IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ehsrev/v68y2015i3p769-805.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An irrevocable shift: detailing the dynamics of rural poverty in southern England, 1762–1834: a case study

Author

Listed:
  • Henry French

Abstract

type="main"> Nearly every conceivable aspect of the old poor law in England appears to have been studied. Yet some fundamental questions about parish-level provisioning remain hard to answer. These include the amount that people received from the parish, from all sources, each week; how the balance between types of payments shifted over the period, and (correspondingly) within the individual life-course; the range of services or supplements that such individuals received, from the parish, over the course of their lives; and how this spectrum of relief adjusted to the massive macro-level changes that we know occurred in the poor relief system between the 1760s and 1834. This study attempts to answer these questions in new depth, by employing a dataset that encompasses all payments to named individuals within the Essex parish of Terling between 1762 and 1834, totalling 143,801 payments to 1,508 recipients. Analysis of this dataset provides new insights into the size, scope, changes, and significance of poor relief in labouring families' lives in southern England in this period.

Suggested Citation

  • Henry French, 2015. "An irrevocable shift: detailing the dynamics of rural poverty in southern England, 1762–1834: a case study," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(3), pages 769-805, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ehsrev:v:68:y:2015:i:3:p:769-805
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ehr.12077
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alysa Levene, 2010. "Parish apprenticeship and the old poor law in London," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 63(4), pages 915-941, November.
    2. Horrell, Sara & Humphries, Jane, 1992. "Old Questions, New Data, and Alternative Perspectives: Families' Living Standards in the Industrial Revolution," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(4), pages 849-880, December.
    3. Blaug, Mark, 1963. "The Myth of the Old Poor Law and the Making of the New," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(2), pages 151-184, June.
    4. Boyer,George R., 1990. "An Economic History of the English Poor Law, 1750–1850," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521364799.
    5. Blaug, Mark, 1964. "The Poor Law Report Reexamined," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(2), pages 229-245, June.
    6. Humphries,Jane, 2010. "Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521847568.
    7. Thomas Nutt, 2010. "Illegitimacy, paternal financial responsibility, and the 1834 Poor Law Commission Report: the myth of the old poor law and the making of the new," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 63(2), pages 335-361, May.
    8. Feinstein, Charles H., 1998. "Pessimism Perpetuated: Real Wages and the Standard of Living in Britain during and after the Industrial Revolution," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 58(3), pages 625-658, September.
    9. Samantha Williams, 2005. "Poor relief, labourers’ households and living standards in rural England c.1770–1834: a Bedfordshire case study," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 58(3), pages 485-519, August.
    10. D. A. Baugh, 1975. "The Cost of Poor Relief in South-East England, 1790–1834′," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 28(1), pages 50-68, February.
    11. Sara Horrell & Jane Humphries, 1995. "Women's labour force participation and the transition to the male-breadwinner family, 1790-1865," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 48(1), pages 89-117, February.
    12. Peter H. Lindert & Jeffrey G. Williamson, 1983. "English Workers’Living Standards During the Industrial Revolution: A New Look," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 36(1), pages 1-25, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thijs Lambrecht & Anne Winter, 2018. "An old poor law on the Continent? Agrarian capitalism, poor taxes, and village conflict in eighteenth‐century coastal Flanders," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 71(4), pages 1173-1198, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sara Horrell & Jane Humphries & Jacob Weisdorf, 2022. "Beyond the male breadwinner: Life‐cycle living standards of intact and disrupted English working families, 1260–1850," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 75(2), pages 530-560, May.
    2. Gazeley, Ian & Verdon, Nicola, 2014. "The first poverty line? Davies' and Eden's investigation of rural poverty in the late 18th-century England," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 94-108.
    3. Jane Humphries, 2013. "The lure of aggregates and the pitfalls of the patriarchal perspective: a critique of the high wage economy interpretation of the British industrial revolution," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 66(3), pages 693-714, August.
    4. Sara Horrell & Jane Humphries & Jacob Weisdorf, 2019. "Working for a Living? Women and Children’s Labour Inputs in England, 1260-1850," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _172, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    5. James Foreman‐Peck & Peng Zhou, 2018. "Late marriage as a contributor to the industrial revolution in England," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 71(4), pages 1073-1099, November.
    6. James Foreman-Peck & Peng Zhou, 2021. "Fertility versus productivity: a model of growth with evolutionary equilibria," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(3), pages 1073-1104, July.
    7. Robert C. Allen, 2015. "The high wage economy and the industrial revolution: a restatement," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(1), pages 1-22, February.
    8. Sara Horrell & Jane Humphries & Ken Sneath, 2015. "Consumption conundrums unravelled," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(3), pages 830-857, August.
    9. Horrell, Sara & Humphries, Jane & Weisdorf, Jacob, 2020. "Life-cycle living standards of intact and disrupted English working families, 1260-1850," Economic History Working Papers 106986, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    10. Robert Allen & Robert C. Allen, 2007. "Engel`s Pause: A Pessimist`s Guide to the British Industrial Revolution," Economics Series Working Papers 315, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    11. Joyce Burnette, 2004. "The wages and employment of female day‐labourers in English agriculture, 1740–1850," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 57(4), pages 664-690, November.
    12. Steven Pressman, 2014. "Keynes, Family allowances and Keynesian economic policy," LIS Working papers 616, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    13. Horrell, Sara & Humphries, Jane & Voth, Hans-Joachim, 2001. "Destined for Deprivation: Human Capital Formation and Intergenerational Poverty in Nineteenth-Century England," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 339-365, July.
    14. Horrell, Sara & Humphries, Jane & Sneath, Ken, 2015. "Consumption conundrums unravelled," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 101311, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Nina Boberg-Fazlić & Paul Sharp, 2018. "North and south: long-run social mobility in England and attitudes toward welfare," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 12(2), pages 251-276, May.
    16. Samantha Williams, 2005. "Poor relief, labourers’ households and living standards in rural England c.1770–1834: a Bedfordshire case study," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 58(3), pages 485-519, August.
    17. Gregory Clark & Marianne E. Page, 2019. "Welfare reform, 1834: Did the New Poor Law in England produce significant economic gains?," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 13(2), pages 221-244, May.
    18. Sara Horrell & Jane Humphries, 2018. "Children’s work and Wages, 1270-1860," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _163, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    19. George R. Boyer, 1998. "The Historical Background of the Communist Manifesto," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 151-174, Fall.
    20. Robert C. Allen, 2005. "Capital Accumulation, Technological Change, and the Distribution of Income during the British Industrial Revolution," Economics Series Working Papers 239, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ehsrev:v:68:y:2015:i:3:p:769-805. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ehsukea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.