ABSTRACT
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the social disruption caused by rapid industrialisation and by the long-drawn-out wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France placed intolerable strains upon the old parochial system of poor relief. The recurrent London crises of the 1860s and the shorter but more severe Lancashire crisis of 18624 focused attention on the increasing costs of, and applications for, outdoor relief. Indiscriminate giving by private charitable agencies and individuals seemed to be more likely to create pauperism and demoralisation amongst the poor than did the inadequacies of the Boards of Guardians. The model of Poor Law practice which emerged in the 1860s exercised a powerful influence over the thinking of social reformers in the second half of the nineteenth century. By 1876, about a third of Poor Law Unions in England and Wales were operating boarding-out systems.
