The 1832 Royal Commission
The Royal Commission, under the chairmanship of the Bishop of London, conducted a detailed survey of the state of poor law administration and prepared a report. This was largely the work of two of the Commissioners, Nassau Senior and Edwin Chadwick. The report took the view that poverty was essentially caused the indigence of individuals rather than economic and social conditions. Thus, the pauper claimed relief regardless of his merits: large families got most, which encouraged improvident marriages; women claimed relief for bastards, which encouraged immorality; labourers had no incentive to work; employers kept wages artificially low as workers subsidized from the poor rate.
The Royal Commission published its report in March, 1834, and made a series of 22 recommendations which were to form the basis of the new legislation that followed in the same year. Its main legislative proposal was that:
In addition, it recommended:
- The grouping of parishes for the purposes of operating a workhouse
- That workhouse conditions should be 'less eligible' (less desirable) than those of an independent labourer of the lowest class
- The appointment of a central body to administer the new system
The report also revived the workhouse test — the belief that the deserving and the undeserving poor could be distinguished by a simple test: anyone prepared to accept relief in the repellent workhouse must be lacking the moral determination to survive outside it.
The subsequent 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act led to a major overhaul of how poor rleief was administered. The Act and its later revisions became known as the New Poor Law.
.Bibliography
- Slack, Paul. The English Poor Law, 1531-1782, 1990, CUP.
- Webb, Sidney and Beatrice English Poor Law History, 1927, Longmans, Green & Co., London.
- Webb, Sidney and Beatrice English Poor Law Policy, 1910, Longmans, Green & Co., London.
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