Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Development and Administration of the Old Poor Law in Rural Areas, 1760–1834
- 2 The Old Poor Law in Historical Perspective
- 3 An Economic Model of the English Poor Law
- 4 The Old Poor Law and the Agricultural Labor Market in Southern England: An Empirical Analysis
- 5 The Effect of Poor Relief on Birth Rates in Southeastern England
- 6 The Poor Law, Migration, and Economic Growth
- 7 The New Poor Law and the Agricultural Labor Market, 1834–1850
- 8 The Economics of Poor Relief in Industrial Cities
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
2 - The Old Poor Law in Historical Perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Development and Administration of the Old Poor Law in Rural Areas, 1760–1834
- 2 The Old Poor Law in Historical Perspective
- 3 An Economic Model of the English Poor Law
- 4 The Old Poor Law and the Agricultural Labor Market in Southern England: An Empirical Analysis
- 5 The Effect of Poor Relief on Birth Rates in Southeastern England
- 6 The Poor Law, Migration, and Economic Growth
- 7 The New Poor Law and the Agricultural Labor Market, 1834–1850
- 8 The Economics of Poor Relief in Industrial Cities
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
Summary
The debate over the economics of the Old Poor Law began before the adoption of the famous relief scale at Speenhamland in 1795 and has continued to the present day. There have been three distinct phases to the debate. The first, which involved the building up of what I shall call the traditional critique of the Old Poor Law, began sometime during the second half of the eighteenth century and culminated in 1834 with the Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate the Poor Laws. The literature during this period focused almost entirely on the supposed disincentive effects on labor supply (and the subsequent effects on wages, profits, rents, and morals) created by the policy of granting outdoor relief to able-bodied laborers. It made no attempt to discern the reasons why the system of outdoor relief had been adopted in the late eighteenth century, or why it had continued to exist for more than 40 years.
The second, or neo-traditional, phase of the debate was ushered in by the publication of John and Barbara Hammond's The Village Labourer in 1911, and includes the Webbs' English Poor Law History (1927; 1929), and Polanyi's The Great Transformation (1944). Rather than simply focusing on the economic effects of outdoor relief, the neo-traditional literature provided explanations for the system's adoption and persistence. The Hammonds, the Webbs, and Polanyi accepted several of the major tenets of the traditional analysis, however, so that their work should be considered extensions of the traditional literature rather than early pieces of revisionism.
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- Information
- An Economic History of the English Poor Law, 1750–1850 , pp. 51 - 84Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990