The English Poor Laws were a system of poor relief in England and Wales that developed out of the codification of late-medieval and Tudor-era laws in 1512–1598. The system continued until the modern welfare state emerged in the late 1940s.
English Poor Law legislation can be traced back as far as 1536,G. R. Elton, "An Early Tudor Poor Law", Economic History Review, 1953 when legislation was passed to deal with the impotent poor, although there were much earlier Plantagenet laws dealing with the problems caused by vagrants and beggars. The history of the Poor Law in England and Wales is usually divided between two statutes: the Old Poor Law passed during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and the New Poor Law, passed in 1834, which significantly modified the system of poor relief. The New Poor Law altered the system from one which was administered haphazardly at a local parish level to a highly centralised system which encouraged the large-scale development of workhouses by poor law unions.
The Poor Law system fell into decline at the beginning of the 20th century owing to factors such as the introduction of the Liberal welfare reforms and the availability of other sources of assistance from friendly societies and trade unions, as well as piecemeal reforms which bypassed the Poor Law system.Lees, Lynn Hollen. The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1770–1948. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 The Poor Law system was not formally abolished until the National Assistance Act 1948 (11 & 12 Geo. 6. c. 29), with parts of the law remaining on the books until 1967.
History
Medieval Poor Laws
The earliest medieval Poor Law was the Ordinance of Labourers of King Edward III, issued in 1349 and revised in 1350. The ordinance was issued in response to the 1348–1350 outbreak of the Black Death in England,Cartwright, Frederick F. 1991. Disease and History. New York: Barnes & Noble. pp. 32–46. when an estimated 30–40% of the population died. The Plague and England, Cardiff University. Retrieved on April 11, 2009. The decline in population left surviving workers in great demand in the agricultural economy. Landowners had to face the choice of raising wages to compete for workers or letting their lands go unused. Wages for labourers rose, and this forced up prices across the economy as goods became more expensive to produce. An attempt to rein in prices, the ordinance (and subsequent acts, such the Statute of Labourers of 1351) required that everyone who could work did; that wages were kept at pre-plague levels; and that food was not overpriced. Workers saw these shortage conditions as an opportunity to flee employers and become freemen, so Edward III passed additional laws to provide for the punishment of the wave of escapee workers.Sidney & Beatrice Webb, English Local Government: English Poor Law History Part 1, pp. 1–2, 24–25 In addition, the Statute of Cambridge, passed in 1388,Byrne, Joseph Patrick, The black death, p. 66 placed restrictions on the movement of labourers and beggars.
Tudor Poor Law
The origins of the English Poor Law system can be traced back to late medieval statutes dealing with beggars and vagrancy, but it was only during the Tudor period that the Poor Law system was codified. Before the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the Tudor Reformation, monasteries had been the primary source of poor relief, but their dissolution resulted in poor relief moving from a largely voluntary basis to a compulsory tax that was collected at a parish level. Early legislation was concerned with vagrants and making the able-bodied work, especially while labour was in short supply following the Black Death.
Tudor attempts to tackle the problem originated during the reign of Henry VII. In 1495, Parliament passed the Vagabonds and Beggars Act, ordering that "vagabonds, idle and suspected persons shall be set in the stocks for three days and three nights and have none other sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town. Every beggar suitable to work shall resort to the Hundred where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there remain upon the pain aforesaid." Although this returned the burden of caring for the jobless to the communities producing more children than they could employ, it offered no immediate remedy to the problem of poverty; it was merely swept from sight, or moved from town to town. Moreover, no distinction was made between vagrants and the jobless; both were simply categorised as "sturdy beggars", to be punished and moved on.
In 1530, during the reign of Henry VIII, a proclamation was issued, describing idleness as the "mother and root of all vices" and ordering that whipping should replace the stocks as the punishment for vagabonds. This change was confirmed in the Vagabonds Act 1530 the following year, with one important change: it directed the justices of the peace to assign to the impotent poor an area within which they were to beg. Generally, the licences to beg for the impotent poor were limited to the disabled, sick, and elderly.Lewis C. Vollmar, Jr., "The Effect of Epidemics on the Development of English Law from the Black Death Through the Industrial Revolution," Journal of Legal Medicine, vol. 15 (1994), p. 385 An impotent person begging out of his area was to be imprisoned for two days and nights in the stocks, on bread and water, and then sworn to return to the place in which he was authorised to beg. An able-bodied beggar was to be whipped, and sworn to return to the place where he was born, or last dwelt for the space of three years, and there put himself to labour. Still no provision was made, though, for the healthy man simply unable to find work. All able-bodied unemployed were put into the same category. Those unable to find work had a stark choice: starve or break the law. In 1535, a bill was drawn up calling for the creation of a system of public works to deal with the problem of unemployment, to be funded by a tax on income and capital. A law passed a year later allowed vagabonds to be whipped.
In London, there was a great massing of the poor, and the Reformation threatened to eliminate some of the infrastructure used to provide for the poor. As a result, King Henry VIII consented to re-endow St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1544 and St. Thomas' Hospital in 1552 on the condition that the citizens of London pay for their maintenance.Sidney & Beatrice Webb, English Local Government: English Poor Law History Part 1, p. 47 However, the city was unable to raise enough revenue from voluntary contributions, so it instituted the first definite compulsory Poor Rate in 1547, which replaced Sunday collections in church with a mandatory collection for the poor.Sidney & Beatrice Webb, English Local Government: English Poor Law History Part 1, p. 48 In 1555, London became increasingly concerned with the number of poor who could work, but yet could not find work, so it established the first House of Correction (predecessor to the workhouse) in the King's Palace at Bridewell where poor could receive shelter and work at cap-making, feather-bed making, and wire drawing.Sidney & Beatrice Webb, English Local Government: English Poor Law History Part 1, p. 50
For the able-bodied poor, life became even tougher during the reign of Edward VI. The Vagabonds Act 1547 was passed that subjected vagrants to some of the more extreme provisions of the criminal law, namely two years servitude and branding with a "V" as the penalty for the first offence, and death for the second. Justices of the Peace were reluctant to apply the full penalty.R. O. Bucholz, Newton Key, Early modern England, 1485–1714, p. 176 In 1552, Edward VI passed the Poor Act 1551 which designated a position of "Collector of Alms" in each parish and created a register of licensed poor. Under the assumption that parish collections would now relieve all poor, begging was completely prohibited.Paul Slack, The English Poor Law 1531-1782, pp. 59–60
The government of Elizabeth I, Edward VI's successor after Mary I, was also inclined to severity. The Vagabonds Act 1572 called for offenders to be burned through the ear for a first offence, and that persistent beggars should be hanged; however, the Act also made the first clear distinction between the "professional beggar" and those unemployed through no fault of their own. Early in her reign, Elizabeth I also passed laws directly aimed at providing relief for the poor. For example, in 1563, her Act for the Relief of the Poor required all parish residents with ability to contribute to poor collections.Sidney & Beatrice Webb, English Local Government: English Poor Law History Part 1, p. 51 Those who "of his or their forward willful mind shall obstinately refuse to give weekly to the relief of the poor according to his or their abilities" could be bound over to justices of the peace and fined £10.Poor Act 1562 (5 Eliz. 1. c. 3) Additionally, the 1572 Act further enabled Justices of the Peace to survey and register the impotent poor, determine how much money was required for their relief, and then assess parish residents weekly for the appropriate amount.Sidney & Beatrice Webb, English Local Government: English Poor Law History Part 1, p. 52 The Poor Act 1575 required towns to create "a competent stock of wool, hemp, flax, iron and other stuff" for the poor to work on and houses of correction for those who refused to work where recalcitrant or careless workers could be forced to work and punished accordingly.Poor Act 1575 (18 Eliz. 1. c. 3)
A new colonial solution In the early 1580s, with the development of English colonisation schemes, initially in Ireland and later in North America, a new method to alleviate the condition of the poor would be suggested and utilised considerably over time. Merchant and colonisation proponent George Peckham noted the then-current domestic conditions; "there are at this day great numbers which live in such penurie & want, as they could be content to hazard their lives, and to ser[v]e one yeere for meat, drinke and apparell only, without wages, in hope thereby to amend their estates." With this, he may have been the first to suggest what became the institution of indentured service.Karl Frederick Geiser, Redemptioners and indentured servants in the colony and commonwealth of Pennsylvania, p. 5. Supplement to the Yale Review, Vol. X, No. 2, August, 1901. At the same time Richard Hakluyt, in his preface to Divers Voyages, likens English planters to "Bees...led out by their Captaines to swarme abroad"; he recommends "deducting" the poor out of the realm. Hakluyt also broadens the scope and additionally recommends to empty the prisons and send them off to the New World.Philip J. Stern, Carl Wennerlind Eds. Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire, p. 166 (2013)
By 1619 Virginia's system of indentured service would be fully developed, and subsequent colonies would adopt the method with modifications suitable to their different conditions and times. English penal transportation would be implemented soon afterwards, and evolve into a subsidized government endeavour with the Transportation Act 1717.
Old Poor Law
In 1597, a session of Parliament was called to deal with the issues of increased poverty and vagrancy, among other things. This session culminated in the passage of several Acts referred to as the "Poor Laws of 1598". Among them were the Poor Relief Act 1597 and the Vagabonds Act 1597. These laws were further refined and formalized by the next session of Parliament, primarily in the Poor Relief Act 1601. Together, these Acts of 1598 and 1601 came to be known as "The Elizabethan Poor Laws."