The Old Poor Law Reconsidered

Abstract

WHAT, then, remains of the concepts made famous by the 1832 Commission? It should be stressed that it is far too early to assume that the Commissioners were always and everywhere wrong in their criticisms of the old system. The complex social fabric of England and Wales at that period would make any such assumption most undesirable. Moreover, an unsound hypothesis can still produce fruitful or factually valuable results, and the 1832 survey was a remarkable achievement of its kind. As Dr. Blaug’s researches show, the potentialities of the Commission’s material are very great, and the latter still has considerable uses to the economic, social and local historian. Nor should we make the mistake of unduly blaming the leading personalities of the Poor Law Commission for attitudes which were widespread at that time, and which, in somewhat transmuted form, have marked social and class relationships ever since. The supposedly idle and shiftless pauper of 1832, multiplying social burdens in immobility and vice, has his modern counterpart — in the minds of many — in the Pakistani immigrant allegedly living on Public Assistance and British welfare services.