Why was there a crusade against out relief in the 1870s and what effect did this have?
The reasons for the crusade against outrelief of the 1870s must be seen in the context of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, the traditional systems of poor relief and charities and attitudes towards poverty and its causes in the nineteenth century, such as those revealed by the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and the Goschen Minute.
The New Poor Law with its workhouse system had tried and failed to abolish outdoor relief, although the number receiving it fell from approximately 1,000,000 in the 1840s to 500,000 in 1900 (Murray 1999, 50). The renewed crusade against outrelief in the 1870s had many origins, both economic and philosophical which shall be examined below after a brief background to poor relief. It must also be borne in mind though, that there were a variety of different situations throughout the English regions and the UK as a whole and an example will be made of the Brixworth Union Workhouse.
Outdoor relief, the relief or assistance of the poor in their own homes has a long tradition stretching back in law to the Poor Law Act of 1601 (Murray 1999, 16). The indigent, orphans, the sick and the elderly as well as the able-bodied poor were assisted, the former sometimes in poorhouses but the latter were more often offered work, cash or food ie outrelief. Relief was the local responsibility of the 15,000 odd parishes of England and Wales with costs met by local rates and the system administered by parish appointed overseers. To combat an increasing fear, under the old Settlement Act of 1662 a pauper could be removed back to his parish of birth, preventing parishes from being overwhelmed by migrating poor (Humphreys 1995, 15-16). The wages of the working poor could also be supplemented to meet high food costs through such systems as that implemented at Speenhamland in 1795 which used the number of children and the price of bread as criteria. Other measures such as flat rate payment systems or tax breaks for landowners employing unemployed labourers were employed around the country: this was no national proto-welfare state.
The view that outrelief was worryingly expensive, was given to the undeserving, encouraged indolence and discouraged self-reliance and thrift was common to both the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws 1832-34 and the Local Government Board (LGB) that replaced the Poor Law Board in 1871, whose secretary Mr H Fleming restated the principles of the New Poor Law (Murray 1999, 49-50). Outdoor relief, he maintained ‘extinguishes in the mind of the labourer all motive for husbanding his resources, and induces him to rely exclusively upon the rates instead of upon his own savings for such relief as he may require. It removes every incentive to self-reliance and prudent fore-thought…’ (quoted in Murray 1999, 49). It was also thought that the augmentation of wages by relief would reduce the recipient’s drive to better himself and therefore be unfair to the successful working class (see Best 1971, 136) as well as disturb the operation of the economy and natural freedom of the labour market despite the fact that the Settlement Act already prevented the free flow of labour (Humphreys 1995, 14).
These ideas, prevalent from Bentham onwards, are also found in the so-called Goschen Minute of 1869: GJ Goschen had been the president of the Poor Law Board from 1868-71 (see text in Englander 1998, 104-5). In his view relief was only to be provided to the destitute not to the insufficiently waged since the expansion of relief brought the danger of the poor having a legal claim to public money. This would degrade self-reliance and thrift. Thus the Poor Law was to serve only the destitute while charities could help those otherwise with insufficient means. The First Annual Report of the LGB under Fleming (see text in Englander 1998, 105-7) also shows concern with expenditure on outrelief by Guardians who fail to apply workhouse tests and disregard the advantages of inrelief, as well as the supposed moral problems stemming from outrelief. LGB inspector Henry Longley also advocated close relationships between the Poor Law and organised charity, suggesting that relief given of right ‘must tend to encourage improvidence’ (Humphreys 1995, 27). In 1874 he recommended the tightening of outrelief against widows, disabled and aged on various grounds including ‘bad character’.
In terms of an increase in expenditure blamed on rising numbers and the laxity by Guardians in applying the New Poor Law system and paid for by ratepayers, the official figures presented by the LGB seemed to show an 20.6% growth in the decade up to 1870 (Humphreys 1995, 25 Table 2.2). So, although the LGB had moral concerns, their main worries seem to have been economic and this was the trigger for the crusade against outrelief in the 1870s (Humphreys 1995, 24). MacKinnon has suggested that the willingness to go along with the crusade by Guardians is related to cost reduction and the changing systems of local taxation (1987).
The indoor relief of the New Poor Law, based on the workhouse system run by the 650 unions, was intended to deter people from claiming relief. Edwin Chadwick, part of the Royal Commission was of the opinion that workhouses should be ‘uninviting places of wholesome restraint’ (Englander 1995). Indeed, the strict regimes of these ‘prisons without crime’ involved segregation of families and married couples, uniforms and dietary limits amongst other things, although workhouses differed widely from the more humane and kindly places to the hellish Swansea, Neath and Andover workhouses (Henriques 1979, 49-50; Murray 1999, 41-46). By reducing the number of those willing to accept relief, if the only relief offered meant entering the workhouse, the idea that those seeking relief were undeserving must have been reinforced and those who refused relief were thrown back on their own means, thus encouraging self-reliance in the eyes of those operating the system. This might also be considered to offset the generally higher costs of inrelief (eg building costs, wages etc) per head in comparison to outrelief.
Brixworth Union Workhouse opened on March 25th 1837 and within five years the cost of outrelief in Brixworth had dropped from £1-3s-5d to £0-9s-0d a week (BVAC 1994). The number outdoor paupers dropped from 1,100 in 1871 to under a hundred in 1890, although the number of workhouse inmates hovered around a hundred throughout that period (Humphreys 1995, 37 Fig 3.2). It is also clear that able-bodied men, those targeted in particular by the New Poor Laws and by Brixworth Union in the 1870s were never the main recipients of outdoor relief at Brixworth. In 1871, the daycount of able-bodied men averages around 60, whereas the figure for not able-bodied women is over 350 (Humphreys 1995, 38 Fig 3.8). Due to the massive withdrawal of outrelief, Brixworth became known as the ‘dark portion of rural England’ (BVAC 1994).
Although these figures from Brixworth show the reduction of outrelief, even strict Guardians had been forced by circumstances to provide outrelief. Many feared to enter the workhouse, for example, in Cuckfield in 1836, 209 men applied for relief and when offered the workhouse or nothing only 11 accepted (Murray 1999, 42). Three of these left after a few hours. At Brixworth ‘The Private Fund’ was devised to provide outdoor relief to those who continuously applied and were rejected (Humphreys 1995, 38). The fact that outrelief was still received by 500,000 in 1900 shows that there was a perceived necessity for it ‘on the ground’ in order to cope with fluctuations in employment. In fact, as early as 1842 outdoor relief was available again in exchange for hard labour and oakum picking (Englander 1998, 29). Local Guardians also possessed knowledge of local people and circumstances that may have led to a more realistic practical understanding of outrelief.
The crusade against outrelief in the 1870s was caused by fears of increasing expenditure and the belief that generous or widespread relief to those other than the destitute was immoral, led to indolence and a dangerous reliance on the state. The rise of organised charities encouraged by the Goschen Minute, sometimes in cooperation with Poor Law Unions, also filled a gap in offering aid to the deserving poor. Local and neighbourly solutions probably always remained central in offering private solutions (Murray 1999, 122-23). The evident failure of the crusade against outrelief and changing attitudes to poverty visible led by the writings of Booth, Rowntree, Dickens and others – that it was not always deserved or escapable without help due to factors such as irregular work and too low wages proved influential in the development of the welfare policies of the Liberal Party in the early twentieth century (Murray 1999, 87-93).
Bibliography
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BVAC 1994. Brixworth Union Workhouse 1837. (Extracted from Brixworth – a Village Appraisal. Brixworth Village Appraisal Committee). Available at:
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