In Their Own Write : Contesting the New Poor Law, 1834-1900 / Steven King [and four others].

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

King, Steven, author.

Series:

States, People, and the History of Social Change

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Poor--Social conditions.

Poor.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xx, 450 pages)

Place of Publication:

Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022.

Summary:

"Few subjects in European welfare history attract as much attention as the nineteenth-century English and Welsh New Poor Law. Its founding statute was at once considered the single most important piece of social legislation ever enacted, and the coming of its institutions - from penny-pinching Boards of Guardians to the dreaded workhouse - has generally been viewed as a catastrophe for ordinary working people. Until now it has been impossible to know how the poor themselves felt about the New Poor Law and its measures, how they negotiated its terms, and how their interactions with the local and national state shifted and changed across the nineteenth century. In Their Own Write exposes this hidden history. Based on an unparalleled collection of first-hand testimony - pauper letters and witness statements interwoven with letters to newspapers and correspondence from poor law officials and advocates - the book reveals lives marked by hardship, deprivation, bureaucratic intransigence, parsimonious officialdom, and sometimes institutional cruelty, while also challenging the dominant view that the poor were powerless and lacked agency in these interactions. The testimonies collected in these pages clearly demonstrate that both the poor and their advocates were adept at navigating the new bureaucracy, holding local and national officials to account, and influencing the outcomes of relief negotiations for themselves and their communities. Fascinating and compelling, the stories presented in In Their Own Write amount to nothing less than a new history of welfare from below."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 Thinking about the New Poor Law

PART ONE Finding and Hearing "Voices"

2 Navigating and Measuring

3 Advocating for the Poor

4 Responding to Paupers and Advocates: The Central Authority

PART TWO Pauper Agency

5 Rhetoric and Strategy: A Corpus View

6 Knowing the Poor "Law"

7 The Female Voice

8 Becoming Old

9 The Able-Bodied Poor

PART THREE Contestation

10 Punishing the Pauper Complainant

11 Limits to Agency? The Sick Poor

12 Experiencing the Poor Law

Appendix: Sampling.

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (McGill-Queen's University Press, viewed May 1, 2023).

ISBN:

0-2280-1535-9

OCLC:

1336053862