Michael E. Rose

The relief of poverty, 1834-1914

Acknowledgements - Editors Preface - Introduction - The Extent of Poverty - The Causes of Poverty - The Investigation of Poverty - The Treatment of Poverty - Appendices - Bibliography - Index

The Extent of Poverty

AN obvious preliminary to any study of poverty in the nineteenth century is to determine approximately how many people were in poverty during this period. Yet this is a question which is impossible to answer with any degree of accuracy even with regard to those who, having applied for poor relief, were officially recorded as paupers. This seems curious in view of the massive collection of statistical tables which filled the appendices to the annual reports of the central authority for poor relief, the Poor Law Commission, after 1847 the Poor Law Board and, after 1871, the Local Government Board. ‘English poor law statistics surpass those of all other countries both in their scope and in the time over which they extend’, wrote an eminent German judge in a study of the English poor law system. Yet he followed up these words of praise with a detailed critique of the deficiencies of the statistics, which the Webbs echoed in their final volume on English poor law history.21

Trade Unionism in Recession.

During the 1980s, British trade unionism confronted its greatest challenge, and suffered its greatest reverses, since the inter-war period. After a decade of rapid growth, the unions experienced a steep decline in membership, and a virtual marginalization in national political affairs. By 1990, a united, self-confident, social movement as well as a powerful industrial bargainer, often seemed more closely akin to a demoralized collection of special interest groupings. This book addresses a number of fundamental questions raised by the record of these years. It examines the reasons for membership loss and the implications for trade union influence in the workplace. It looks at the steps the unions took in reaction to the membership problem and the difficulties they confronted doing so. It also looks at whether this period can be seen as making a fundamental break with the past, resulting in irretrievable loss by British trade unionism of its former important position in British society and the British workplace, or whether the past decade has been but a temporary recession and the future can still see revived movement.

The Treatment of Poverty

THE increasing investigation of poverty in the second half of the nineteenth century and the changing attitudes towards the poor which were ever more apparent from the 1880s on, brought the two main nineteenth-century agencies for poor relief, private charity and the poor law system, under increasing scrutiny and criticism. The Charity Organisation Society cast a coldly critical eye over much of the charitable activity of Victorian England. They attacked indiscriminate almsgiving which failed to discover the needs of the recipient and which laid itself open to the incessant claims of the fraudulent. They criticised impertinent interference in the lives of the poor by well-meaning but ignorant philanthropists, particularly of the female variety. A part of their work was devoted to the investigation and exposure of fraudulent charities, with even such a respectable institution as Dr Barnardo’s Homes attracting their attention at one stage in its career.

The Investigation of Poverty

THE deficiency of statistics on poverty and in particular the gap between the official estimates of pauperism and those of poverty made by Booth, Rowntree and other social investigators, the tendency to oversimplify the causes of poverty and to ascribe to weakness of character destitution which was the result of an % ill-organised labour market or an ill-drained slum, seem to confirm our worst suspicions of the Victorian treatment of poverty. Until the last decade of the century when private social investigation began to stir the national social conscience, it would seem that the typical attitude to poverty was either one of unconcern and complacency, or of a concern that took the form of a moralising and patronising charity. Either middle-class mid-Victorians felt with Mr Podsnap that there was ‘not a country in the world, sir, where so noble a provision is made for the poor as in this country’, or like Mrs Pardiggle they burst into the homes of the poor leaving broth, tracts and good advice until the objects of their compassion demanded ‘an end of being drawed like a badger’. Behind these comfortable middle-class assumptions lay the harsh realities of the Victorian poor law, symbolised by the grim workhouse in which little Oliver Twist suffered.

The Causes of Poverty

OF all the causes of poverty in the nineteenth century, the most prominent was poverty resulting from the receipt of inadequate or irregular earnings. Even the limited statistics of the Poor Law Commission showed that in the early 1840s between 16 and 20 per cent of adult able-bodied persons in receipt of poor relief were being aided because of ‘insufficient wages’.32 Lord George Hamilton, in an analysis of poor law statistics published in 1910, showed that rates of pauperism were highest in occupations where casual labour was predominant.33 Poor relief in aid of low earnings, particularly to women workers, was given by many boards of guardians until the 1870s when the Local Government Board launched a campaign against the practice. Nevertheless it seems to have survived this onslaught in some Unions. Maude Davies found that in Corsley ‘several women in receipt of poor relief add a little to their incomes by gloving’.34 Booth and Rowntree showed low and irregular earnings to be a major cause of the poverty they discovered. Booth found that 55 per cent of the poverty in his lowest classes, A and B, and 68 per cent of that in classes C and D was the result of casual or irregular work, which he condemned as being ‘the most serious trial the people of London suffer’.35 Rowntree revealed that 52 per cent of the primary poverty in York was the result of low wages.36