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The New Poor Law refers to the welfare policy in England and Wales initiated by the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834. All destitute individuals were eligible for poor relief from their local Poor Law union. Those granted assistance were either given cash or in-kind payments in their homes (outdoor relief) or were relieved in workhouses (indoor relief). Although the Poor Law remained in existence until 1948, the Crusade against Outrelief in the 1870s and the adoption of the Liberal welfare reforms in the decade before the First World War significantly reduced its role as a safety net for the poor.

The Poor Law Amendment Act was an outgrowth of the Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate the Poor Laws (1834), which called for sweeping reforms to the existing system of poor relief, including the grouping of parishes into Poor Law unions, the abolition of relief for the able-bodied and their families outside workhouses, and the appointment of a centralized Poor Law Commission to direct the administration of relief. The Act implemented some of the report’s recommendations, but left the regulation of outdoor relief to the Poor Law Commissioners.

By 1839 most rural parishes had been grouped into Poor Law unions, which had built or were building workhouses. However, the Poor Law Commission met with strong opposition when it attempted to set up unions in the industrial north, and the implementation of the New Poor Law was delayed in several industrial cities. The Commission and its 1847 replacement, the Poor Law Board, issued orders in 1842, 1844 and 1852 to restrict the payment of outdoor relief to able-bodied males, but these were evaded by both rural and urban unions. Thus, while real per capita relief expenditure fell by 43 per cent from 1831 to 1841, and remained at least 20 per cent below its 1831 level for the remainder of the 19th century (see Table 1), many Poor Law unions continued to grant outdoor relief to needy able-bodied males after 1834 (Rose 1970; Digby 1978). Data for three London parishes and six provincial towns in the years around 1850 indicate that large numbers of prime-age males continued to apply for relief, and that a majority of those assisted were granted outdoor relief (Lees 1998). The Poor Law played an important role in assisting the unemployed and their families in urban districts during cyclical downturns (Boot 1990; Boyer 2004). Moreover, the New Poor Law, like its predecessor, provided a major source of support for the non-able-bodied poor. From the 1840s to the 1860s, in much of rural England a large share of those aged 70 and over received regular poor relief payments, although these often did not provide full maintenance (Thomson 1984).

Poor Law, New, Table 1 Relief expenditures and numbers on relief, 1831–1936
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Data on the number of persons receiving poor relief are available for two days a year, 1 January and 1 July, beginning in 1849; the official estimates of the annual number relieved in Table 1 are the average of the number relieved on these two dates. Studies conducted by Poor Law administrators in 1892 and 1906–07 found that the day counts significantly underestimated the number assisted during the year. The ‘revised’ estimates in Table 1 are based on these studies, and assume that the ratio of actual to counted paupers was 2.24 for 1851–96 and 2.15 for 1901–11. These estimates indicate that from 1850 to 1870 about ten per cent of the population was assisted by the Poor Law each year. Lees (1998) contends that over a three-year period as much as 25 per cent of the population made use of the Poor Law.

Relief expenditures were financed by a local property tax, known as the poor rate. Up to 1865, each parish within a Poor Law union was responsible for relieving its own poor. As a result, tax rates were often significantly different across parishes within Poor Law unions, and were especially high in working-class districts. Economic crises put enormous financial strain on parishes that were already poor. The ‘basic weaknesses’ of the poor relief system were exposed in the 1860s, when the Poor Law ‘was subjected to an almost continual series of shocks’ (Rose 1981). The two major shocks of the decade were the Lancashire cotton famine of 1862–4 and the East London crises of 1860–1 and 1867–9. The collapse of raw cotton imports from the United States during the American Civil War forced Lancashire cotton textile factories to shut down or severely curtail production. The resulting unemployment caused a huge increase in demand for relief, which the hardest-hit parishes were unable to meet, and led several Poor Law unions to appeal to private relief committees for charitable assistance. During the severe winters of 1860–1, 1867–8 and 1868–9, Poor Law unions in London’s East End were also forced to turn to private charities for assistance in meeting the high demand for relief.

The problems associated with Poor Law finance led parliament to adopt the Union Chargeability Act in 1865, and similar acts relating to London in 1867, 1869 and 1870. These acts placed the cost of poor relief on the Poor Law union rather than on each parish within it, and thus shifted a large share of the cost of relief from working-class parishes (which had low tax bases and many paupers) to middle-class parishes (with higher tax bases and fewer paupers). The tax-shifting eased the financial burdens that had plagued the Poor Law, but also led to the revolt of middle- class taxpayers in many areas.

The Union Chargeability Act was one of the catalysts of the Crusade against Outrelief in the early 1870s. Encouraged by the Local Government Board (LGB), Poor Law unions throughout England and Wales curtailed outdoor relief for all types of paupers. In December 1871 the LGB issued a circular concluding that generous outdoor relief was destroying self-reliance among the poor. In the circular’s words: ‘a certainty of obtaining outdoor relief in his own home whenever he may ask for it extinguishes in the mind of the labourer all motive for husbanding his resources, and induces him to rely exclusively upon the rates instead of upon his own savings for such relief as he may require’ (quoted in Englander 1998, p. 107). The Charity Organization Society (COS), founded in 1869, aided the Board in convincing the public of the need for reform. It argued that most low-skilled workers earned enough to be able to set aside some income in anticipation of future interruptions in earnings caused by unemployment or sickness. The LGB and the COS maintained that the restriction of outdoor relief would improve the moral and economic condition of the poor in the long run. The COS also believed that most applicants for relief would refuse to enter workhouses and would remove themselves from relief roles, so that a shift from outdoor to workhouse relief would significantly reduce Poor Law expenditures. Most Poor Law unions found it difficult to resist a policy that promised to raise the morals of the poor and reduce taxes (MacKinnon 1987).

The effect of the Crusade against Outrelief can be seen in Table 1. Real per capita relief expenditures and the share of the population receiving relief both fell sharply from 1871 to 1876. The decline in numbers on relief was largely a result of the deterrent effect of the workhouse: as the COS predicted, many of those offered indoor relief refused it. From 1871 to 1881, the number of paupers receiving outdoor relief fell by 282,000 (a 33 per cent decline), while the number relieved in workhouses rose by only 21,000.

Real per capita relief expenditures increased after 1876, mainly because the Poor Law provided increasing amounts of medical care for the poor. Otherwise, the role played by the Poor Law declined in the last quarter of the 19th century. The share of the population receiving relief fell from seven per cent in 1876 (revised estimates) to 5.2 per cent in 1901. The decline was due in large part to improvements in living standards, which increased workers’ ability to save and to join friendly societies – mutual help associations providing sickness, accident, death, and (sometimes) old age benefits. However, part of the decline in numbers on relief was a result of the Crusade against Outrelief and of a change in the attitude of the poor towards relief. Prior to 1870, a large share of the working class regarded access to public relief as an entitlement, although they rejected the workhouse as a form of relief. Partly as a result of COS propaganda, by the end of the century most within the working class viewed poor relief as stigmatizing, and went to great lengths to avoid applying for relief. Thus, the decline in the share of the population receiving poor relief from 1871 to 1901 overestimates the decline in the share living in poverty.

One section of the working class continued to rely heavily on the Poor Law – the elderly. Table 2 shows that, for the 12-month period from March 1891 to March 1892, 29.3 per cent of those aged 65 and over received poor relief, as compared with 5.1 per cent of children and 3.7 per cent of those aged 16–64. Most elderly paupers received only partial maintenance, which they combined with wage income, savings, friendly society or trade union benefits, and help from relatives or friends to achieve a subsistence income. The ability of the elderly to support themselves declined with age; Booth (1894) estimated that 40 per cent of those aged 75 and over received poor relief, as compared to 20 per cent of those aged 65–70.

Poor Law, New, Table 2 Pauperism in the early 1890s: 1 January 1892 and March 1891–March 1892
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Despite improvements in living standards, many manual workers still experienced ‘acute financial’ distress at some point in their lives (Johnson 1985). The inability of low-skilled workers to protect themselves from financial insecurity was the catalyst for the Liberal welfare reforms, several pieces of social welfare legislation adopted between 1906 and 1911. Acts of 1906 and 1907 provided free meals and medical inspections (later treatment) for needy schoolchildren. The 1908 Old Age Pension Act granted weekly pensions to persons aged 70 and over whose annual income was below a certain level, and the National Insurance Act of 1911 established compulsory systems of health insurance (covering all manual workers) and unemployment insurance (covering workers in a limited number of industries). The Liberal welfare reforms provided assistance to the working class that was outside the Poor Law and therefore did not involve ‘the stigma of pauperism’, and they paved the way for the eventual abolition of the Poor Law.

During the inter-war period the Poor Law served as a residual safety net, assisting those who fell through the cracks of existing social insurance policies. A large share of those on relief, especially in the mid-1920s, were unemployed workers who either did not qualify for unemployment benefits or had exhausted their benefits. The Local Government Act of 1929 abolished the Poor Law unions, and transferred the administration of poor relief to the counties and county boroughs. Finally, from 1945 to 1948, Parliament adopted a series of laws that together formed the basis for the welfare state, and made the Poor Law redundant. The National Assistance Act of 1948 officially repealed all existing Poor Law legislation.

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