Migrants, immigrants and welfare from the old poor law to the welfare state

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Volumn 13, Issue , 2003, Pages 79-104

  Feldman, David ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 26044437557     PISSN: 00804401     EISSN: 14740648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0080440103000045     Document Type: Review

References (122)

1. M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality (New York, 1983), 31
2. P. Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (1988), 129, 194
3. 13 & 14 Car. II, cap. 12. Of course, even before 1662 parishes did not invariably relieve sick or unemployed migrants who, consequently, were 'much sent and tossed up and down from town to town'. However, the judiciary did try to check the practice and advised that only vagrants could be lawfully removed. M. Dalton, The Country Justice (1666), 115-16
4. S. and B. Webb, English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act: The Parish and the County (1906), 5
5. In recent years there have been some notable attempts to address the history of welfare over the long term. Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare in the English Past, ed. M. Daunton (1996)
6. L. Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700-1948 (Cambridge, 1998)
7. P. Thane, Old Age in English History: Past Experiences Present Issues (Oxford, 2000)
8. S. King, Poverty and Welfare in England 1700-1850 (Manchester, 2000)
9. For an interesting commentary see M. Wiener, 'The Unloved State: Twentieth-Century Politics in the Writing of Nineteenth-Century History', Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), 283-306
10. with C. Hamlin, Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick, Britain 18000-54 (Cambridge, 1998)
11. For a sceptical view of insurance see J. Macnicol, The Politics of Retirement in Britain, 1878-1948 Cambridge, 1948)
12. J. Cronin, The Politics of State Expansion: War, State and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (1991), is critical of state policies for doing too little
13. and highlighted in G.B.M. Finlayson, Citizen State and Social Welfare in Britain (Oxford, 1994)
14. On local government see, for instance, S. Szreter, 'The Importance of Social Intervention in British Mortality Decline c. 1850-1914: A Reinterpretation of the Role of Public Health', Social History of Medicine, 1 (1988), 1-37
15. On working-class mutuality and association see A. Kidd, State, Society and the Poor in Nineteenth-Century England (Manchester, 1999)
16. Most notably in Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Local Government: English Poor Law History. Part 1: The Old Poor Law (1927)
17. J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783 (1989)
18. J. Innes, 'Parliament and the Shaping of Eighteenth-Century English Social Policy', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, 40 (1990), 63-92
19. G. Boyer, An Economic History of the English Poor Law, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1990)
20. J.R. Kent, 'The Centre and the Localities: State Formation and Parish Government in England, c. 1640-1740', Historical Journal, 38:2 (1995), 363-404
21. D. Eastwood, Governing Rural England: Tradition and Transformation in Local Government (Oxford, 1994)
22. N. Landau, 'The Laws of Settlement and the Surveillance of Immigration in Eighteenth-Century Kent', Continuity and Change, 3 (1988), 391-420
23. D. Thomson, 'The Decline of Social Welfare: Falling State Support for the Elderly since Early Victorian Times', Ageing and Society, 4:4 (1984), 451-82, implicitly extends the argument back to the Old Poor Law, see 452
24. K. Snell and J. Miller, 'Lone-Parent Families and the Welfare State: Past and Present', Continuity and Change, 2:3 (1987), 387-422
25. On the generosity of the Old Poor Law to the elderly, at least until the mid-eighteenth century, see R. Smith, 'Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare: Reflections for Demographic and Family History', in Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare, ed. Daunton, 37-41
26. For instance, K. Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Ithaca, 1997)
27. D. Cesarani, 'The Changing Character of Citizenship and Nationality in Britain', in Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe, ed. D. Cesrani and M. Fulbrook (1996), 57-73
28. P. Panayi, Immigration, Ethnicity and Racism in Britain, 1815-1945 (Manchester, 1994)
29. B. Carter, C. Harris and S. Joshi, 'The 1951-55 Conservative Government and the Racialization of Black Immigration', Immigrants and Minorities, 6:3 (1987), 335-47
30. On welfare specifically, see H. Dean with M. Melrose, Poverty, Riches and Social Citizenship (1998), 146
31. N. Ginsburg, Divisions of Welfare (1992), 153-5
32. J. Innes, 'The State and the Poor: Eighteenth-Century England in European Perspective', in Rethinking 'Leviathan', ed. J. Brewer and E. Hellmuth (Oxford, 2000), 226-9
33. A. Redford, Labour Migration in England (1926)
34. E.A. Wrigley, 'A Simple Model of London's Importance in Changing English Society and Economy 1650-1750', Past and Present, 37 (1967), 46-9
35. A. Kussmaul, 'The Ambiguous Mobility of Farm Servants', Economic History Review, 29 (1981) 222-35
36. Migration and Society in Early-Modern England, ed. P. Clark and D. Souden (1987)
37. C. Pooley and J. Turnbull, Migration and Mobility in Britain since the Eighteenth Century (1998)
38. Bristol Corporation of the Poor: Selected Records, 1696-1834, ed. E.E. Butcher (Bristol, 1932), 62-3
39. E.M. North, Early Methodist Philanthropy (New York, 1914), 34
40. The Kaleidoscope or Literary and Scientific Mirror, 3 May 1825, 372a
41. North, Early Methodist Philanthropy, 49
42. On the society in Manchester see G.B. Hindle, Provision for the Relief of the Poor in Manchester 1754-1826 (Manchester, 1975), 78-89
43. For Leeds see R.J. Morris, Class, Sect and Party: The Making of the Middle Class in Leeds 1820-50 (Manchester, 1990), 205-6
44. The two statutes are 1 Jac. II, cap. 17 and 3 & 4 Will. and M., cap. 11. R. Burn, The Justice of the Peace and the Parish Officer (14th edn, 1780), III, 444
45. On the logic of the law see W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (4th edn, 1770), I, 362
46. See Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, I, 362-5, for a short summary of the law as it stood in the middle of the eighteenth century
47. More detailed expositions can be found in Burn, The Justice of the Peace
48. A Member of Parliament, Remarks on the Laws Relating to the Poor
49. cited in Parliamentary Papers [henceforth PP] 1851 XXVI, Report on the Law of Settlement and Removal, 296
50. Attributed in T. Ruggles, The History of the Poor: Their Rights, Duties and the Laws Respecting Them (1793), I, 217
51. N. Landau, 'The Regulation of Immigration, Economic Structures and Definitions of the Poor in Eighteenth-Century England', Historical Journal, 33 (1990), 541-71
52. Landau, 'The Laws of Settlement and Surveillance'. Landau's argument has been controversial. See K.D.M. Snell, 'Pauper Settlement and the Right to Poor Relief in England and Wales', Continuity and Change, 6 (1991), 375-415
53. N. Landau, 'The Eighteenth-Century Context of the Law of Settlement', Continuity and Change, 6 (1991), 417-39
54. K.D.M. Snell, 'Settlement, Poor Law and the Rural Historian: New Approaches and Opportunities', Rural History, 3 (1992), 145-72
55. R. Wells, 'Migration, the Law and Public Policy in Eighteenth and early Nineteenth-Century Southern England', Southern History, 15 (1993), 86-139
56. Berkshire Record Office, D/P 71/8/3, Hungerford Special Vestry Minutes, 19 Oct. 1783
57. A.W. Ashby, One Hundred Years of Poor Law Administration on a Warwickshire Village (Oxford, 1912), III, 67
58. On 'credit' see C. Muldrew 'Credit and the Courts: Debt Litigation in a Seventeenth-Century Urban Community', Economic History Review, 46 (1993), 23-38
59. The Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics, 1550-1800, ed. J. Barry and C. Brooks (Basingstoke, 1994)
60. K. Wrightson, 'The Politics of the Parish in Early Modern England', in The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England, ed. A. Fox, P. Griffiths and S. Hindle (Basingstoke, 1996), 10-46
61. S. Hindle, 'Power, Poor Relief and Social Relations in Holland Fen', Historical Journal, 41:1 (1998), 37-96
62. J. Kent, 'The Rural "Middling Sort" in Early-Modern England, circa 1640-1740: Some Economic, Political and Socio-Cultural Characteristics', Rural History, 10:1 (1999), 19-54
63. Bristol Corporation of the Poor, 83
64. Hindle, 'Power, Poor Relief and Social Relations'
65. There is a useful discussion of certificates in P. Styles, 'The Evolution of the Law of Settlement', in P. Styles, Studies in Seventeenth-Century West Midlands History (Kineton, 1978 ), 189-93
66. However, from the mid-eighteenth century there were complaints that some parishes refused to issue certificates. Bristol Corporation of the Poor, 117-19
67. J.S. Taylor, 'A Different Kind of Speenhamland: Nonresident Relief in the Industrial Revolution', Journal of British Studies, 30 (1991), 183-208
68. Essex Pauper Letters, ed. T. Sokoll (Oxford, 2001)
69. Cumbria Record Office, Kirkby Lonsdale Township Letters, Mary Wilkinson to Stephen Garnett, 2 Jan. 1810. Pioneering work by Taylor, Sokoll and others on these letters written by migrant paupers proposes that non-resident relief was a functional adaptation which promoted the interests of migrants and both parishes involved. No doubt this was often the case but since so many pauper correspondents complain that they have not received answers to letters, that money has not been sent or that the amount they have been given does not meet their basic needs, future research might also consider to what extent these letters also reflect a system under strain. Dealing with a slightly later period, D. Ashforth draws attention to the low level of non-resident relief. 'Settlement and Relief in Urban Areas', in The Poor and the City: The English Poor Law in its Urban Context, 1834-1914 (Leicester, 1985), 73
70. PP 1803-4 XIII, Abstract of Answers and Returns...Relative to the Expense and Maintenance of the Poor in England, 715
71. Hindle, 'Social Relations in Holland Fen', 89
72. Taylor, 'The Impact of Pauper Settlement', 53
73. Wells, 'Migration, the Law and Public Policy', 114
74. Eastwood, Governing Rural England, 110
75. Further Appendix to the Report from the Committee on Certain Returns Relative to the State of the Poor (1787), 730-1
76. PP 1803-4 XIII, Abstract of Answers and Returns...Relative to the Expense and Maintenance of the Poor in England, 714
77. Cited in M.D. George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (1925; 1966 edn), 395 n. 140
78. PP 1851 XXVI, Report of George Coode Esq to the Poor Law Board on the Law of Settlement and Removal of the Poor, 111
79. E. Head, 'The Law of Settlement', Edinburgh Review, 87 (1848), 456
80. see too T. Koditschek, Class Formation and Urban-Industrial Society: Bradford 1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1990), 405-6
81. Morris, Class, Sect and Party, 206-7
82. PP 1803-4 XIII, Abstract of Answers and Returns...Relative to the Expense and Maintenance of the Poor in England, 714-15
83. Lees, Solidarities of Strangers, 145-53, 177-229, provides a recent discussion of how far these goals were fulfilled
84. For recent restatements of this view see C. Chinn, Poverty Amidst Prosperity: The Urban Poor in Nineteenth-Century England (Manchester, 1995), 102-5
85. Lees, Solidarities of Strangers, 113-14
86. T.M. Torrens, The Life of Sir James Graham (1863), II, 350-1
87. Report of George Coode, 320-1
88. A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)
89. Ruggles, History of the Poor, provides a digest attack up to the 1790s
90. See the recognition of this outcome in A. Prentice, Historical Sketches and Personal Recollections of Manchester (Manchester, 1851), 233-4
91. For an example of the attitudes of local officials to the Irish see J. Davis, 'Jennings Buildings and the Royal Borough: The Construction of the Underclass in Mid-Victorian England', in Metropolis - London: Histories and Representations since 1800, ed. D. Feldman and G. Stedman Jones (1989), 24
92. PP 1850 XXVII, Report to the Poor Law Board on the Law of Settlement and Removal of the Poor, 118, 125
93. Cited in D. Ashforth, 'Settlement and Removal in Urban Areas', in The Poor and the City: The English Poor Law in its Urban Context, 1834-1914, ed. M.E. Rose (Leicester, 1985), 82
94. J.P. Kay, The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes Employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester (Manchester, 1832), 27
95. D.M. MacRaild, 'Irish Immigration and the Condition of England Question: The Roots of an Historiographical Tradition', Immigrants and Minorities, 14:I (1995), 67-85
96. P. Harling and P. Mandler, 'From 'Fiscal-Military State to Laissez-Faire State, 1760-1850', Journal of British Studies, 32 (1993), 57
97. P. Lindert, 'Poor Relief before the Welfare State: England versus the Continent, 1780-1880', European Review of Economic History, 2 (1998), 114
98. On numbers of immigrants see C. Holmes, John Bull's Island: Immigration and British Society, 1871-1971 (1988)
99. C. Peach, V. Robinson, J. Maxted and J. Chance, 'Immigration and Ethnicity', in British Social Trends since, 1900 ed. A.H. Halsey (1988), 561-615
100. D. Coleman, 'UK Immigration Policy: "Firm but Fair", and Failing?', Policy Studies, 17 (1996), 195-214
101. See D. Feldman, Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture (1994), 370-8
102. Parliamentary Debates, 1948-9 (457), 1015
103. Parliamentary Debates, 1948-9 (461), 2001-2
104. A. Bevan, In Place of Fear (1952), 81
105. G. Alderman, London Jewry and London Politics 1889-1986 (1989), 66-7
106. S. Glynn, 'Irish Immigration to Britain, 1911-51', Irish Economic and Social History, (1981), 63
107. Parliamentary Debates, 1939-40 (357), 1738
108. J. Rex and S. Tomlinson, Colonial Immigrants in a British City (1979), 130-1
109. P.B. Rich, 'The Politics of Race and Segregation in British Cities: With Reference to Birmingham, 1945-76', in New Perspectives on Race and Housing in Britain, ed. S.J. Smith and J. Mercer (Glasgow, 1987), 74-93
110. As the 1969 Cullingworth Report made clear, these rules disadvantaged internal migrants as well as immigrants. J.B. Cullingworth, English Housing Trends (1965), 61
111. Select Committee on Race Relations, 43
112. C. Vincenzi and D. Marrington, Immigration Law: The Rules Explained (1992), 39-40
113. Welfare Rights Bulletin, February 1996, 10
114. N. Harris, Social Security Law in Context (Oxford, 2000), 198-201
115. A. Geddes, 'Denying Access: Asylum Seekers and Welfare Benefits in the UK', in Immigration and Welfare: Challenging the Borders of the Welfare State, ed. M. Bommes and A. Geddes (2000), 134-47
116. See, for example, National Association of Citizen Advice Bureaux, Barriers to Benefit (1991)
117. However, even this has been questioned in R. Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-War Britain: The Historical Origins of a Multicultural Nation (Oxford, 2000)
118. see too F. Neal, Black '47: Britain and the Famine Irish (Basingstoke, 1998), 256-62
119. P.G. Richards, 'The Recent History of Local Fiscal Reform', in The Reform of Local Government Finance in Britain, ed. S.J. Bailey and R. Paddison (1988), 32
120. A. Walker, 'The Strategy of Inequality', in Britain Divided: The Growth of Social Exclusion in the 1980s and 1990s, ed. A. Walker and C. Walker (1997), 3
121. Parliamentary Debates, 1987-8 (122), 705
122. Hindle, 'Power, Poor Relief and Social Relations in Holland Fen'