Paper Summary:

The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which the new Poor Law represented an attempt on the part of the British government to ease poverty in the cities. The paper begins by outlining the main provisions of the Act and then details the nature of the government's motivation. Above all, it is made clear that although in some measure the new Poor Law was an attempt to alleviate poverty in Britain's cities, the techniques used to achieve such ends were harsh and Draconian. As such, it is difficult to argue that the Act in any way represented a concerted attempt to redress poverty for moral purposes.

From the Paper:

"The 1834 act was based largely on the findings of the Royal Commission Into The Operation Of The Poor Laws, 1832. The primary premises of the commissions' conclusions were based on two principles; less eligibility and the workhouse test (Wrigley; 1987). Less eligibility declared that institutional state provision for the poor should be made as hard and disagreeable as possible in order to dissuade the poor from using it. The workhouse test proffered that all relief for the poor should only be available through the state run workhouses (Wrigley; 1987). As such, 'outdoor relief' which had previously been available for all able bodied poor was abolished and the workhouse was established as the primary method of receiving poor relief (although admittedly changes to outdoor relief were not enacted on a wide scale until the 1840s when the workhouse became the only possible relief for the majority of poor). "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Boyer, George. (1990). An Economic History of the Poor Law: 1750-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Clark, Peter. (2000). The Cambridge Urban History of Britain: Volume II, 1540-1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Gildea, Robert. (2003). Barricades and Boarders: Europe 1800-1914. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Hobsbawn, Eric. (1962). The Age of Revolutions: Europe 1789-1848. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
• Knott, John William. (1985). Popular Opposition to the 1834 Poor Law. London: Croom Helm.

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