ABSTRACT
In considering how a legal right was marginalised, abolished and forgotten, this work began by reconstructing those jurisprudential theories that formed one pre-condition for those proto-modernist legal elements contained within the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. What follows here is an historical reconstruction of the sources of those administrative reforms set out in the terms of the Act, drawn from a long history of publications and from parliamentary investigation introduced earlier. The final section of the chapter reconstructs how the poor responded to the implementation of the new poor law, factoring in the loss of legal rights. Significantly, despite a history of criticism, settlement was not repealed in 1834 neither was the legal authority of the 1601 Act and the poor continued to be relieved. Poynter and Himmelfarb have reconstructed the reform debate, Himmelfarb taking a stand in favour of the reformers against the ‘common law’ position as reactionary and paternalist.1 Poynter reconstructs the breadth of reform literature and indicates its basis in theories of political economy, religion, humanism, jurisprudence, charity and theories of social control. It must be underlined, however, that the most powerful and immediate influences upon reform were the vast increase in the cost of poor relief combined with escalating manifestations of discontent by labourers. Consequently, in responding to contemporary economic problems, discussions by political economists were divorced from a consideration of rights. That considerable history of the legal rights of the poor reconstructed within this work, both in customary and common law, was not a focus of the debate and opponents of reform could not produce a persuasive argument sufficient to counter contemporary accusations of ‘antiquated’ paternalism.
