ABSTRACT
By the turn of the nineteenth century, the socially disruptive effects of indus-trialisation and urbanisation, combined with the economic effects of the long Napoleonic War, posed severe challenges for the poor law. It was widely believed that the poor law was over-generous, disrupted the labour market and was an intolerable burden on property owners. The imposition of the new poor law was greeted with mass opposition to what soon came to be called ‘Bastilles’, and the new regime took several years to be established in some northern and midland industrial cities. Charities received a boost when, in 1869, the president of the Poor Law Board, George Goschen, issued a minute which created a new dichotomy within poor relief. Some historians have viewed the 1908 pensions as essentially no more than poor law reform, yet to contemporaries, the distinction was clear.
