The consequences of extreme poverty were a grim reality for all too many people in Victorian England. The various poor laws implemented in response contained a number of controversial measures, one of the most radical and unpopular being the crusade against outdoor relief, whereby the government sought to halt all welfare payments at home. Via a close case study of Brixworth union in Northamptonshire, Elizabeth T. Hurren looks at what happened to those impoverished men and women who struggled to live independently in a world without welfare outside of the workhouse.
Few subjects in European welfare history attract as much attention as the nineteenth-century English and Welsh New Poor Law. Its founding statute was considered the single most important piece of social legislation ever enacted, and at the same time, the coming of its institutions – from penny-pinching Boards of Guardians to the dreaded workhouse – has generally been viewed as a catastrophe for ordinary working people. Until now it has been impossible to know how the poor themselves felt about the New Poor Law and its measures, how they negotiated its terms, and how their interactions with the local and national state shifted and changed across the nineteenth century. In Their Own Write exposes this hidden history. Based on an unparalleled collection of first-hand testimony – pauper letters and witness statements interwoven with letters to newspapers and correspondence from poor law officials and advocates – the book reveals lives marked by hardship, deprivation, bureaucratic intransigence, parsimonious officialdom, and sometimes institutional cruelty, while also challenging the dominant view that the poor were powerless and lacked agency in these interactions. The testimonies collected in these pages clearly demonstrate that both the poor and their advocates were adept at navigating the new bureaucracy, holding local and national officials to account, and influencing the outcomes of relief negotiations for themselves and their communities. Fascinating and compelling, the stories presented in In Their Own Write amount to nothing less than a new history of welfare from below.
Medical Negligence in Victorian Britain is the first detailed exploration of the hundreds of charges of neglect against doctors who were contracted to the 'new' poor law after the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The author moves beyond the hyperbole of Victorian public 'scandal' to use medical negligence as a prism through which to view hidden aspects of poor law doctors and their patients. This provides a uniquely grounded perspective, from the day-to-day experience of medical practice – for both doctor and patient – to the context of the medico-political, socio-legal and cultural processes that underpinned the social construction of negligence at this time. The result is a clearly enunciated description of what negligence meant to the Victorians and how they sought to define and deal with negligent care, moving the topic from the sidelines of English welfare history to the centre-stage role it played in Victorian society. Thematically and chronologically arranged in two parts, the book uses extensive new archival material with a particular focus on the official inquiries into neglect conducted by poor law inspectors. It offers a fresh perspective on the poor laws that has repercussions for wider histories of welfare, medicine and legal medicine.
The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 is one of the most important pieces of social legislation ever enacted. Its principles and the workhouse system dominated attitudes to welfare provision for the next 80 years. This new Seminar Study explores the changing ideas to poverty over this period and assesses current debates on Victorian attitudes to the poor. David Englander reviews the old system of poor relief; he considers how the New Poor Law was enacted and received and looks at how it worked in practice. The chapter on the Scottish experience will be particularly welcomed, as will Dr Englander's discussion of the place of the Poor Law within British history.
The first book to provide a detailed analysis of the body-trafficking networks of the dead poor that underpinned the expansion of medical education from Victorian times. With an even-handed approach to the business of anatomy, Hurren uses remarkable case histories which still echo a vibrant body-business on the internet today in a biomedical age.
