The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 (4 & 5 Will. 4. c. 76) (PLAA) known widely as the New Poor Law, was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed by the Whig government of Earl Grey denying the right of the poor to subsistence. It completely replaced earlier legislation based on the Poor Relief Act 1601 (43 Eliz. 1. c. 2) and attempted to fundamentally change the poverty relief system in England and Wales (similar changes were made to the Scottish poor laws in 1845). It resulted from the 1832 Royal Commission into the Operation of the Poor Laws, which included Edwin Chadwick, John Bird Sumner and Nassau William Senior. Chadwick was dissatisfied with the law that resulted from his report. The Act was passed two years after the Representation of the People Act 1832 which extended the franchise to middle-class men. Some historians have argued that this was a major factor in the PLAA being passed.
The act has been described as "the classic example of the fundamental Whig-Benthamite reforming legislation of the period".The Poor Law Amendment Act: 14 August 1834 Its theoretical basis was Thomas Malthus's principle that population increased faster than resources unless checked, the "iron law of wages" and Jeremy Bentham's doctrine that people did what was pleasant and would tend to claim relief rather than working.
The act was intended to curb the cost of poor relief and address abuses of the old system, prevalent in southern agricultural counties, by enabling a new system to be brought in. Under this system, relief would only be given in workhouses, and conditions in workhouses would be such as to deter any but the truly destitute from applying for relief. The act was passed by large majorities in Parliament, with only a few Radicals (such as William Cobbett) voting against. The act was implemented, but the full rigours of the intended system were never applied in Northern industrial areas; however, the apprehension contributed to the social unrest of the period.
The importance of the Poor Law declined with the rise of the welfare state in the 20th century. In 1948, the PLAA was repealed by the National Assistance Act 1948 (11 & 12 Geo. 6. c. 29), which created the National Assistance Board to act as a residual relief agency.
1832 Royal Commission's findings
Alarmed at the cost of poor relief in the southern agricultural districts of England (where, in many areas, it had become a semi-permanent top-up of labourers' wages—the Allowance System, Roundsman System, or Speenhamland System), Parliament had set up the 1832 Royal Commission into the Operation of the Poor Laws. The commission's findings were that the old system was badly and expensively run. The commission's recommendations were based on two principles. The first was less eligibility: conditions within workhouses should be made worse than the worst conditions outside of them so that workhouses served as a deterrent, and only the neediest would consider entering them. The other was the "workhouse test": relief should only be available in the workhouse. Migration of rural poor to the city to find work was a problem for urban ratepayers under this system, since it raised their poor rates. The commission's report recommended sweeping changes:
Outdoor relief should cease; relief should be given only in workhouses, and upon such terms that only the truly indigent would accept it. "Into such a house none will enter voluntarily; work, confinement, and discipline, will deter the indolent and vicious; and nothing but extreme necessity will induce any to accept the comfort which must be obtained by the surrender of their free agency, and the sacrifice of their accustomed habits and gratifications." Whilst this recommendation was a solution to existing problems consistent with "political economy", there was little consideration in the report of what new problems it might give rise to. There was little practical experience to support it; only four of the parishes reporting had entirely abolished out-relief, and their problem cases could well have simply been displaced to neighbouring parishes.Speech of Mr Paulett Scrope (c1321)in Different classes of paupers should be segregated; to this end, parishes should pool together in unions, with each of their poorhouses dedicated to a single class of paupers and serving the whole of the union. "[T]he separation of man and wife was necessary, in order to ensure the proper regulation of workhouses".Speech of Lord Althorp (c 339) in In practice, most existing workhouses were ill-suited to the new system (characterised by opponents as locking up the poor in "Poor Law bastilles"), and many poor law unions soon found that they needed a new purpose-built union workhouse. Their purpose being to securely confine large numbers of the lower classes at low cost, they not unnaturally looked much like prisons. The new system would be undermined if different unions treated their paupers differently; there should therefore be a central board with powers to specify standards and to enforce those standards; this could not be done directly by Parliament because of the legislative workload that would ensue. This arrangement was simultaneously justified as required to give absolute uniformity country-wide and as allowing regulations to be tailored to local circumstances without taking up Parliament's time. Mothers of an illegitimate child should receive much less support; poor-law authorities should no longer attempt to identify the fathers of illegitimate children and recover the costs of child support from them. It was argued that penalising fathers of illegitimate children reinforced pressures for the parents of children conceived out of wedlock to marry, and generous payments for illegitimate children indemnified the mother against failure to marry. "The effect has been to promote bastardy; to make want of chastity on the woman's part the shortest road to obtaining either a husband or a competent maintenance; and to encourage extortion and perjury"."Mr Cowell's report" quoted in (J W Cowell was one of the Assistant Commissioners of the Royal Commission)
Doctrines Malthusianism Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population set out the influential doctrine that population growth was exponential, and that, unless checked, population increased faster than the ability of a country to feed it. This pressure explained the existence of poverty, which he justified theologically as a force for self-improvement and abstention. He saw any assistance to the poor—such as given by the old poor laws—as self-defeating, temporarily removing the pressure of want from the poor while leaving them free to increase their families, thus leading to greater number of people in want and an apparently greater need for relief. His views were influential and hotly debated without always being understood, and opposition to the old Poor Law which peaked between 1815 and 1820 was described by both sides as "Malthusian".
Of those serving on the Commission, the economist Nassau William Senior identified his ideas with Malthus while adding more variables, and Bishop John Bird Sumner as a leading Evangelical was more persuasive than Malthus himself in incorporating the Malthusian principle of population into the Divine Plan, taking a less pessimistic view and describing it as producing benefits such as the division of property, industry, trade and European civilisation.
Iron law of wages David Ricardo's "iron law of wages" held that aid given to poor workers under the old Poor Law to supplement their wages had the effect of undermining the wages of other workers, so that the Roundsman System and Speenhamland system led employers to reduce wages, and needed reform to help workers who were not getting such aid and rate-payers whose poor-rates were going to subsidise low-wage employers.
Utilitarianism Edwin Chadwick, a major contributor to the Commission's report, developed Jeremy Bentham's theory of utilitarianism, the idea that the success of something could be measured by whether it secured the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. This idea of utilitarianism underpinned the Poor Law Amendment Act. Bentham believed that "the greatest good for the greatest number" could only be achieved when wages found their true levels in a free-market system. Chadwick believed that the poor rate would reach its "correct" level when the workhouse was seen as a deterrent and fewer people claimed relief. A central authority was needed to ensure a uniform poor law regime for all parishes and to ensure that that regime deterred applications for relief; that is, to ensure a free market for labour required greater state intervention in poor relief.
Bentham's argument that people chose pleasant options and would not do what was unpleasant provided a rationale for making relief unpleasant so that people would not claim it, "stigmatising" relief so that it became "an object of wholesome horror".
Terms
When the act was introduced, it did not legislate for a detailed Poor Law regime. Instead, it set up a three-man Poor Law Commission, an "at arms' length" quango to which Parliament delegated the power to make appropriate regulations, without making any provision for effective oversight of the commission's doings. Local poor-rates payers still elected their local board of Poor Law guardians and still paid for local poor law provisions, but those provisions could be specified to the board of guardians by the Poor Law Commission; where they were, the views of the local rate-payers were irrelevant. The principles upon which the commission was to base its regulations were not specified. The workhouse test and the idea of "less eligibility" were therefore never mentioned. "Classification of paupers" was neither specified nor prohibited (during passage of the act, an amendment by William Cobbett forbidding the separation of man and wife had been defeated), and the recommendation of the royal commission that "outdoor relief" (relief given outside of a workhouse) should be abolished was reflected only in a clause that any outdoor relief should only be given under a scheme submitted to and approved by the commissioners.
The Poor Law Commission was independent of Parliament, but conversely, since none of its members sat in Parliament, it had no easy way of defending itself against criticism in Parliament. It was recognised that individual parishes would not have the means to erect or maintain workhouses suitable for implementing the policies of "no outdoor relief" and segregation and confinement of paupers; consequently, the commission was given powers to order the formation of Poor Law unions (confederations of parishes) large enough to support a workhouse. The commission was empowered to overturn any unions previously established under Relief of the Poor Act 1782, but only if at least two-thirds of the union's guardians supported this. Each union was to have a board of guardians elected by rate-payers and property owners; those with higher rateable-value property were to have multiple votes, as for the select vestries set up under Sturges-Bourne's Acts. The commission had no powers to insist that unions built new workhouses (except where a majority of guardians or rate-payers had given written consent), but they could order improvements to be made to existing ones. The commission was explicitly given powers to specify the number and salaries of Poor Law Board employees and to order their dismissal. It could order the "classification" of workhouse inmates and specify the extent to which (and conditions under which) out-door relief could be given.
Clause 15 of the act gave the commission sweeping powers: