ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the unique set of demographic and social characteristics underpinned a distinctive metropolitan geography of pauperism. Geographical differences between parishes were important in explaining the complexities of metropolitan pauperism; however, these differences and the emerging structural difficulties of the poor law were accentuated by the financial panic of 1825. Expenditure on relief rose as economic fortunes fell, though the impact was not felt equally throughout the city. One of the main problems that London parishes experienced in relation to casual and outdoor relief was how to deal with the fragmentation of jurisdictions and rapid population turnover. Parishes faced with constraints on the capacity of the workhouse could turn to other forms of institutional provision. In London, economies of scale arising from the concentration of relatively large numbers of the poor allowed specialist institutions catering for specific types of paupers and run by private contractors to operate.
