How different was poor relief after the PLAA compared to before??

Question 1

Money:

Answer 1

Continuity:

• The intention was to ban poor relief and yet relief was still handed out at the discretion of local guardians, even people with houses managed to Gain relief in some instances
• the workhouses were comparatively more expensive to run than outdoor relief ie 4s8d per person in a workhouse compared to 2s3d for outdoor relief (50-100% more expensive)
• initial costs of workhouses were expensive Ie £6200 in Banbury for 300 people, less incentive to build them in the north due to seasonal fluctuations in poverty

changes:
-402 subsequent workhouses suggest some attempts across the country to fulfil the PLAA and stop outdoor relief

Question 2

Extent of poor relief?

Answer 2

Continuity:

• opposition to indoor relief was so great in areas like Yorkshire and Lancashire that by 1838 poor law commissioners allowed the use of outdoor relief if it was deemed necessary
• the law was not strongly or universally enforced across the country so Paupers felt they could avoid it and persuade guardians to provide outdoor relief instead
• the north of England was the greatest extent of this; due to its industrialisation, they knew that seasonally there would be many workhouses empty due to the demand for labour, and so they refused to open them due to the high cost and low return; in the times where unemployment’s high, outdoor relief was more favourable

Changes:

• the PLAA was better implemented in the south than the north in terms of opening workhouses and stoping relief
• the old system had 15,000 parishes each responsible for the relief of poverty in their area; the PLAA administrated these into groups of 30, each governed by guardians, to reduce discrepancies and uneven ruling across the country
• poor law unions had 14,000 parishes in them by 1840 and only 800 parishes remained outside the system

Question 3

Impact on paupers

Answer 3

Continuity-
-those who continued to receive poor relief didn’t see much of a change from the PLAA as they weren’t put into workhouses,mostly in the north

Changes

• the speenhamland system was abolished in 1834; whilst it was not a law, it did help to top up the wages of those who were in low demand industries to the cost of 3 loaves of bread, and was also impacted on by the number of children. this was important during the economic decline of the 1810s and yet now paupers didn’t have their wages subsidised and often had to choose workhouses instead
• workhouses lacked efficiency or motivation for workers, they did jobs like bone crushing and stone crushing

Question 4

Punishment and support

Answer 4

Continuity:
-2000 workhouses existed before 1834 housing 20-50 inmates, these were made no better by the PLAA and provided little motivation to encourage paupers to work harder

Changes:
-workhouses were designed to be awful and act as a deterrent to poverty
-scandals like the Andover scandal in 1845 emerged, where inmates were said to have been assaulted by McDougal, punished by being sent to spend the night in a mortuary and starved
-

Question 5

Judgement/criteria

Answer 5

-the PLAA failed to make any significant change overall despite its efforts, owing to the high costs of workhouses compared to the already high costs of poor relief which ultimately led to PLAA in the first place. It certainly didn’t provide any positive change as workhouses that already existed were made worse eg Andover and showed PLAA to be largely a failure