has not in some part of his life felt himself most cruelly oppressed by this ill-contrived law of settlements. |
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776 184 |
The Poor Relief Act of 1662 is frequently called the Act of Settlement. This law gave justices of the peace the power to remove any person from the parish if someone complained that they had arrived within the last forty days, and were determined to be needing relief or might be needing it in the future.185 The process called "removal" sent back the person to their previous location or "settlement." Once removed, they had no right to go elsewhere, that was now their permanent legal settlement place. |
The genesis of the law was primarily the concern of authorities in London and Westminster who felt they were being overrun with poor people coming into the city from the rural areas.186 While the law itself was probably only a reflection of already existing local practices, sanctioning and clarifying the current state of affairs, because it was now a national act, its impact was substantial.187 |
The settlement law arose out of at least three concerns: the desire to reduce local responsibility for poor relief; a growing sense that there needed to be a punitive dimension to poor relief; and a determination to keep the laboring poor close to home and away from the cities.188 |
Localities preferred, if they were compelled to support paupers, to support only their own, and this law created a way to remove outsiders. No parish wanted to support people who should or could be supported elsewhere. The resulting law made it exceptionally difficult for both the nonworking poor and workers to move and settle elsewhere. It kept people where they were and restricted the ability of anyone to go elsewhere for work. The law's preamble sets the tone: |
By reason of some defects in the law, poor people are not restrained from going from one parish to another, and therefore do endeavor to settle themselves in those parishes where there is the best stock, the largest commons or wastes to build cottages, and the most woods for them to burn and destroy, and when they have consumed it, then to another parish, and at last become rogues and vagabonds, to the great discouragement of the parishes to provide stocks, where it is liable to be devoured by strangers . . . . 189 |
The justices could return any person back to the parish of their birth who was a new arrival at another parish if either they needed poor relief or if the justices thought they would need poor relief in the future.190 There was an exception to this law that allowed workers who were needed to harvest the crops in another locale to travel there with written permission from the justice of the peace and an enforceable promise to return.191 |
People of means could easily and legally settle in a new place by performing certain economic acts enumerated in the law, which were unavailable to the poor, e.g. renting a tenement of annual value exceeding ten pounds.192 |
The law of settlement was modified thirty-five years later by an act in 1697. "An Act for Supplying Some Defects in the Law for the Relief of the Poor of this Kingdom," modified the law of settlement by making it slightly easier to relocate and further stigmatized the treatment of those who accepted relief.193 |
The law of settlement was creating difficulties for employers to find new workers, a problem reflected in the new law's preamble, which read as follows: "they are for the most part confined to live in their own parishes, townships or places, and are not permitted to inhabit elsewhere, even though their labour is wanted in many other places, where the increase in manufacturers would employ more hands."194 |
Under the new law, if a person came to a new location with a certificate from his previous parish showing they would |
accept responsibility for him if he needed relief, he was allowed to stay and it became unlawful to try to remove him.195 Further, a person was said to have settled in a new location only if that person worked continuously there for one year.196 Not until 1795, was an act, 35th George 3rd, Chapter 101, passed to relax and modify the laws of settlement. While previous laws allowed the removal of persons from a locality on the basis that they had not settled there and might seek relief, removal was now prohibited until they actually applied for relief. |
In addition to the changes to the law of settlement, the new law made it more difficult on the poor. In order to make sure that relief "may not be misapplied and consumed by the idle, sturdy, and disorderly beggars," all people who received poor relief, parents and children, were required to wear the letter "P" in red or blue cloth on the right shoulder of their uppermost garment.197 |
Refusal to wear the badge resulted in one of two types of punishment: a reduction or elimination of relief or imprisonment at hard labor up to twenty-one days.198 A fine of twenty shillings was punishment for giving relief to poor who were not wearing their badge.199 The badging part of the act was not repealed until 1810, and was apparently continued in some places even after repeal.200 |
Badging or stigmatizing the poor was a legislative reflection of common moral assumptions about the poor: poverty was the fault of the individual who was poor; if people remained poor it was because of their own bad decisions, laziness or drunkenness; poor people are sinful because they are squandering God-given opportunity; assisting the poor must be limited and punitive; and, therefore, relief of poverty must be very carefully restricted and monitored so it does not go to the wrong people.201 |
There were two main criticisms of the law of settlement. First, that it prompted endless expensive litigation as parishes competed over which could push responsibility for the poor on the other.202 This effect of the law was substantial. Tens of thousands of people were removed each year.203 The poor themselves had little or no voice in the matter. Cases of the time show officials of one locality shipping people out to another locality only to have that locality try to send them back.204 Secondly, it restricted the mobility and opportunity for workers. One commentator observed that the effect of the law on workers ended up "restricting them through life to their place of birth, destroying the incentives to independent effort, and perpetuating a low state of civilisation."205 |
The law damaged workers because not only were people who sought relief to be sent back to where they came from, but it also allowed the removal of anyone who might possibly be on relief sometime in the future. If it even appeared that they might someday ask for relief, they were subject to removal. Only with written authorization from the justice of the peace showing they were settled in their home parish, could people go to other parishes to work.206 Since the parish was a very small unit confinement to one's birth parish was a severe geographical restriction.207 In 1834, for example, there were 15,000 parishes with an average of less than 1,000 people per parish.208 |
One noted analyst was critical of "this almost incredible violation of the rights of liberty" and also its virtual geographical imprisonment of workers: |
In the sphere of Poor Laws another and not successful attempt was made to reduce the working classes to practical servitude . . . . By this Act it may with truth be said that the iron of slavery entered into the soul of the English labourer, and made him cling to his parish as a shipwrecked sailor to his raft. From the very first it was the fruitful parent of fraud, injustice, lavish expenditure, ill-will and endless litigation.209 |
Settlement curtailed the movement of poor people and again returned England to the limited mobility of the feudal times where everyone knew who was responsible for whom. The only major exception to this process of limited mobility was to banish criminals and the poor to America.210 Like other parts of the poor laws, settlement and removal were "a kind of substitute for the system of . . . serfdom."211 |
In the final analysis, settlement was a natural but ultimately malignant outgrowth of the principle of local responsibility. It represented the most extreme and cruel form of localism that England had known previously or has known since. It was modified a little more than a century later, but it still stands in history as the ultimate on the negative side of the Elizabethan system of assistance by neighbors to neighbors."212 |
VIII. Workhouses |
The Poor Relief Act of 1722, 9th George, Chapter 7, allowed parishes, either alone or with others, to provide houses for the indigent where they could be housed, supervised, and put to work.213 This act was a reform of the prior system of providing relief to the poor in their own homes. It also established workhouses, called "indoor relief", and allowed parishes to make living in the workhouse a mandatory alternative to the prior system of providing assistance to the poor who still lived in their own homes.214 |
Inasmuch as the prior Elizabethan poor laws intended for the unemployed to work, the laws already allowed the justices to levy taxes on everyone and everything of value in order to provide materials for the poor to work on such as "flax, |
hemp, wool, thread, iron and other necessary ware and stuff."215 However, since there was no place for the poor to work, they worked on these materials in their own homes under little or no supervision . This system of providing assistance to the poor in their own homes was called "outdoor relief". This system was criticized, among other reasons, for being too easy on the poor and for its growing cost. Some turned to the idea of putting the able-bodied poor to work in supervised institutions, or workhouses.216 |
Housing the poor was not a new idea. There had been poorhouses for some time but they were much different than workhouses. Poorhouses had been in existence since the sixteenth century. They were often nothing more than a few cottages owned by the parish and used to provide shelter for the aged, disabled and sick of the parish.217 |
Parliament had already authorized individuals, but not towns or parishes to build hospitals and work housing for the poor.218 Other acts of parliament allowed specific locales to combine to build joint workhouses.219 Prior to this act, there had been no general legal authorization for all jurisdictions to create workhouses. |
There were two main reasons for the creation of workhouses: first, to find a way to reduce the costs of poor relief by having the poor perform work that would hopefully pay for their keep; and secondly, to make public support for the poor less attractive in the hope that fewer people would apply. |
The parishes were to have the "benefit of the labour" of those in the workhouses and this would allow the workhouse to support itself. The thinking was "that the paupers could be put to remunerative labor," a thinking that turned out to be "so plausible in itself, but so wrong in principle and disastrous in effects."220 While initially successful in reducing the cost of providing relief to people, the establishment of workhouses ultimately ended up using even more parish resources. The workhouse was in truth at that time kind of a manufactory, carried on at the risk and cost of the poor-rate, employing the worst description of the people, and helping to pauperise the best.221 |
For those who thought poverty was the result of idleness and vice, workhouses were the answer: |
The workhouse provided sufficient food, clothing and shelter but restricted socializing and family relations, movement, clothing, consumption of alcohol and tobacco, and so on. The purpose was to make the receipt of aid so psychologically devastating and so morally stigmatizing that only the truly needy would request it-thus preventing starvation and homelessness without creating work disincentives.222 |
Willingness to live in a workhouse effectively became the new test of destitution in every parish that instituted the workhouse. Relief provided to the poor in their homes was now prohibited.223 Persons who refused to go into the workhouse "shall not be entitled to ask or receive . . . relief from the Churchwardens and Overseers . . . ."224 Living in the workhouse became yet another stigma that repelled people from seeking assistance and penalized those who did.225 |
At first, the workhouses effected a reduction in parochial expenditures they deterred the Poor from making applications for relief.226 Workhouses were to be closely supervised and controlled and provide shelter and lodging in return for strict discipline and strenuous work. They differed from each other in how those in charge prioritized the various purposes for the workhouses, of which there were many: profitably employing the poor; penalizing the idle; deterring others from applying for relief; housing the impotent poor; and as an asylum for the insane and sick.227 |
The inmates in the workhouse in Kendall are described by Sir Frederick Eden: |
The number of Paupers in the workhouse at present (4th April 1795) is 136; viz. 57 males, and 79 females; 8 are bastards. Of these 38 are under 10 years of age; 26 between 10 and 20; 12 between 20 and 30; 8 between 30 and 40; 15 between 40 and 50; 4 between 50 and 60; 17 between 60 and 70; 10 between 70 and 80; 6 between 80 and 90. Their employments are various: the men are generally employed out of the house; the women spin, and weave Kendall-cottons, & c. children are generally sent to the different manufactories; where they earn about 1s. a week each.228 |
While in theory the justices of the peace were still responsible for supervising the poor, in practice those who ran the poorhouses were in control. |
[They] acted at their own discretion and without interference from the justices... The houses also proved to be breeding grounds for epidemics. They were unsanitary and lacking in accommodation. There was also much promiscuity and the houses were the scene of great cruelty by the contractors to whom they were farmed out and who underpaid those who worked for them.229 |
Few developments of the poor laws more clearly demonstrate the interrelation of poverty and work than the workhouse. Refusal to work meant the workhouse. How to avoid the workhouse? Stay working for the master.230 While subsequent laws aimed to make the parishes responsible for providing employment to those who could work, the only real alternative at this time was work at whatever wage could be found or face the workhouse.231 The workhouse survived for decades despite their expense and administrative problems.232 |
While there were as many as 700 workhouses by 1732 and probably as many as one out of every three parishes had a workhouse by 1782, outdoor relief slowly returned.233 Criticisms of the workhouse mounted: |
One thing is too publicly known to admit of denial, that those workhouses are scenes of filthiness and confusion; that old and young, sick and healthy, are promiscuously crowded into ill-contrived apartments, not of sufficient capacity to contain with convenience half the number of miserable beings condemned to such deplorable inhabitation, and that speedy death is almost ever to the aged and infirm, and often to the youthful and robust, the consequence of removal from more salubrious air to such mansions of putridity.234 |
Reform came slowly. Reports documenting widespread deaths of infants in the workhouses, as many as 82% of those under one year of age, forced a law compelling the removal of all children under six from the houses.235 |
One successful reformer was Thomas Gilbert, who after twenty years of trying finally persuaded Parliament to pass an act changing the workhouses back into poorhouses.236 Gilbert's Act of 1782237 allowed parishes to only house orphans and the impotent stating that, "no person shall be sent to such poor house or houses, except as become indigent by old age, or infirmities, and are unable to acquire a maintenance by their labor . . . ."238 |
The idle and dissolute were to be kept in houses of correction. The locality was directed to find outside employment for willing and able workers by hiring them out and making up any wage deficiency.239 The reform of the workhouse was itself the subject of reform as dissatisfaction with current methods of providing assistance to the poor continued. |
Subsets and Splits