Let them shift for themselves

The Poor Law of 1834 has a bad reputation as a meanly deterrent, an attempt to force the poor into the virtuous path of hard work. By contrast, the Elizabethan Poor Law is praised by many historians for its generosity. Advocates of this view suggest that it was inclusive, offering relief to all in need. They argue that the benefits were generous, reaching a higher proportion of the income of an employed man than the 1834 Poor Law or even the welfare state. The system was underwritten by compulsory taxation and was co-ordinated by national legislation. No other country in Europe had such a system of relief. Why did it exist?

One argument is that it connected with England's demographic structure of relatively late marriage and residence in nuclear families.

Couples marrying in their late twenties had the option of supporting their children or looking after elderly or ill parents. Usually, they opted for the former and left their parents to the care of the parish, which offered "pensions". In this view, the old Poor Law was a response to the common risks of the life cycle, so members of a parish were willing to relieve their neighbours in the knowledge that they and their relatives would also seek support.

Not everyone accepts this picture. Malthus questioned the old Poor Law at the end of the 18th century, when high population growth and high grain prices placed it under strain. Might it not simply encourage rapid population growth in the knowledge that the parish would provide, so spreading poverty by creating more mouths to feed and more hands to work? Even before the alarm of the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, some historians have pointed to a harsh and punitive element in the old Poor Law. The poor in one Yorkshire parish who were stoned by ratepayers on their way to church might well have wondered whether it was inclusive and generous.

Steve Hindle's fine book probes beneath generalities to the micro-politics of the individual parish to offer a more complex and sophisticated account of the old Poor Law. It shifts the debate to a new level of understanding, moving beyond demographics to grapple with the processes of parish politics.

The poor in England's past survived through an economy of makeshifts. As the parson of Middle Claydon in Buckinghamshire remarked in 1672, his parishioners felt the poor "should be put to their shifts a while longer", piecing together a living from family, neighbours, charity, work, begging or gleaning - and even theft. The parishioners of Middle Claydon were not generous and inclusive; they insisted that the parish was a last resort when the poor could no longer shift for themselves. As Hindle notes, the Elizabethan Poor Law was less concerned with pensions than with enforcing work and apprenticeship so as to create an industrious and self-sufficient workforce. At the heart of the old Poor Law was a distinction between those parents who raised their children to be diligent and prudent and those who allowed their children to be idle and dissipated. The life cycle of the worthy poor might be treated with sympathy, but the inherited poverty of the unworthy poor was viewed with alarm.

Parish relief rose from its low levels in the later 16th century, when it was subsidiary to alms-giving, mutual aid and Easter doles, and largely confined to market towns and larger rural parishes. By the late 1630s, parish relief was found in most parishes as part of a national, bureaucratic system. This did not mean that the poor had secured an entitlement to relief or that it was generous. The pensions listed in the parish records might possibly be generous, but they ignored the poor who were denied relief. It was granted only to those who were felt to belong to a community.

Each parish had to set the balance between the costs of supporting paupers and the burden on the ratepayers. Did it want cheap labour or low rates? Did ratepayers wish to avoid paying taxes now or calculate that they might become an applicant in the future? Much depended on the nature of the local economy, the tax base, the demographic structure, the pattern of land ownership and the moral conscience of the local clergy.

As Hindle points out, the micro-politics of the parish shaped definitions of membership and identity, complicating the assumptions of solidarity and inclusion in the orthodox understandings of the Poor Law.

The granting of relief was a matter of discretion rather than entitlement, but not of paternalism and deference. The poor had some agency, for they could petition magistrates for relief. The magistrates might accept their claims, less because of paternalistic beliefs than self-preservation and fear. Of course, the poor were in the weaker position, and even when relief was granted it might entail entry into the workhouse or compulsory apprenticeship of children. Eligibility criteria were constantly contested.

On the Parish? is the best account of the workings of the old Poor Law in the two centuries before the crisis of the late 18th century.

Martin Daunton is professor of economic history, Cambridge University.