The English Poor Law, 1531-1782The Poor Law had a profound impact on English society. Designed to reform the poor as much as to relieve poverty, it also shaped institutions of government and determined people's expectations and assumptions about social welfare. The English Poor Law, 1531-1782 provides a concise synthesis of recent scholarly work together with full references, explaining the origins of this unique system of welfare, and showing how it played a central role in English social and political development from the Reformation to the Industrial Revolution. |
Contents
Defining strategies | 3 |
2 Aspirations | 6 |
3 The law | 9 |
Implementing the law | 14 |
2 The parish | 17 |
3 Rising costs | 21 |
The failure of reform | 27 |
2 Deterrence and work | 31 |
The law in context | 41 |
2 Poverty | 45 |
3 Politics | 48 |
Statutes relating to the poor | 51 |
Notes | 57 |
Select bibliography | 59 |
Additional bibliographical note | 67 |
| 71 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
able-bodied able-bodied poor argued attitudes beggars Beier better Relief Books of Orders Cambridge cent charity churchwardens circumstances civil parish dearth discussion doles Early Modern England early seventeenth centuries economic and social Economic History Society effects eighteenth century Elizabethan statutes English Poor Law expenditure G. R. Elton Gilbert's Act Guardians houses of correction idle and disorderly impact impotent poor increasing institutions justices labouring poor later eighteenth century later seventeenth century later sixteenth legislation London Corporation magistrates ment Norwich Old Poor Law outdoor relief overseers parish officers Parliament parliamentary parochial paupers peace pensioners period philanthropy political poor children poor rates poor relief population poverty pressure problem Punishment Puritan Relief and Employment rising rogues schemes settlement laws Slack Social History social policy social welfare Stuart England Studies in Economic survey Thirsk tion towns Tudor and Stuart Vagabonds vagrants vestries Wales Webb Workhouse Test Act