How far do you agree that poor relief in the years 1834-70 evidenced a more positive concern for the well-being of society? Flashcards
What should you remember for this question?
To Consider the motives for every change that was made.
What are the four factors that need to be discussed?
PLAA
Andover and Huddersfield
Growth of Charity, philanthropism and self-help
Other government laws
When was the PLAA?
1834
What is the utilitarian principle upon which the PLAA was based?
Less eligibility
what is less eligibility and what does it mean for the question?
The utilitarian principal that deliberately made poor relief harsh so that only the most destitute and those truly unable to help themselves would apply for it
shows that government weren’t concerned about the well being of the poorest in society in the early part of the time period
what central authority was established for the PLAA?
Poor Law commission
What did the PL commission oversee the transformation of 15 000 parishes into?
600 larger ones to allow them to share workhouses
Fundamentally what did the PLAA discourage?
outdoor relief for the able bodied poor
Thanks to the PLAA, what became the principle way to effect relief?
Workhouses
From what view did the rationale for workhouses being the principle way to effect come?
The indolence view
What did the indolence view believe?
It was believed that systems such as Speenhamland had made it too easy to get support and even allowed people to manipulate support for personal gain.
How many hours’ work a day in a workhouse after the PLAA?
10
Where were inmates were made to break stones for use in road building?
Guildford workhouse
Which workhouse where ran a woollen interest which made the inmates operate each of the processes involved with the manufacture of textiles?
Newbury workhouse in berkshire
Which workhouse under who banned the use of beer, snuff or tobacco?
Southwell workhouse under Reverend Thomas Becher
What was the basic diet and what would inmates get once a week?
Basic diet of bread, cheese and gruel and once a weak soup, meat and potatoes
What was a privilege only for the elderly in workhouses?
Tea
What did prisoners wear?
uniform
Who were separated?
men and women
The resistance to the New Poor Law from which group was not from genuine concern for the population, but because of what?
the growing northern industry offered a cyclical degree of employment to which the permanency of the workhouse solution was ill-suited
The resistance form which humanitarian campaigner suggest a growing concern from Northern society about the poor?
Nevertheless the resistance from notable humanitarian campaigner Oastler suggests a greater concern within northern society.
The growth in middle-class affluence gave rise to a stronger feeling of what related to charity?
a stronger feeling of Christian charity which consequently informed the newfound interest in the poor
What did the new middle classes who were interested in the poor focus on?
These people focussed on alleviating the greater discomforts of poverty by supplementing the basic provision of the Poor Law Board.
Who is the notable female philanthropist who needs to be talked about?
Angelina Burdett Coutts
What did Angelina Burdett Coutts to become the richest woman in England?
£1.8 million
what did Angelina Burdett Coutts’ family make their money in?
Banking
How did Angelina Burdett Coutts show an interest in poor children?
She tried to given them opportunity by finding them employment in the military
What did Angelina Burdett Coutts co-found and with who did she do this?
With Charles Dickens she co-founded a hospital for poor women in 1847 called Urania for those who had turned to prostitution
What person could you talk about along with Angelina Burdett Coutts as a middle class female philanthropist?
Christina rossetti
What did Angelina Burdett Coutts fund for Britain’s poorest children?
Education projects
What was Angelina Burdett Coutts’ basic purpose for the poor?
furnish the poor with the skills that they might need to get themselves out of poverty and alleviate the continued existence of pauperism in society
What did the workhouse visiting society do and for what did this allow?
Collected information on the lives of the poor, allowing a much more formal approach to private relief to be organised.
The workhouse visiting society backed up philanthropic work with what?
Solid statistics
What is the name of the medical journal that investigated the quality of medical care in London workhouses?
The Lancet
In what was the concept of self-help founded?
industrialisation
Why was self-help founded in industrialisation?
entrepreneurial men achieved great wealth as a result of their own effort
The re-emphasis of self help in the mid-19th century was in response to what?
The continuing high levels of pauperism and a desire to place the responsibility for that in the hands of the paupers rather than in the hands of the state
For what two things did the poor have a reputation that led to the state advocating self-hep?
Indolence and drink
Who was one of the founding figures of the Charity Organisation Society and when was this?
1869 Helena Bosanquet
What was the purpose of the 1869 Charity Organisation Society?
served to assess people into the categories of deserving and undeserving poor, and so to limit the relief given out by employers
Who did the Charity Organisation society aim to help and who did they not aim to help?
It aimed to not help everyone, but to ensure that the ‘deserving’ got back on their feet.
What were the Charity Organisation society not concerned with?
The concern was not one of the poor’s well being, but a concern that welfare was only targeted to the most ‘deserving’.
Of what is the existence of the charity organisation society indicative?
Its existence was indicative of a belief in society that poor relief was actually increasing poor people’s dependancy on the state.
What did the Charity organisation society serve to demonstrate about the voices and sentiment behind less eligibility?
It served to demonstrate that the voices and sentiment behind the ‘less eligibility doctrine’ were still distinctly prominent in society.
What is the one positive of the Charity organisation society?
for the deserving poor, the Charity Organisation Society did have a much more objective, rational approach to administering poor relief.
How could the motivation for modern philanthropy be said to be something other than genuine concern for the poor?
an opportunity for affluent women to participate in public affairs despite restrictive attitudes that existed around women
When was philanthropy an opportunity for affluent women to participate in public affairs despite restrictive attitudes that existed around women particularly true?
This was particularly true in the 1850s where the motivation was down to a wish to participate in society more fully.
What is the other government law in 1842?
Outdoor Labour Test Order
What are the other government laws in 1844 and 52?
Attempts to reduce the availability of Outdoor poor relief in the form of the outdoor relief prohibitory order and the outdoor relief regulation order
What is the other government law in 1867?
Metropolitan Poor act
What did the 1842 outdoor labour test order do?
formally allowing the use of outdoor relief for able-bodied workers during times of economic decline, despite the PLAA prohibiting it
Though it might not be, how could the 1842 outdoor labour test order be evidence of a society that was not concerned with the welfare of the poor and was instead concerned with something else?
Arguably this was not so much evidence of an increased concern for the poor, though that was the implication, but a practical consideration to address cyclical unemployment in some cases.
Attempts to reduce the availability of Outdoor poor relief in 1844 and 1852 were often met with what and why?
vehement opposition from local boards who felt that their discretionary power was being infringed upon by the state
Attempts to reduce the availability of Outdoor poor relief in 1844 and 1852 were often met with vehement opposition from local boards who felt that their discretionary power was being infringed upon by the state. What does this show?
This shows that whilst the national government’s opinion may have been absent of any concern, this perhaps hides real local concern.
What did the 1867 metropolitan poor act do?
Demanded that medical facilities be separate from the workhouse itself and provided for the creation of the Metropolitan Asylum Board that took over the responsibility of caring for the sick paupers.
What were the two implications of the 1867 metropolitan poor act?
These advances paved the way for more specialised care of the sick but also began to modernise the system of general poor relief.
What was the motivation behind the 1867 metropolitan poor act?
The motivation behind this was certainly to make relief more effective, and was a more conciliatory approach which involved talking to Paupers and marked a departure for poor relief.
Rather than treating them as the problem that needed solving, what did the 1867 metropolitan poor act do?
Began to involve the poor themselves in finding solutions to the problems
What did the 1844 Outdoor relief regulation order do?
effectively brought an end to the provision of outdoor relief
What did the 1852 Outdoor Relief Regulation Order do?
limited the availability of outdoor relief to such a great extent that even the sick and the infirm struggled to get any outdoor relief.
What did the 1852 outdoor relief regulation order encapsulate?
This perhaps encapsulates the extent to which government did not have a genuine concern for the Poor’s welfare as it was against the sick and venerable
Which newspaper and which editor criticised the Andover workhouse scandal?
John Walter at the times
Give a judgement for the Huddersfield and Andover workhouse scandals
Whilst the actual existence of these events was symptomatic of a society that was not concerned with their poorest, the scrutiny and outrage that they afterwards created ensured that the consequence of them was a greater social interest in the well-being of society.
When was andover?
1845
When was Huddersfield?
1848
when was Andover established?
1836
Who was the master of the house at Andover?
Colin McDougal
What did the Andover workhouse have a notorious reputation for?
Discipline
What was the two workhouses symptoms of?
A government which did not care about its citizens welfare
What had the abuse at Andover influenced?
The abuse of Andover had gone some way to softening society’s views and created a growing sense of responsibility towards the poor.
As a result of the scandals, who published what and when did he publish it?
Henry Mayhew 1849 London Labour and the London Poor
What did Henry Mayhew 1849 say in his London Labour and the London Poor and what belief did this challenge?
it was poor wages that produced pauperism because they were insufficient to protect the recipients from unforeseen fluctuations in the economy. This challenged the belief that idleness was the real cause of poverty.
What was dissolved following Andover and what replaced it?
Poor Law Commission was dissolved following Andover and replaced with a Poor Law Board
The creation of a Poor Law Board staffed with notable cabinet members signalled what?
which signalled relief brought more closely under government control.
when was the workhouse visiting society established?
1858
what did the workhouse visiting society do?
undertook checks on workhouses, the information that they collated through doing this agitated better treatment of the sick and elderly.
What happened despite the scandals?
Despite the scandals, a further 100 workhouses were built between 1851 and 1866 to augment the 402 which had been constructed immediately after 1834.
What did the ANDOVER regime epitomise?
The belief in deterrence
What purpose built things did the Andover workhouse have?
Cells
Who were separated in Andover?
Women and children
what would be crushed in Andover for fertiliser?
Bones
People were so hungry in andover that they would do what two things to the animals bones that they were meant to be breaking?
Break them open and have the marrow and eat any scraps of meat left on them to subsidise their diet
Subsistence levels of food in Andover did what to the Board of Guardians and why?
It kept them happy because it kept the poor rate low
What is indicative of the extent of the cruelty of the Andover workhouse?
Indicative of the extent of the cruelty was that between 1837 and 1846, 61 paupers were sent to prison for having deliberately committed offences to escape the institution.
Following what in 1848 Huddersfield was exposed as being especially poor at caring for its inmates?
Typhus outbreak
What is the horrible fact about Huddersfield?
People had to share lice ridden beds with dead bodies for up to 9 weeks
