Poverty and Public Health

• Poverty can be caused by systemic factors such as discrimination, unequal distribution of resources, and limited access to basic services.
• Who were paupers?

  A person in receipt of poor relief.
• Outdoor relief was provided to paupers in their own homes. This included cash, food and clothes.
• Indoor relief was provided in a workhouse or a poorhouse.
• What was relief?

  Support given to paupers to enable them to maintain a basic standard of living.
• Who was indoor relief mainly provided for?

  The impotent poor - sick, old, infirm and mentally ill.
• Why was a parish important to paupers?


  Administered relief to the poor and collected taxes in order to provide appropriate relief.
• What was the poor rate?

  A tax levied at parish level and used to provide relief for the parish poor.
• What were the main objections to the Poor Law?

  Failing to cope with the growing and very different demands upon it caused by a mobile and industrialised population.
• What role did 'overseers of the poor' have?

  > Responsible for administering poor relief in their parish.

  > Levied a poor rate and supervised its distribution.
• What did it mean if someone was "indigent"?

  Having an inability to support oneself.
• Who were the 'deserving' poor?


  Those who were poor through no fault of their own, therefore deemed worthy of help and support.
• Who were the 'undeserving' poor?


  Those whose poverty was the result of some sort of perceived moral failure (e.g. drunkenness).

  *Any help would involve punishment and improvement.
• How was 'legal settlement' defined?

  Birth, marriage, apprenticeship or inheritance in any one area.
• Why was outdoor relief preferred by many parishes?

  Easy to administer, could be applied flexibly.
• What strains were put upon the Poor Law in the last years of the 18th Century?

  > Mobile population = growing towns.

  > Paupers became a charge on parishes.

  > Poor Rate levied a burden on parish property.
• What was the Speenhamland system?

  A way of providing relief by subsidising low wages.

  Formal relationship between price of bread and number of dependants in a family.
• What was the Roundsman System?

  Way of making sure there was work for able-bodied paupers when there were too many in one parish.

  Parish labourers often assigned to a farmer, wages partly paid by the farmer and partly paid by the parish.
• What was the problem with the Roundsman system?


  Farmers realised that they could still pay less and the parish would make up for the rest.
• What was the Gilbert's Act of 1872?

  > Parishes could join to form unions - saves money as workhouses and poorhouses could be shared.

  > Workhouses are now only for the sick, old and children.

  > Parish guardian must find work for able-bodied poor - if not found THEN outdoor relief can be provided.
• What is a mandatory Act?

  An Act of Parliament that must apply to everyone.
• What is a permissive Act?

  An Act of Parliament that does not have to apply unless specific conditions are met.
• What is the principle of "less eligibility"?

  Conditions inside a workhouse had to be "less eligible" - less desirable - than those outside.
• What is a select Vestry?

  Group of parishioners who meet in the Vestry of a Church - responsible for managing the parish.