Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 - Essay Example

poor law amendment act 0f 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 (PLAA) was an operation by the Parliament of the United Kingdom which was passed by the Whig government of Lord Melbourne that was presented in order to ameliorate the poor at that time. This amendment act totally replaced the previous legislation that was based on the Poor Law of 1601. With allusion to its previous act it is also known as the New Poor Law. An investigation was made by 4 people including Edwin Chadwick, George Nicholls, John Bird Sumner, and Nassau William Senior. This Amendment act was introduced two years after the Reform act of 1832 which had extended its exemption to the middle-classes. According to some historians, this was an important factor in the approval of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. (Great Britain 1857) There was much opposition for the New Poor Law, which was named as the “Whig Starvation and Infanticide Act”. The newspapers, demonstration and media produced turbulence in some areas but on the whole it was quite limited. The major problem in 1843, with the Old Poor Law was the refusal to work by the able-bodied paupers. The new law prevailed throughout the First World War after which it created great bitterness amongst its victims, the older citizens, who could no longer work; widows, orphans, and the physically disabled. These were the unfortunate ones who were punished in the workhouse, not the idle poor who the reformers hoped to demoralize. Fear and acrimony of the workhouse was on the rise during this time. (Edsall 1971) The New Poor law turned to be a great success in a destitute and unfortunate way. It was this law that stopped the poor from living off the bethel. The poor looked at the Poor Law Authorities with such fear; hatred and audacity that they would prefer to live on credit and charity, starve or steal than to enter into the workhouses. The poor law expenditure in the year 1854 was £5,282,853 or 6s per person as compared to 9s person in the Poor Law of 1834. In short, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was a complete failure. (Rose 1971) The New Poor Law was surely not supporting the poor of that time; rather it was creating agitation, hatred and contempt in their minds against the Authorities. Chadwick, who was the main force behind the Poor Law Amendment Act, was just appointed as a secretary to the Poor Law Board. His superiors did not pay any attention to his ideas and views. By1841, Chadwick’s influence diminished. The Authorities found it hard to get the local Boards of Guardians to do what they wished. The board of Guardians carried on as before even after the Ministry of Health took over in 1919. (William IV 1976) 13, 247 of the 15,000 of the churchgoers had been incorporated in 573 different unions in 1838. Local acts covered the reaming parishes and as soon as 1868, all the parishes were unionized. However, the unions were false and counterfeit and there was a mutual opposition between the larger and the smaller townships. Rarely the Boards of Guardians were constituted of the same overseers from the previous system, in effect all the old habits and animosities were perpetuated. The local Boards faced a lot of trouble in financing the Union workhouses. But the parishes paid according to the number of the poor and not according to how useful they are. It was like this that the rich churchgoer paid nothing and the poor parish with lots of pauper paid a lot. This issue was resolved in an Act of 1865, but still great differences existed amongst the unions. (Sydney 1910) Each union was supposed to be paid and the officials were to maintain the management. A salary of about £50 was being paid to 8,240 people by the year 1846. In 1836, when the registrations of births, deaths and marriage acts were introduced, the union officials worked as the registrars. The Poor Law Board was unable to persuade the unions to establish workhouses and thus they relied upon local initiatives. Some workhouses were clean well organized and comfortable (which was rather opposite to the idea of workhouse as an impediment). The workhouse of Andover was one of the worst. Here, the paupers fought amongst each other for scraps of meat from the bones which they had to smash. Most of the workhouses were somewhere between these apexes. The workers were too young and poor to perform their duties properly. Moreover, the workhouses were all mixed up, that is the children, the old, the mentally and physically disabled and the idle wanderers were all accumulated together. (Fowle 1881) The Poor Law Amendment Act 0f 1834 was not supporting the poor of 1830s in an appropriate and well-organized way. Assistant commissioners, like Alfred Power and Charles Mott, ignored 100 unions altogether. They were simply not being able to confront the administration and inspections. The ideal of the workhouse to deal with a few country vagabonds did not cope with the issue of mass unemployment in the industrial towns. The majority of them weren’t lazy; the problem was that they couldn’t find any work. There was no space to gather these people in the workhouses. Equivocation rates were too high; only 110,000 paupers were in the workhouses out of the total of one million. (Boyer 1990) In short, the new poor law had failed to cope with the causes of poverty; persistent unemployment and less wages. 12% of the population was registered as paupers as compared to 10% in 1832. While in the 1890s 33% of the people living in towns were unable to earn not even this much to keep them healthily fed and clothed. The attitudes, traditions, faculty and organizations took years to change. The Poor Law Amendment Act did not stimulate a social revolution rather the root causes of the poverty were neither anticipated nor alleviated. (King 1906) Even if we try to enforce this law at the present time it would still turn out be a disaster and pure wastage of money because the amendments of the law weren’t as good as they should have been. The authorities were lazy and unconcerned with the problems faced by the poor and the workhouses were very poorly organized. Moreover, still the majority of the population of the United Kingdom is against this law because of all the reasons and apprehensions mentioned above. The tactics mentioned in this act are mostly impractical and without any authorized research. In short, The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 did not do well to the poor of the 1830s and is still inapplicable in the present time due to most of its impractical ideas and tactics. - References Top of Form Great Britain. (1834). Poor Law Act, 1834: [485 William IV c.76] an act for the amendment and better administration of the laws relating to the poor in England and Wales. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode. Top of Form Fowle, T. W. (1881). The Poor Law, By T.W. Fowle. London, Macmillan. Top of Form Boyer, G. R. (1990). An economic history of the English poor law, 1750-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bottom of Form Top of Form Webb, S., & Webb, B. (1910). English Poor Law policy. London: Frank Cass and Co. Top of Form Poynter, J. R., & Edsall, N. C. (October 01, 1972). Review of The Anti-Poor Law Movement, 1834-44. The American Historical Review, 77, 4, 1125. Top of Form Rose, M. E. (1971). The English poor law: 1780-1930. New Abbot: David Charles. Top of Form DODD, J. T. (1906). Administrative Reform and the Local Government Board ... Second edition. P. S. King & Son: London, 1906. Top of Form Great Britain. (1857). The Poor, the poor law and the Poor Law Board. London. Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form jklkjlkjlkjlkjlkjN Read More