The Poor Law Report Reexamined

In an earlier article, I pleaded for a reappraisal of the Old Poor Law. Despite what all the books say, the evidence that we have does not suggest that the English Poor Law as it operated before its amendment in 1834 reduced the efficiency of agricultural workers, promoted population growth, lowered wages, depressed rents, destroyed yeomanry, and compounded the burden on ratepayers. Beyond this purely negative argument, I tried to show that the Old Poor Law was essentially a device for dealing with the problems of structural unemployment and substandard wages in the lagging rural sector of a rapidly growing but still underdeveloped economy. It constituted, so to speak, “a welfare state in miniature,” combining elements of wage-escalation, family allowances, unemployment compensation, and public works, all of which were administered and financed on a local level. Far from having an inhibitory effect, it probably contributed to economic expansion. At any rate, from the economic point of view, things were much the same after 1834 as before. The Poor Laws Amendment Act of 1834 marked a revolution in British social administration, but it left the structure of relief policy substantially unchanged.