Providing for the Poor: The Old Poor Law, 1750–1834
Synopsis
The Old Poor Law in England and Wales, administered by the local parish, dispensed benefits to paupers providing a uniquely comprehensive, pre-modern system of relief. Remaining in force until 1834, the law provided goods and services to keep the poor alive.
Combining short- and long-form articles and essays, Providing for the Poor brings together academics and practitioners from across disciplines to re-examine the micro-politics of poverty in the long eighteenth century through the eyes of the poor, their providers and enablers. From the providence of the parochial sixpence given in order to move a beggar on, to coercive marriages, plebeian clothing and the much broader implications of vagrancy towards the end of the long eighteenth century, this volume aims to bridge the gaps in our understanding of the experiences of people across the social spectrum whose lives were touched by the Old Poor Law. It brings together some of the wider arguments concerning the nature of welfare during economically testing times, and navigates the rising bureaucracy inherent in the system, to produce a radical new history of the Old Poor Law in astonishing detail.
Dr Peter Collinge teaches at Keele University and is a former postdoctoral researcher on the AHRC-funded project ‘Small Bills and Petty Finance: Co-creating the History of the Old Poor Law’.
Dr Louise Falcini is a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex and a member of the Sussex Humanities Lab.
Providing for the Poor appears in the Royal Historical Society's New Historical Perspectives, an Open Access monograph series for Early Career Scholars from the Royal Historical Society and Institute of Historical Research.
Table of Contents
-
Notes on contributors
-
Preface: The Small Bills and Petty Finance projectPeter Collinge and Louise Falcini
-
Introduction: The Old Poor Law
-
I. PAUPERS AND VAGRANTS
-
1. Accounting for illegitimacy: parish politics and the poorLouise Falcini
-
2. Clothing the poorElizabeth Spencer
-
3. Vagrancy, poor relief and the parishTim Hitchcock
-
II. PROVIDERS AND ENABLERS AND THEIR CRITICS
-
4. Women, business and the Old Poor LawPeter Collinge
-
5. The overseers’ assistant: taking a parish salary, 1800–1834Alannah Tomkins
-
6. Who cares? Mismanagement, neglect and suffering in the final decades of the Old Poor LawsSamantha Shave
-
III. PUBLIC HISTORIES
-
7. Public histories and collaborative workingLouise Falcini and Peter Collinge
-
ConclusionAlannah Tomkins
-
Index
Downloads
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.