Introduction

Until late Elizabethan times, the poor - tinkers, hawkers, evicted tenants, discharged soldiers, the blind, the lame - were often treated in much the same way as 'arrant rogues and vagabonds'. Under the poor law legislation of 1598 and 1601 the poor of each parish was to be relieved (given doles of money, or paid in kind - food, fuel, clothes etc.) by the parish vestry. The system established in 1601 lasted until the controversial Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, when the parishes of England and Wales were grouped together to form poor law unions. (Scotland and Ireland were governed by separate legislation.)

Earl Grey's 1832 government was concerned about the amount being spent on relieving poverty. The government's solution: to force the poor into residential workhouses. There was a huge building programme of workhouses, which were designed to be 'less comfortable' than the living conditions enjoyed by the poorest labourer in the land. Families were divided: men, women and children were housed in separate blocks. Paupers often had to endure a prison-like regime, under the watchful eye of poor law guardians. The act of 1834 is often considered a harsh piece of social legislation driven by concerns over recent (1830-31) agricultural disturbances see The 'Swing' Riots: Chapter 3: Popular protest and by increasing levels of poor relief expenditure. The poor law guardians were abolished in 1929. But the last remnants of the poor law were only displaced in 1948 by the welfare provisions of the post-war Labour government.

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For the record:

Poster for the Church of England Central Society for Providing Homes for Waifs and Strays 1892. Catalogue reference: COPY 1/106 pt2 f136

The range of topics covered in the poor law union records is incredibly diverse and is a recommended source for any piece of local social and economic research. Our records are particularly useful in tracing the day to day problems faced by the poor law guardians as they struggled to implement government policy relating to the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act in the localities. Each workhouse was, to varying degrees, run differently. The guardians of a rural union workhouse would face very different problems from a union in an urban and industrial area. An essential series of records for local historians can be found in MH 12.

For example you can find records which show the 'workhouse rules' which were developed to regulate every aspect of the pauper's life:

Other records can provide information such as:

In many respects these records supplement the local material which is usually kept at the appropriate county record office. Indeed, where the local records have not survived, we may hold the best material for local historians. Some of the appropriate records in this series relating to the early 1900s were unfortunately lost in the Blitz.

It is possible to search for poor law union, workhouse and vestry records held elsewhere by looking in the indexes of the National Register of Archives.

There is also much material, often easily searched by place name, published in Parliamentary Papers.

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