Commission of Enquiry

• The Royal Commission of Enquiry consisted of nine commissioners, the most influential being:

  • Nassau Senior: Professor of Political Economy at Oxford University, he deeply disapproved of the allowance system.
  • Edwin Chadwick: A committed follower of Utilitarianism
  • 26 assistant commissioners appointed to put in leg-work, collecting and collating the evidence.
• The data was collected in 2 different ways:

  1. The commissioners created 3 different questionnaires, 2 for rural parishes and 1 for urban parishes. Around 10% of parishes replied.
  2. Assistant commissioners were sent out to talk to the poor, attend vestry meetings and magistrates' sessions. Each was given a particular district to conduct their enquires and between them, they visited around 3000 parishes, around 1/5 of the Poor Law districts.
• Unsurprisingly, they found what they were looking for. The questions were skewed to elicit the answers required, or were open to interpretation. An example of this would be the use of the word 'allowance', which was interpreted in different ways. The final report found that allowances to supplement wages (the Speenhamland system) were commonplace, ignoring the fact that these systems had died out in the 1820s. But, it must be remembered that the enquiry wasn't intended to be impartial.
• Published in early 1834, the first part of the report attacked the old Poor Law, citing examples of corrupt practices and demoralised paupers. The second part contained the commissioners' conclusions and recommendations. Throughout the report, the reader is led to the conclusion that the old Poor Law itself was the cause of poverty.
• The commissioners recommended radical changes, designed to save money and improve efficiency:

  • Separate workhouses should be provided for the aged and infirm, children, able-bodied women and able-bodied men.
  • Parishes should group into unions to provide these workhouses.
  • All relief outside workhouses should stop and conditions inside workhouses should be such that no one would willingly enter.
  • A new, central authority should be established, with powers to make and enforce regulations concerning the workhouse system.
• The aims of Poor Law policy were to:

  • reduce the cost of providing relief to the poor
  • ensure that only the genuinely destitute received relief
  • provide a national system of poor relief