Protesting about Pauperism - (Royal Historical Society Studies in History New) by Elizabeth T Hurren (Paperback)

About the Book

A fresh look at the complex question of outdoor poor relief in the nineteenth century.

Book Synopsis

A fresh look at the complex question of outdoor poor relief in the nineteenth century.

The consequences of extreme poverty were a grim reality for all too many people in Victorian England. The various poor laws implemented to try to deal with it contained a number of controversial measures, one of the most radical and unpopular being the crusade against outdoor relief, during which central government sought to halt all welfare payments at home.
Via a close case study of Brixworth union in Northamptonshire, which offers an unusually richcorpus of primary material and evidence, the author looks at what happened to those impoverished men and women who struggled to live independently in a world-without-welfare outside the workhouse. She retraces the experiences ofelderly paupers evicted from almshouses, of the children of the aged poor prosecuted for parental maintenance, of dying paupers who were refused medical care in their homes, and of women begging for funeral costs in an attempt toprevent the bodies of their loved ones being taken for dissection by anatomists. She then shows how increasing democratisation gave the labouring poor the means to win control of the poor law.

ELIZABETH T. HURREN is a Reader in the Medical Humanities, University of Leicester.

Review Quotes

[Makes] a significant contribution to the historiography of the later nineteenth century.-- "AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW"

This excellent study of the administration and politics of the English poor law, in a comparatively neglected phase of its history, contributes greatly to our understanding of the 'poverty, politics and poor relief' of the title.-- "."

Well researched and clearly written, this is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the intersection between political and elected political action on the one hand, and the power of democratization on socio-economic policy on the other.-- "GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF SOCIAL HISTORY"