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Elizabethan Poor Law (1601)

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History 1500-1750

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   The Poor Law Act 1601 was also known as the Elizabethan Poor Law, 43rd
   Elizabeth or Old Poor Law after the passing of the Poor Law Amendment
   Act in 1834. It formalised earlier practices of poor relief
   distribution in England and Wales. The Old Poor Law was not one law but
   a collection of laws passed between the sixteenth and eighteenth
   centuries. The system's administrative unit was the parish, it was not
   a collectivist government policy but a piece of legislation which made
   individual parishes responsible for Poor Law legislation. The 1601 saw
   a move away from the more obvious forms of punishing paupers under the
   Tudor system towards methods of 'correction'.

   Several amending pieces of legislation can be considered part of the
   Old Poor Law:
     * 1662 - Poor Relief Act 1662 (Settlement Acts)
     * 1723 - Workhouse Test Act
     * 1782 - Gilbert's Act
     * 1795 - Speenhamland

Main points of the 1601 Act

     * To board out (making a payment to families willing to accept them)
       those young children who were orphaned or whose parents could not
       maintain them,
     * To provide materials to "set the poor on work"
     * to offer relief to people who were unable to work — mainly those
       who were "lame, impotent, old, blind", and
     * "The putting out of children to be apprentices".

Terms of the 1601 system

   Relief for those too ill or old to work, the so called ' impotent
   poor', was in the form of a payment or items of food ('the parish
   loaf') or clothing also known as outdoor relief. Some aged people might
   be accommodated in parish alms houses, though these were usually
   private charitable institutions. Meanwhile able-bodied beggars who had
   refused work were often placed in houses of correction ( indoor
   relief). However, provision for the many able-bodied poor in the
   workhouse, which provided accommodation at the same time as work, was
   relatively unusual, and most workhouses developed later . The 1601 Law
   said that poor parents and children were responsible for each other -
   elderly parents would live with their children.

   The 1601 Poor Law could be described as 'parochial' as the
   administrative unit of the system was the parish.There were around
   15,000 such parishes based upon the area around a parish church. This
   system allowed greater sensitivity towards paupers, however this system
   also made tyrannical behaviour from Overseers possible. Overseers of
   the Poor would know their paupers and therefore be able to
   differentiate between the deserving and undeserving poor. The
   Elizabethan Poor Law operated at a time when the population was small
   enough for everyone to know everyone else, therefore people's
   circumstances would be known and the idle poor would be unable to claim
   on the parishes' poor rate.

   The 1601 Act sought to deal with 'settled' poor who had found
   themselves temporarily out of work - it was assumed they would accept
   indoor relief or outdoor relief.Neither method of relief was at this
   time in history seen as harsh. The act was supposed to deal with
   beggars whom were considered a threat to civil order.

   In 1607 a House of Correction was set up in each county. However this
   system was separate from the 1601 system which distinguished between
   the settled poor and 'vagrants'.

Criticisms of the 1601 Act

Implementation and variation

   There was much variation in the application of the law and there was a
   tendency for the destitute to migrate towards the more generous
   parishes, usually situated in the towns. There was wide variation in
   the amount of poor relief given out. As the parish was the
   administrative unit of the system there was great diversity in the
   system. As there were no administrative standards parishes were able to
   interpret the law as they wished. Some towns, such as Bristol, Exeter
   and Liverpool were able to obtain by-laws which established their
   control onto several of the urban parishes within their jurisdiction.
   Bristol gained a private Act of Parliament in 1696 which allowed the
   city to create a 'manufactory' so that the profits from the paupers
   work could be used for maintenance of the poor relief system.

Outdoor relief

   Outdoor relief continued to be the most popular form of relief for the
   able-bodied poor even though the law described that "the poor should be
   set to work". In 1795 the Speenhamland system was introduced as a
   system of outdoor relief - again there was variation within the system
   with some parishes subsidising with food and others with money. Some
   parishes were more generous than others - there was no uniformity to
   the system. The Speenhamland system was popular in the south of England
   - elsewhere the Roundsman and Labour rate were used. The system was
   designed for a pre-industrial society, industrialisation, a mobile
   population, a series of bad harvests during the 1790s and the
   Napoleonic Wars tested the old poor law to breaking point.

Issues of Settlement

   The 1601 Act states that each individual parish was responsible for its
   'own' poor. Arguments over which parish was responsible for a pauper's
   poor relief and concerns over migration to more generous parishes led
   to the passing of the Settlement Act 1662 which allowed relief only to
   established residents of a parish - mainly through birth, marriage and
   apprenticeship. A pauper applicant had to prove a 'settlement'.If they
   could not, they were removed to the next parish that was nearest to the
   place of their birth, or where they might prove some connection. Some
   paupers were moved hundreds of miles. Although each parish that they
   passed through was not responsible for them, they were supposed to
   supply food and drink and shelter for at least one night.

   Individual parishes were keen to keep costs of poor relief as low as
   possible - there are examples of paupers in some cases being shunted
   back and forth between parishes.

   The Settlement Laws allowed strangers to a parish to be removed after
   40 days if they were not working - but the cost of removing such people
   meant that they were often left until they tried to claim poor relief.
   In 1697 Settlement Laws were tightened when people could be barred from
   entering a parish unless they produced a Settlement certificate.

Affect on labour market

   The Act was criticised in later years for its effect in distorting the
   labour market, through the power given to parishes to let them remove
   'undeserving' poor. Another criticism of the Act was that it applied to
   rated land not personal or movable wealth - therefore benefiting
   commercial and business interests.

Cost of implementing act

   The building of workhouses was expensive. The Workhouse Act of 1772
   allowed parishes to combine and apply for a workhouse test - where
   conditions were made worse than those outside.

   The Act stated that workhouses,poorhouses and houses of correction
   should be built for the different types of pauper. However, it was not
   cost effective to build these different types of buildings. For this
   reason parishes such as Bristol combined these institutions so that the
   profits paupers made were plunged back into the maintenance of the
   system.

Reliance on the parish

   The systems reliance on the parish can be seen as both a strength and a
   weakness. It could be argued it made the system for humane and
   sensitive - but a local crisis such as a poor harvest could be a great
   burden on the local poor rate.

The eighteenth century

Bristol abandons the system

   The eighteenth-century workhouse movement began at the end of the
   seventeenth century with the establishment of the Bristol Corporation
   of the Poor, founded by Act of Parliament in 1696. The corporation
   established a workhouse which combined housing and care of the poor
   with a house of correction for petty offenders. Following the example
   of Bristol some twelve further towns and cities established similar
   corporations in the next two decades. Because these corporations
   required a private Act, they were not suitable for smaller towns and
   individual parishes.

   Starting with the parish of Olney, Buckinghamshire in 1714 several
   dozen small towns and individual parishes established their own
   institutions without any specific legal authorization. These were
   concentrated in the South Midlands and in the county of Essex. From the
   late 1710s the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge began
   to promote the idea of parochial workhouses.

Workhouse Test Act (Knatchbull's Act)

   The Society published several pamphlets on the subject, and supported
   Sir Edward Knatchbull in his successful efforts to steer the Workhouse
   Test Act through Parliament in 1723. The act gave legislative authority
   for the establishment of parochial workhouses, by both single parishes
   and as joint ventures between two or more parishes. More importantly,
   the Act helped to publicise the idea of establishing workhouses to a
   national audience. The Workhouse Test Act made workhouses a deterrent
   as conditions were to be regulated to make them worse than outside of
   the workhouse. However during this period outdoor relief was still the
   most popular method of poor relief as it was easier or administer.

   By 1776 some 1912 parish and corporation workhouses had been
   established in England and Wales, housing almost 100,000 paupers.
   Although many parishes and pamphlet writers expected to earn money from
   the labour of the poor in workhouses, the vast majority of people
   obliged to take up residence in workhouses were ill, elderly, or
   children whose labour proved largely unprofitable. The demands, needs
   and expectations of the poor also ensured that workhouses came to take
   on the character of general social policy institutions, combining the
   functions of creche, and night shelter, geriatric ward and orphanage.

Gilbert's Act

   Gilbert's Act was passed in 1782 to combat the excessive costs of
   outdoor relief. It promoted indoor alternatives and allowed parishes to
   combine for the impotent poor. However outdoor relief was still used to
   help to able-bodied poor.

Reasons for overhauling the system

Industrialisation

   The 1601 system was for a pre-industrial society, the massive
   population increases after the Industrial revolution strained the
   existing system. Mechanisation meant that unemployment was increasing,
   therefore poor relief costs could not be met.

French Wars

   The Napoleonic Wars meant that there were periods of trade blockades on
   Britain. The blockade and bad harvests in 1813 and 1814 meant that
   bread prices were kept artificially high. When the imports returned
   many farmers went bankrupt - the high prices had caused unemployment
   and therefore an increasing the poor rate. The bankruptcies meant that
   their workers became unemployed pushing the poor rate higher still and
   those that survived reduced wages in order to cover the cost of wartime
   taxes and money lost due to the enclosure of farmland. The Corn Laws
   were passed to protect British farmers - however this kept prices
   artificially high and made more people claim relief. The dislocation of
   trade and poor harvests after the French Wars caused poor rates to
   reach their highest levels.

Corruption

   In 1819 Select Vesteries were set up - these were committees set up in
   each parish whom were responsible for Poor Law administration. There
   were concerns over corruption within the system as contracts for
   supplying food and beer often went to local traders or these vestries.

Cost

   The cost of the current system was increasing. The increasing numbers
   of people claiming relief peaked after the economic dislocation caused
   by the French Wars when it was 12 shillings per head of population.

Fear of unrest

   One reason for changing the system was to prevent unrest or even
   revolution. Habeas Corpus was suspended and the Six Acts passed to
   prevent possible riots. The Swing riots highlighted the possibility of
   agricultural unrest.

Intellectuals

   See main article Opposition to the Poor Law
   Jeremy Bentham argued for a disciplinary, punitive approach to social
   problems, whilst the writings of Thomas Malthus focused attention on
   the problem of overpopulation, and the growth of illegitimacy. David
   Ricardo argued that there was an "iron law of wages". The effect of
   poor relief, in the view of the reformers, was to undermine the
   position of the "independent labourer".

The process of reform

   The 1832 Royal Commission into the Operation of the Poor Laws wrote a
   report stating the changes which needed to be made to the poor. These
   changes were implemented in the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834.

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