Pauper Policies: Poor Law Practice in England, 1780–1850 - Hardcover

Shave, Samantha A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0719089638 ISBN 13: 9780719089633

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2017

Synopsis

 

Pauper policies examines how policies under both Old and New Poor Laws were conceived, adopted, implemented, developed or abandoned. The book engages with recent literature on the experience and agency of poor relief recipients, and offers a fresh perspective on poor law administration. Through a ‘policy process’ approach, the author exposes several significant areas of poor law history that are currently unknown or poorly understood, each of which is explored in a series of thematic chapters. 

This volume contains important new research on: the adoption and implementation of enabling acts at the end of the Old Poor Laws, Gilbert’s Act of 1782 and Sturges Bourne’s Acts of 1818 and 1819; the exchange of knowledge about how best to provide poor relief in the final decades of the Old Poor Law and formative decades of the New; and the impact of national scandals on policy-making in the new Victorian system. It points towards a new direction in the study of poor law administration, one which examines how people – both those in positions of power and the poor – could shape pauper policies. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in welfare, poverty and society in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, as well as those who want to understand the early workings of the welfare system.

About this title

About the Author

Samantha A. Shave is Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Lincoln -- .

From the Back Cover

Pauper policies examines how policies under both Old and New Poor Laws were conceived, adopted, implemented, developed or abandoned. The book engages with recent literature on the experience and agency of poor relief recipients, and offers a fresh perspective on poor law administration. Through a 'policy process' approach, the author exposes several significant areas of poor law history that are currently unknown or poorly understood, each of which is explored in a series of thematic chapters.

This volume contains important new research on: the adoption and implementation of enabling acts at the end of the Old Poor Laws, Gilbert's Act of 1782 and Sturges Bourne's Acts of 1818 and 1819; the exchange of knowledge about how best to provide poor relief in the final decades of the Old Poor Law and formative decades of the New; and the impact of national scandals on policy-making in the new Victorian system. It points towards a new direction in the study of poor law administration, one which examines how people - both those in positions of power and the poor - could shape pauper policies. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in welfare, poverty and society in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, as well as those who want to understand the early workings of the welfare system.

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0719089638
• ISBN 13: 9780719089633
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320