Poverty, Gender and Life-Cycle under the English Poor Law, 1760-1834

Social welfare, increasingly extensive during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was by the first third of the nineteenth under considerable, and growing, pressure, during a period when levels of poverty soared. This book examines the poor and their families during these final decades of the old Poor Law. It takes as a case study the experience of poor families in two Bedfordshire communities, Campton and Shefford, and contrasts it with that of other participants in parish politics, from the magistracy to the vestry, and from overseers to village ratepayers. It explores the problem of rising unemployment, the provision of parish make-work schemes, charitable provision and the wider makeshift economy, together with the attitudes of the ratepayers. Gender and life-cycle were crucial features of poverty: the lone mother and her dependent children, and the elderly, dominated the relief rolls. Poor relief might have been relatively generous but it was not pervasive, and it by no means approximated to the income of other labouring families

List of contents

People, place and poverty
Policy and paupers
Paying for poverty
Gender, life-cycle and the life-course
Work, unemployment and the makeshift economy

About the author

Samantha Williams

Summary

Examination of welfare during the last years of the Poor Law, bringing out the impact of poverty on particular sections of society - the lone mother and the elderly.

Product details

• Authors: Samantha Williams
• Publisher: Royal Historical Society
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 19.09.2013
• EAN: 9781843838661
• ISBN: 978-1-84383-866-1
• No. of pages: 206
• Dimensions: 156 mm x 234 mm x 11 mm
• Weight: 322 g
• Series: Royal Historical Society Studies in History New Series; Royal Historical Society Studies in History; Royal Historical Society Studi; Royal Historical Society Studies in History; Royal Historical Society Studi; Royal Historical Society Studies in History New Series
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Modern era up to 1918; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories