Paying for the sick poor: financing medicine under the Victorian Poor Law – the case of the Whitechapel Union, 1850–1900

Historians of the New Poor Law have focused on the plight of those admitted to the workhouse, to confirm or modify Dickensian images, or explained development in terms of changing conceptions of poverty and social policy.1 Although there has been a growing emphasis on local experiences and on the impact of the Poor Law on the economy, analysis has marginalised the financial underpinning of the very institution it seeks to explain.2 Monetary concerns were central to the new Poor Law, but studies of financial policy focus on expenditure or the near collapse of the poorer unions in London’s East End in the 1860s. Income is only considered in the context of the poor rate or in relation to demands for equalisation.3