Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 (PLC)

• The bill reflected closely the recommendations of the report of the Poor Law Commission. It did exactly what MPs and the Lords wanted: it aimed to reduce the cost of providing for the poor.
• There was little opposition to the act. This was because the Tories were seduced by utilitarian arguments and were a minority in government. In addition, even radicals such as William Cobbett who argued the poor had a right to relief, were barely listened to. Most who argued against the bill weren't concerned with its underpinning philosophy, they were more worried about the centralisation involved.
• The purpose of the act was to radically reform the system of poor relief in England and Wales, making it cost effective and efficient. It laid down that:

  • a central authority should supervise the implementation and regulate the administration of the Poor Law
  • parishes were to be grouped together to form Poor Law unions
  • each Poor Law union was to establish a workhouse in which inmates would live in conditions that were worse than those of the poorest independent labourer
  • outdoor relief for the able-bodied poor was to be discouraged, but not abolished
• However, the actual programme of reform was not laid down by parliament. Parliament simply set down the administrative arrangements through which the 3 commissioners were to implement and interpret the act.
• A central Poor Law Commission was established to administer the Poor Law Amendment Act throughout the country. There were 3 commissioners:

  • Thomas Frankland Lewis - a Tory MP who was actively involved with the Sturges-Bourne's select committee 1817-18
  • George Nicholls - a radical overseer in Nottingham under the old Poor Law
  • John Shaw-Lefevre - a lawyer who had been a Whig MP and under-secretary of state for war
  • Edwin Chadwick was made the secretary to the commission
• The commission was independent of parliament. This independence meant the commission had no spokesman in parliament to defend it against the criticisms by MPs. Outside of parliament, in the press, books and journals, songs and broadsides, the commissioners were lampooned, and in the parishes, commissioners and assistant commissioners were universally hated.
• The commission had a powerful constitutional position, but it didn't have the direct power many assumed it did. The commissioners could issue directives, draw up regulations and monitor their implementation, but there was no mechanism to make parishes do what they were told. Although the commission could: veto appointments they thought unsuitable, refuse to allow certain types of building, set dietaries for workhouses, centralise accounting procedures and make life difficult for opposing parishes.
• The Poor Law Commission policy, after 1834, had 2 priorities:

  • the transfer of out-of-work and underemployed workers in rural areas to urban areas where employment was plentiful
  • the protection of urban ratepayers from a sudden surge of demand from rural migrants prior to their obtaining regular employment
• Priority 1: A programme of workhouse construction -

  The programme of reducing able-bodied pauperism by building deterrent workhouses carried with it the assumption that outdoor relief would stop. Commissioners were only able to act fairly slowly as amalgamating unions and building or adapting workhouses took time.
• Priority 1: A programme of workhouse construction -

  • Throughout the 1830s, the commission began issuing orders to specific unions in the rural south of England, prohibiting outdoor relief to the able-bodied poor.
  • This was extended to the rural north of England in 1842.
  • The 1844 General Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order applied to all unions and forbade outdoor relief to the able-bodied poor.
• Priority 1: A programme of workhouse construction -

  However, outdoor relief did continue and was the most common form of relief given to paupers, especially in industrial northern towns. These towns were subject to swings of cyclical unemployment meaning it was a cheaper alternative to building huge workhouses that would remain half empty for most of the working year.
• Priority 2: The Settlement Laws -

  In the mid 19th century, the Settlement Laws were seen as necessary if the cost of maintaining paupers was to be fairly spread between urban and rural parishes. By 1840, around 40000 paupers had been removed from the parishes in which they were living and claiming relief, back to their parishes of settlement, by virtue of birth or marriage. This was a costly process.
• As a young barrister, Edwin Chadwick was first appointed to the Royal Commission as an assistant commissioner, where his output as an investigator and report writer led to his rapid promotion to commissioner. He wrote the second part of the commission, setting out the remedial measures that had to be taken, which was driven by the principle of less eligibility.
• Although Chadwick didn't have the responsibility of drafting the parliamentary bill, he wrote his 'Notes for the Heads of a Bill', which set out his recommendations of what should be included in the bill, which was circulated to cabinet ministers and his fellow commissioners. Two recommendations included within his notes and not in the report included: local control should be vested in elected boards of guardians and magistrates could become ex officio Poor Law guardians. Both these recommendations were implemented.
• However, even though Chadwick had been the driving force behind both the report and the Act, he was instead made secretary to the commission. He was bitterly disappointed and clashed frequently with the commissioners. He issued hundreds of notes, circulars, regulations and replies to queries from parishes to impose Utilitarianism on the operation of the new Poor Law.