Join Vic and her friends as they visit the National Archives in this activity pack for young children.

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Students and teachers can discover the voices of the poor who wrote to the Poor Law Commission and explore how they understood, experienced and exercised agency under the New Poor Law from 1834. 

This collection of documents represents a small sample of the letters that have been identified and transcribed as part of ‘In Their Own Write’, an Arts Humanities Research Council funded project, 2018 to 2021, which uses letters from paupers and other poor people, and other material such as petitions, sworn statements and advocate letters written on behalf of paupers to investigate the lives of the poor between 1834 and 1900. It is run jointly by The National Archives and the Department of History at the University of Leicester. 

The majority of work focuses on the thousands of volumes of poor law correspondence (MH12) held by The National Archives much of which has been little used by historians. 

Dr Peter Jones, Research Assistant, ‘In Their Own Write: Contesting the New Poor Law, 1834-1900’, The University of Leicester.  

The question of what to do with the poorest members of society is one that has exercised human communities for as long as those communities have existed. All the major religions teach compassion and encourage charity towards the poor; but by the early-modern period in Europe, population increase and a gradual move towards urbanisation, meant that local piecemeal responses were no longer sufficient to contain the growing problem of poverty. In England and Wales, the response was to establish a set of national regulations in the 16th and 17th centuries that required local communities to look after their own poor (the ‘Old Poor Law’). The so-called ‘deserving poor’ (that is, the elderly, widows, orphans, the sick and disabled) were given ‘relief’ in money or goods. Those who were thought to be less deserving – in particular, the ‘able-bodied’ poor who, it was thought, should be able to look after themselves – were put to work for their relief. This system of welfare was administered at the level of the parish (which commonly overlapped with a village or township) and it continued in place until the early-19th century. 

By the 1830s, however, as the population rocketed and urban poverty became endemic, the rising cost of relief alarmed large ratepayers and those who governed England and Wales. The response of the authorities was (as it very often is) to drive down costs by deterring people from seeking relief in the first place. In 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed, ushering in the New Poor Law which, in theory at least, made the welfare landscape a much less hospitable place. Poor relief would now be administered by local boards of guardians, who oversaw whole groups of parishes (known as ‘unions’), and instead of money and food being given to paupers in their own homes unions were given the right to place their poor in local workhouses; large prison-like institutions where families were separated and individuals were required to perform hard labour for meagre rations. Unsurprisingly, the new system, and particularly the workhouse, was hated by many paupers. Not all paupers were sent to the workhouse (most were not), however most of the so-called ‘deserving poor’ who were given relief in their own homes often felt that it was completely inadequate for their needs. 

The Central Authorities and Pauper Letters 

Sometimes, paupers felt so aggrieved at their treatment that they wrote to the central poor law authorities in London to complain. The Poor Law Commission was set up in 1834 to ensure that relief was administered properly under the New Poor Law. Its main focus was on ensuring consistency of practice in unions across England and Wales, but paupers soon realised that if they had a complaint about ill-treatment or the rules being broken by local officials then the Commission ought to do something about it. Many such complaints were received between 1834 and 1900 by the Commission and the bodies that succeeded it (the Poor Law Board in 1847, and the Local Government Board in 1871), and these were bound up volumes along with all the other correspondence received by the Commissioners. These volumes are now held at The National Archives, and there are more than 16,000 of them in total! 

As you will see from the letters in this sample, paupers complained about all kinds of things; but there are some broad themes which it is useful to tease out. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most common complaints were about the workhouse. In particular, paupers felt that they should not have to go there in the first place when their only ‘crime’ was poverty. Many in our sample complain that the relief they were given in their own homes was either inadequate, or was reduced or stopped altogether, so that their only alternative was to become an inmate in the ‘house’. Others complained bitterly about the treatment they received once there, whether it was the terrible food, the appalling living conditions or the arduous work. A large proportion of the letters come from those who were traditionally considered as the ‘deserving poor’: the elderly, young widows with children, and the sick or disabled, who felt that they deserved different treatment from the able-bodied, or ‘idle’ poor. 

Sometimes, the letters reveal really terrible treatment, beatings or abuse by the officials and other paupers; and taken together it is easy to conclude (as many historians have done) that the New Poor Law really was an inhuman and cruel system. But it is important to remember that these letters are a ‘self-selecting’ sample; that is, paupers rarely wrote to say what a fine time they were having in the workhouse, and how generous the master and matron were (although there are one or two examples of more positive letters, even here)! But despite this note of caution, the one thing that comes through loud and clear in these letters is the voice of the paupers themselves, and the multitude of fascinating stories they had to tell. 

Discover the Dissolution is a national enrichment project run by The National Archives for schools and history groups. The aim is to allow students of all ages to practice their research skills.

Groups are encouraged to use the Discover the Dissolution resources to locate a local monastery or nunnery that was involved in the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1530s. They can then use the internet, libraries, local archives or other resources available to them to explore the story of the site.

Once the research is complete, students can present their findings to others in the school and submit their work to the Discover the Dissolution Schools Map to be published online and made available for other students to use as an educational resource.

You can find the main Discover the Dissolution Resource here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/eabbb11e62b941c1bf1474a83b5ce8a1