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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2008
Throughout the nineteenth century one of the main issues that preoccupied central government policy-makers was how poverty should be dealt with, in order to reduce poor relief expenditure. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, as Karel Williams argues, aimed to introduce a general rule against out-door relief by substituting instead a workhouse test that sought to deter paupers with its axiom of ‘less eligibility’. In practice, as Williams explains, regulations only stipulated that a workhouse test was to be strictly applied in the case of able-bodied male applicants and this gave unions the discretion to award out-door relief to other types of pauper. For example a number of unions continued to grant small out-door relief allowances to the aged, widows and infirm on medical out-door relief orders. Others found that it was not possible to follow poor relief guide-lines because they did not have the workhouse capacity to relieve all pauper applicants before the 1860s. This was because a comprehensive administrative infrastructure was not put in place in most unions until after the passing of the Union Chargeability Act of 1865. Once workhouse capacity had been improved with the creation of dispensaries and new medical wards, central government expected out-door poor relief expenditure to decrease. Consequently, in 1870 concern was expressed when they calculated that only 15 per cent of paupers were relieved within workhouses. A new discourse on the causes of poverty, as outlined by organisations such as the Charity Organisation Society, demanded that stricter poor relief regulations should be implemented.
1. Williams, Karel, From Pauperism to Poverty (London, 1981), p. 97.Google Scholar
2. There is an extensive historiography which discusses the implementation of the New Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The major texts that examine social policies after 1870 are Fraser, D., The Evolution of the British Welfare State (London, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fraser, D., Urban Politics in Victorian England (Leicester, 1978)Google Scholar; Williams, , From Pauperism, pp. 96–146Google Scholar; Rose, M. E., ‘The Crisis of Poor Relief in England, 1860–1900’ in Mommsen, W. J. and Mocks, W. (eds.), The Emergence of the Welfare State in Britain and Germany, 1850–1950 (London, 1981), pp. 50–70Google Scholar; Digby, A., ‘The Rural Poor’ in Mingay, G. E. (ed.), The Victorian Countryside: Volume Two (London, 1981), pp. 591–601Google Scholar; Thomson, D., ‘The Decline of Social Security: Falling State Support for the Elderly since Early Victorian Times’, Ageing and Society 4 (1984), 451–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mackinnon, M., ‘Poor Law Policy, Unemployment and Pauperism’, Explorations in Economic History 23 (1986), 299–336CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rose, M. E., The Relief of Poverty 1834–1914 (London, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mackinnon, M., ‘English Poor Law Policy and the Crusade against Outrelief’, Journal of Economic History 47 (1987), 603–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bellamy, C., Administering Central-Local Relations, 1871–1918 (Manchester, 1988)Google Scholar; Finlayson, G., Citizen, State and Social Welfare in Britain, 1830–1990 (Oxford, 1994):CrossRefGoogle ScholarThane, P., Foundations of the Welfare State (Harlow, 1996 edn.).Google Scholar
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14. see footnote 10 above.
15. Spencer, Bury to, 10.3.1874, K156, Althorp MS, British Library Manuscript Department (hereafter BLMD) – quoted with original spelling and emphasis.Google Scholar
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20. PRO, MH 12/8699, internal memorandum on how best to reply to George Faulkener (April 1873).
21. Northamptonshire Guardian (5.8.1876).Google Scholar
22. Horn, P. L. R., ‘Northamptonshire Agricultural Labourers and the Quest for Allotments The 1870s’, Northamptonshire Past and Present 6, IV, (1971/1972), 372.Google Scholar
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24. J. N. Beasley to Spencer, 27.3.1873, and C. Boyle to Spencer, 8.4.1872, documents local NALU activity and the reaction of farmers, Sox 571, Spencer MS, NRO.
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29. Bury to Spencer, 15.1.1180, 11.11.1880, K382; Calverley to Bury, 1.12.1880, 8.3.1881, K144, Althorp MS, BLMD.
30. David Morton, Rector of Harlestone, to Brixworth Union board of guardians, 9.5.1878, Brixworth Union guardian minute book, (1878)Google Scholar, PL2/19, NRO. Quoted with original punctuation, spelling and emphasis; ‘Brixworth—Power of the Chairman Questioned’, Local Government Journal (27.7.1878), ZA 2246, NRO.Google Scholar
31. PRO, MH12/8701, Brixworth Poor Law Union correspondence, (1877–1879), Alfred Jeffrey Brixworth Union clerk to LGB, (July 1878).Google Scholar
32. PRO, MH 12/8701, ‘Petition by Rev. John Drake J.P., Mr Richard Lee Bevan J.P., Mr Francis Eady and Mr Francis Chevalier Jeyes all guardians of the poor in the Brixworth Union protesting against policy of having only one relieving officer’, (13.12.1879).
33. PRO, MH 12/8701, see memos by – ‘Southam, Lambert and The President’, (3.1.1879).
34. Bury to Spencer, 6.3.1883, K382, Althorp MS, BLMD.
35. Spencer hoped that ex-officio guardians would enthusiastically welcome the new scheme because the C.O.S. had recently been established in nearby Leicester. See Leicester Charity Organisation Society minute books (1876–1881), DE/2340, No. 1, Leicestershire Country Record office (hereafter LCRO); Martin, Janet D., The Leicestershire C.O.S., 1876–1976: A Contemporary Review (Leicester, 1976), L361.7, LCRO.Google Scholar
36. Bury to Spencer, (undated draft notes of a proposed speech at the inaugural meeting of the Secret Service Fund on 15.3.1882 in Northampton), K382, Althorp MS, BLMD. Quoted with original spelling and emphasis.
37. Unfortunately despite extensive research no detailed records of the Secret Service fund have come to light. John Morley, 5th Earl Spencer's land agent, recorded that Spencer paid an annual subscription of £10 to the fund. See Morley's financial statement of Earl Spencer's private accounts, 26.10.1895, Sox 551, Spencer Papers, NRO; Secret Service Fund Circular to Spencer, January 1894, K345, Althorp MS, BLMD.
38. Sidney Ward, a labourer from Brixworth parish, gave evidence in Ward, SidneyPP, Royal Commission on the Aged Poor (1894), questions 15764–15653, that Jeyes, the Guardian of the Brixworth parish, was asked by the Chairman to subscribe to the Secret Service Fund. Jeyes replied that he would contribute provided he was given a detailed explanation in writing of how the fund was administered. The Chairman returned Jeyes' cheque and withdrew his membership application.Google Scholar
39. Pell to Spencer, 3.2.1877, and Bury to Spencer, 7.2.1877, K159, Althorp MS, BLMD.
40. Rural labourers were disenfranchised in parliamentary elections until the Franchise Extension Acts of 1885 equalised county with borough qualifications. In poor law elections most labourers remained disenfranchised until the passing of the Local Government Act, 1894, which abolished property qualifications. See Keith-Lucas, B.The English Local Government Franchise (London, 1952), chapter 3, pp. 97–101 – this is still the standard text in its field.Google Scholar
41. PRO, MH 12/8701, Bury to LGB, 26.3.1877. Quoted with original emphasis.
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47. ‘Brington, Harlestone, Brampton and Whilton NALU petition to the 5th Earl Spencer’, 27.3.1873, Sox 393, Spencer MS, NRO. Spencer reacted angrily against the petitioners refusing them permission to use local school-rooms for their union meetings.
48. Girdlestone, Canon, ‘The Farm Labourer’, Macmillan Magazine (1872), p. 261.Google Scholar
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50. Dunbabin, , ‘The Revolt’, p. 69.Google Scholar
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55. My conclusion has used many of John Garrard's exemplary conceptual ideas about the nature of power in local authorities in the late-nineteenth century. See Garrard, , ‘Social History, Political History’, pp. 113–15.Google Scholar
56. Garrard, , ‘Social History’, p. 116.Google Scholar
57. Cannadine, D., The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (London, 1996 edn.), pp. 13–15.Google Scholar
58. Garrard, ‘Social History’, p. 109.Google Scholar
59. Williams, , From Pauperism, p. 103.Google Scholar
60. Northamptonshire Mercury (3.3.1893).
61. Northamptonshire Mercury (1.3.1895). Out of a total population of 12, 186, 7,475 joined the association and 5,011 supported the retrenchment party.
62. Refer to this author's forthcoming thesis “The Bury-al” board: Penalising the Poor and Poor Law Politics in the Brixworth Union in Northamptonshire, 1870–1900'. The poor called the Brixworth Union ‘the “bury-al” board’. This was a wry comment on the retrenchment party's policies of trying to remove paupers from out-door relief registers by ignoring their impoverishment until they died of starvation, and a pun based on the Chairman's surname – Rev. W. Bury.
