The Provincial Crusade: Results and Reactions

Abstract

Focus now centres on a number of provincial Poor Law unions which either had the reputation of applying strict anti-outdoor relief policies during the LGB crusade or where such strictures might reasonably have been expected because of the establishment of a nearby Charity Organisation Society. When viewed in the context of the national pattern and accepting the law of averages, other unions must have been unusually lenient in dispensing out-relief. The majority of unions which, after acquiescence in the early years, tended to cock a snook at the stricter out-relief doctrines were rarely featured in LGB Annual Reports or at Poor Law Conferences, other than to provide objects of derisory criticism. In contrast, to quote the Webbs, throughout the 1870s and 1880s the few ‘bright and shining examples of “orthodox Poor Law policy” were made the subject of perpetual laudation; they were advertised in the publications of the LGB, and quoted endlessly by Poor Law Inspectors; they were studied at COS meetings and discussed at Poor Law Conferences, without, in the result, finding imitators among the 600 other Boards of Guardians…¹ The general reduction of out-relief paupers in the early years of the crusade indicates that over this period the Webbs’ estimate of 600 non-conforming unions was an exaggeration.