Download: Lesson pack What did people think of the new Poor Law? Some people welcomed it because they believed it would:. The new Poor Law ensured that the poor were housed in workhouses, clothed and fed. Children who entered the workhouse would receive some schooling. In return for this care, all workhouse paupers would have to work for several hours each day.
However, not all Victorians shared this point of view. The poor themselves hated and feared the threat of the workhouse so much that there were riots in northern towns. Use this lesson to find out how some people felt about the new Poor Law of Before , the cost of looking after the poor was growing more expensive every year. This cost was paid for by the middle and upper classes in each town through their local taxes.
There was a real suspicion amongst the middle and upper classes that they were paying the poor to be lazy and avoid work.
After years of complaint, a new Poor Law was introduced in The new Poor Law was meant to reduce the cost of looking after the poor and impose a system which would be the same all over the country.
Under the new Poor Law, parishes were grouped into unions and each union had to build a workhouse if they did not already have one. Except in special circumstances, poor people could now only get help if they were prepared to leave their homes and go into a workhouse. Conditions inside the workhouse were deliberately harsh, so that only those who desperately needed help would ask for it.
Families were split up and housed in different parts of the workhouse. The poor were made to wear a uniform and the diet was monotonous. There were also strict rules and regulations to follow. Inmates, male and female, young and old were made to work hard, often doing unpleasant jobs such as picking oakum or breaking stones. Children could also find themselves hired out to work in factories or mines.
Shortly after the new Poor Law was introduced, a number of scandals hit the headlines. The most famous was Andover Workhouse, where it was reported that half-starved inmates were found eating the rotting flesh from bones. All of these changes began under a Whig administration, but ultimately the legislation was taken forward by a minority Tory government. It was said that the Whig government already had plans in mind and that the commission provided the evidence for their proposals.
Workhouses and Boards of Guardians were abolished in by the Local Government Act , and their powers and responsibilities were passed to local and national government bodies.
The Workhouse: The story of an institution. The Poor Law Amendment Act. Living Heritage: Reforming society in the 19th century. Poor Law Reform. Theobald W. The Poor Law Amendment Act: with a commentary on the powers of the commissioners, and a general introductory view, showing how the act affects the Law of Relief, Settlement, Removals and Appeals.
London: Sweet, Stevens and Son; Austin RCA. The Metropolitan Poor Act, with introduction, notes, commentary and index. South Carolina: Nabu Press; She was by no means of the same stuff, or the same breeding, or the same experience, or in the same state of mind, as those by whom she was surrounded; and she pathetically complained, that the daily association and the nightly noise made her worse, and was driving her mad - which was perfectly evident.
The case was noted for enquiry and redress, but she said she had already been there for some weeks. I can still vaguely remember the cold uncharitableness of the place and its inhuman poverty. Most of the two or three hundred inmates were very old, and many were treated as hospital patients. Looking back through memory's years, I see an atmosphere of hopelessness which gave me, surrounded as I was by the old, the infirm and even the insane, the feeling that all had come here to die.
Life was a continuous repetition of work, sleep and funerals. I could never make out why so many people had to die. All the ground floors, with the exception of the Master's quarters, were of stone. The upper walls and ceilings were a dirty cream, the lower part a monotonous battleship grey. The dining hall to me was a huge place. It had lines of well scrubbed tables and stools on the stone floor. There was one small, round, closed-in iron stove, with a long chimney reaching to the ceiling.
The dormitories were on the first and second floors, with the infirm people in two wings, one for men and the other for women. There were buildings attached to either wing for the male and female tramps, who appeared to have a life of their own organised separately from the Workhouse itself.
The tramps, curiously enough, were the envy of the inmates because of their freedom to leave at will. My mother was a little old lady, thin and frail, and almost totally deaf. She seemed unhappy. She always seemed to be discussing what she would do when her ship came home. All the inmates had this habit and talked constantly of what they would do when they got out. Very few of them ever left, however. I would often meet Mother, scrubbing the stone passages which, to me, were miles long.
It seemed that she did all the work. She was perpetually on her knees, and her hands were rough and sore from being so much in cold and dirty water. Talk between us was difficult, and for that reason she seldom showed her feelings. Even at that age I felt pity for her, coupled with hatred for those who were better off. I compared her with the Master, the cooks or the women who worked in his quarters.
They appeared well off in comparison. Our Sundays were never the happy time they might have been, sitting at the table in the bare dining hall separated from the others, because her deafness made us shout, causing much noise. This drew attention to us, making us feel we were the joke of the crowd. George often cried. How I hated all of them for it. Looking back, I realise that Mother had a real deep love for us.
Though she never displayed it openly, I sensed it all the same. Often I saw her crying, but could not get to know the reason. I never knew a father, and if he existed she seldom mentioned him. The leaders of the Liberal Party advised women to prove their fitness for the Parliamentary franchise by serving in municipal offices, especially the unsalaried offices. A large number of women had availed themselves of this advice, and were serving on Boards of Guardians, on school boards, and in other capacities.
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