Material lives of the poor and their strategic use of the workhouse during the final decades of the English old poor law

Harley, Joseph

doi:10.1017/s0268416015000090

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…There were also other groups of the poor such as workhouse inmates who fell somewhere between the homeless/mobile poor and those on outdoor relief. 94 Of course, this is an oversimplified discussion of the different categories of poor people and there was inevitably overlap between the subgroups. Nonetheless, this comparison of different sources shows that we need a more nuanced awareness of the wide varieties and life-cycles of poverty.…”

Section: Hierarchies Of Materials Povertymentioning

confidence: 99%

Consumption and poverty in the homes of the English poor, c. 1670–1834

Harley

2017

Social History

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The consumer behaviour of the poor in the long eighteenth century has attracted more historical attention in recent years. Yet, we have little understanding of whether regional factors affected consumption or how the poor's ownership of household goods was influenced by level of poverty and the life-cycle. By focusing on Kent and drawing comparisons to other counties, this article argues that the material lives of the poor were improving by the late eighteenth century, but finds that there were distinct regional differences as the poor acquired more and better goods in London and the Home Counties than in relatively remote areas. Moreover, by using pauper inventories and labourers' probate inventories, the research finds that the poor were not a homogeneous group with similar levels of material wealth, but should be considered in terms of different subgroups which often led very different material lives to one another due to life-cycle-related problems including sickness and old age. Labourers' probate inventories are found to represent a minority of the poor who were materially richer than most, whilst pauper inventories appear to represent a more typical subgroup of the poor that struggled to make do and owned most types of goods in smaller numbers.

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Section: Hierarchies Of Materials Povertymentioning

confidence: 99%

Consumption and poverty in the homes of the English poor, c. 1670–1834

Harley

2017

Social History

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“…6 Joseph Harley explains how some paupers, of both genders, were able to use workhouses as short-term coping strategies but that generally it was the most vulnerable who struggled to use this tactic. 7 I argue that lone mothers with large numbers of children were one of the most vulnerable groups of the poor in this period and that is why so many of them gave up their children instead of entering the workhouse themselves.…”

Section: The Socio-legal Landscape Behind Welfare Reductionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

District schools and the erosion of parental rights under the Poor Law: a case study from London (1889–1899)

Pimm-Smith

2019

Cont. Change

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This article investigates the empirical backing for the claim that poor law officials needed legal authority to refuse poor parents’ right to the custody of their children in order to stabilise children's welfare institutions during the nineteenth century. Although workhouses were capable of accommodating children, Victorian lawmakers feared children would model themselves on adult paupers to become permanent burdens on the state. To tackle this problem, a system of children's welfare institutions called ‘district schools’ was introduced to train children to become industrious adult labourers. Children were usually classified as orphans or deserted so they could be sent to district schools without fear of family intervention. However, children with ambiguous parental circumstances were labelled as ‘other’ and considered a problematic class because they were perceived to be at risk of having on-going contact with their birth families. Lawmakers feared parents of ‘other’ children would undermine reformation efforts by asserting their custody rights, and passed the first laws in English history to allow the state to restrict parental rights on this basis. This article explores the claim of unwanted parental involvement, and in doing so, seeks to contextualise the origins of public law interference in the family sphere within a narrative of imposed citizenship rather than protection.

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PAUPER INVENTORIES, SOCIAL RELATIONS, AND THE NATURE OF POOR RELIEF UNDER THE OLD POOR LAW, ENGLAND, c. 1601–1834

Harley

2018

Hist. J.

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During the old poor law, many paupers had their possessions inventoried and later taken by authorities as part of the process of obtaining poor relief. Historians have known about this for decades, yet little research has been conducted to establish how widespread the system was, what types of parishioners had their belongings inventoried and why, what the legal status of the practice was, and how it affected social relations in the parish. Using nearly 450 pauper inventories, this article examines these historiographical lacunae. It is argued that the policy had no legal basis and came from local practices and policies. The system is found to be more common in the south and east of England than in the north, and it is argued that the practice gradually became less common from the late eighteenth century. The inventorying of paupers’ goods often formed one of the many creative ways in which parishes helped the poor before 1770, as it guaranteed many paupers assistance until death. However, by the late eighteenth century the appraising of paupers’ goods was closely tied to a negative shift in the attitudes of larger ratepayers and officials, who increasingly wanted to dissuade people from applying for assistance and reduce expenditure.

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Material lives of the poor and their strategic use of the workhouse during the final decades of the English old poor law

Cited by 6 publications

References 26 publications

Consumption and poverty in the homes of the English poor, c. 1670–1834

Consumption and poverty in the homes of the English poor, c. 1670–1834

District schools and the erosion of parental rights under the Poor Law: a case study from London (1889–1899)

PAUPER INVENTORIES, SOCIAL RELATIONS, AND THE NATURE OF POOR RELIEF UNDER THE OLD POOR LAW, ENGLAND, c. 1601–1834

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