From Allowances to Less Eligibility: Speenhamland and the Reconfiguration of Entitlement in 1834

Why did the abolition of wage supplements in 1834 lead to a durable reorganization of poor re-lief, even though subsequent research has questioned the empirical diagnosis on which the reform was based? Revisiting the Speenhamland allowance practices (1795–1834) and the New Poor Law, this paper argues that the significance of the reform lies less in correcting economic mal-function than in redefining the principles of entitlement. Drawing on revisionist economic history, the study shows that claims of systematic wage depres-sion, labor demoralization, and demographic distortion are not robustly supported by parish-level evidence. Allowances functioned primarily as locally administered forms of income smoothing under conditions of price volatility and labor-market strain. The reform of 1834 is interpreted as a reconfiguration of entitlement in which poverty was in-creasingly framed as a matter of conduct rather than subsistence risk. Through the codification of less eligibility and the workhouse test, access to relief became structured around deterrence and behavioral assessment. This institutional shift established a conditional entitlement logic whose structural features continue to shape modern welfare arrangements.