Abstract
The Old Poor Law was one of the first subjects explored by social historians. Yet the way in which this law was used, both by those giving and those receiving poor relief, remains little examined. The history of the eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century poor law has been concerned with administrative or economic changes, generally at the national level. There has been considerably less attention paid to the interaction of individuals with the poor law authorities and how within the statutory system of poor relief provision, social and ideological factors came into play, aside from concepts of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. Gertrude Himmelfarb looked at the history of ideas regarding poverty, but bemoaned the lack of ‘the direct testimony of the poor themselves’.1
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Notes
G. Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty (New York, 1984), p.14.
They are presently being transcribed into book form by Thomas Sokoll: see his forthcoming Essex Pauper Letters c.1820–1834 and ‘Voices of the Poor: Pauper Letters and Poor Law Provision in Essex 1780–1834’ in A. Digby, J. Innes and R.M. Smith (eds), Poverty and Relief in England from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). A.P. Hutchings, ‘The Relief of the Poor in Chelmsford 1821–1829: Case Histories and Pauper’s Correspondence’, Essex Review 257: LXV (1956), 42–56 puts together some family letters.
G. Boyer, An Economic History of the English Poor Law 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1990), p.258.
J.S. Taylor, Poverty, Migration and Settlement in the Industrial Revolution: Sojourners’ Narratives (Palo Alto, 1989) analyses the large number of extant letters, bills and petitions for Kirkby Lonsdale.
J.S. Taylor, ‘A Different Kind of Speenhamland: Non-resident Relief in the Industrial Revolution’, Journal of British Studies, 30:2 (1991), 183–208: p.199 finds that early nineteenth-century Manchester had as many non-resident as resident poor and calls the system ‘industrial speenhamland’. See his contribution to this volume, Chapter 5, ‘Voices in the Crowd: The Kirkby Lonsdale Township Letters, 1809–36’. Pauper letters are also used by
K.D.M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor (Cambridge, 1985).
J. Booker, Essex and the Industrial Revolution (Chelmsford, 1974), p.54. For Essex cloth production in the late eighteenth century, see Chapter 2 of my book Adapting to Capitalism: Working Women in the English Economy 1700–1850 (Macmillan. 1996).
ERO D/NC22 1/3. Mrs Hall was admitted 4/8/1808; John Junior on 30/7/1817 but shortly afterwards left for London. H.M. Wisbey and R.J. Church, Our Story 1808–1958: London Road Congregational School, Chelmsford (Chelmsford, 1958), p.7; H.S.C. ‘The olde meeting house, Baddowe Lane, Chelmsford’ (1927). Baptisms but no marriage or burial registers are extant for the early nineteenth century.
A.V. Sowman, ‘The Chelmsford Charity School 1713–1878’, Essex Journal, 4 (1969), 88–95.
For other evidence of fairly generous support to unmarried mothers, see M.E. Fissell, ‘Gender, Life-cycle and the Old Poor Law’ (unpublished paper, 1992). Evidence from cultural history suggests, to quote Perry, ‘the centrality of representations of motherhood to eighteenth-century English culture as a newly elaborated social and sexual identity for women’. See
R. Perry, ‘Colonizing the Breast: Sexuality and Maternity in Eighteenth-century England’ in J.C. Fout (ed.), Forbidden History (University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp.107–37 for a stimulating discussion of these issues.
ERO D/P 203/18/1 17/1/1827. For more details on the treatment of the elderly under the Old Poor Law, see M. Barker-Read, ‘The Treatment of the Aged Poor in Five Selected West Kent Parishes from Settlement to Speenhamland’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Open University, 1988).
ERO D/P 203/8/2 20/3/1827. There are notable differences between John’s wife, Elizabeth, and Thomas’s wife, Sarah. Sarah is forced to resort to endless attempts to patch the family finances together, which were never mentioned for Elizabeth. On the under-explored subject of female strategies for survival and working-class ideology in this period, see S. D’Cruze, ‘Care, Diligence and “Usfull Pride”: Gender, Industrialisation and the Domestic Economy c.1770–1840’, Women’s History Review 3:3 (1994), 315–45.
L.A. Tilly, ‘Individual Lives and Family Strategies in the French Proletariat’ in R. Wheaton and T.K. Hareven (eds), Family and Sexuality in French History (Philadelphia, 1980), pp.201–23.
D. Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture: England 1750–1914 (Cambridge, 1989);
R.S. Schofield, ‘Dimensions of Illiteracy in England 1750–1850’, Explorations in Economic History 10:4 (1973), 437–54. See also
M. Sanderson, ‘Literacy and Social Mobility in the Industrial Revolution in England’, Past and Present LV 1 (1972), 75–104, and debate with T. Laqueur in Past and Present LXIV (1974). 96–112.
J. Brewer and J. Styles, An Ungovernable People (London, 1980), p.20.
ERO D/P 203/18/1 5/2/‘ 1719’; D/P 203/18/1 1/8/1826. N. Tadmor, ‘“Family” and “friend” in Pamela: A Case Study in the History of the Family in Eighteenth-century England’, Social History 14 (1989), 289–306 suggests directly referring to patrons as friends is unusual in the mideighteenth century.
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© 1997 Tim Hitchcock, Peter King and Pamela Sharpe
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Sharpe, P. (1997). ‘The bowels of compation’: A Labouring Family and the Law, c.1790–1834. In: Hitchcock, T., King, P., Sharpe, P. (eds) Chronicling Poverty. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25260-2_5
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