ABSTRACT
The Poor Law, and the problems to which it gave rise in the first half of the nineteenth century, have a peculiar importance in the formation of social policy for several reasons. If before 1830 the parish priest occupied a place in three hierarchies – the spiritual, the governmental and the social – mid nineteenth-century conditions would pose an important problem. The unique importance of the parson’s spiritual functions were going to be emphasized as, in general, they had not been emphasized in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The provision of money for labour-providing schemes meant the taxation of productive activities for activities which were essentially artificial and unproductive, and that in the long run could do no one any good. The principle of ‘less eligibility’ calls up a picture of dreary workhouse wards, of meals of watery gruel, of brutal workhouse masters and callous woman superintendents, and of human beings treated without any regard for human dignity.
