Resisting the Poor Law

Resistance to alterations in the provision of poor relief was not uncommon in the early nineteenth century and grievances about the operation of the poor laws formed a significant feature of disturbances in southern England between 1830 and 1832. Whatever its demoralising character, the old poor law had at least provided flexible arrangements to deal with poverty and had come to be regarded by many labourers as their right in times of hardship. It was not surprising that the introduction and especially the implementation of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 provoked widespread hostility and opposition[1]. This section is divided into three parts: discussion of rural and then urban opposition and finally a documentary exercise in how opposition has been interpreted.

Rural opposition

The Act was intended to solve the problem of rising poor rates and the maladministration of existing workhouses by an application of market principles. Making unlawful any relief to able-bodied people outside the workhouse was intended to discourage all but the genuinely needy. The Act also grouped hitherto independent parishes into poor law unions governed by an elected board of guardians under the supervision of three centrally appointed Poor Law Commissioners. The Act had a relatively easy passage through Parliament but even so there was some opposition. William Cobbett saw it, in his pamphlet The Legacy to Labourers, as an attack on the 'right' to relief and an assault on the traditional 'social compact' between the propertied and the poor. Other saw it as an attack on the independence of local government. Working class radicals saw it as part of the attack on the livelihood of the poor by a penny-pinching government.

• The first reaction to the implementation of the Act came in agricultural areas. From 1835 there were numerous disturbances in East Anglia and the southern counties, a situation aggravated by a hard winter that forced many unemployed labourers to apply for relief.
• Announcements of the implementation of the Act were greeted with hostility. In May 1835 a crowd assembled at Ampthill demanding 'Blood or bread', 'All money' and 'No bread' and was dispersed only after the Riot Act was read.
• In other places labourers occupied the workhouses demanding their customary rights.
• Attempts to separate male and female paupers under the new regulations were seen as part of a Malthusian plot to stop the poor from breeding; this was elaborated by rumours that workhouse food was laced with an anti-fertility substance or even poisoned.
• The most serious disturbances took place in Suffolk. Anglican clergymen openly opposed to the new law and strong local feeling was more evident than in many other parts of the country.

The disturbances in southern England demonstrated the sensitivity of the population to changes in customary arrangements for poor relief. Reactions varied from locality to locality but there was little serious violence other than some property being damaged and a few people assaulted. There was often considerable local sympathy for the rioters and many gentry and parsons petitioned against the Act. However, the disturbances did little to disturb the implementation of the Act and by mid 1836 the new system was operating across the agricultural south. The anti-poor law movement never gained the support and partial success it was to achieve when the system was applied to the North.

Urban opposition: the North

Initially the Act was received favourably by the powerful provincial northern press because it was felt to be irrelevant to the industrial areas where poor rates were much lower than in the south and parochial relief had often already been organised. Implementation in the north from the end of 1836 aroused serious and sometimes violent opposition, much of it organised by Tory radicals such as Michael Sadler and Richard Oastler. These middle class reformers, already prominent in campaigning for factory reform, provided an organisation against the new Act that the resistance in the south had not had.

1. The campaign orchestrated by the anti-poor law movement stressed the Christian duty of the rich to assist the poor and accepted Cobbett's argument that the Act denied basic rights.
2. The timing of implementation in the north was also unfortunate and occurred just at the time that trade depression was beginning to affect many of the textile districts, greatly adding to the fears of the manufacturing population, especially the increasingly vulnerable handloom workers.
3. The arrival of the commissioners often led to violence though the leaders of the movement preferred to maintain control over their followers and direct the campaign in a peaceful direction without causing outright violence. This was not always possible. In June 1837 a crowd of people wrecked the workhouse in Huddersfield. This led to implementation being put off until the following year.
4. By the end of 1838 the violent phase of resistance had died down as the unions were gradually established and the poor law commissioners made concessions that allowed boards of guardians to give relief in Lancashire and Yorkshire on the traditional basis of the old poor law if the situation required it. By 1839 the campaign began to disintegrate as working class resentment was appeased by the continued use of outdoor relief and rivalries between middle class and working class elements of the movement began to come to the fore. Increasingly Chartism attracted the more radical supporters of the agitation.

The anti-poor law movement in the North represented a temporary alliance between working and middle classes against what was widely regarded as an unjust and intrusive measure; in a sense it was also a local reaction against centralisation that cut across class lines. Eventually differences in emphasis and ideas between Tory radicals, who emphasised the value of paternalism, and the emerging Chartist leaders, with their belief in universal suffrage, ruptured the alliance.

Opposition to the 1834 Act did little to delay its implementation in southern England but in the north it was more effective. It delayed effective implementation until 1838 and even then local concessions meant that outdoor relief still continued to play an important role. The northern campaign demonstrated that exerting pressure through press, pamphlets and meetings was far more influential that the 'language of menace'. This stands in contrast to the more traditional, less organised and less effective reactions in the agricultural areas.

Anti-poor law agitation: some sources

Source 1: William Cobbett

This bill will totally abrogate all the local government of the kingdom: the gentlemen and the magistrates will be totally divested of all power, tending to uphold their character, and to secure their property, and their personal safety in the country. I have talked to twenty gentlemen, farmers and attorneys; every man of them has said: “If this bill be attempted to be put into execution, there will be a revolution in England”; and I am so firmly persuaded of the soundness of their opinion, that I should look upon such result as something inevitable.

Weekly Political Register, 3 May 1834

Source2: Account from W.J. Gilbert from Devon

The leaders of the opposition are to be found amongst the constant overseers (gentlemen accustomed to accept the office for £5 a year, and quit it with a well-furnished purse); the little shopkeeper, at whose house the poor were paid, and who received the amount for old debts and encouraged new, from which the pauper never got free; the beer-shop keeper, at whose house great part of the relief was expended; and the little farmer or the lime-kiln owner, whose influence at the vestry enabled him to pay one half hid labour from the parish funds, under the name of relief in aid of wages, or to speak correctly, relief in aid of vestrymen. Wherever disturbances have taken place, they have been traced to the instigation of some or one of these parties. In the north of the county, where there were some disturbances, we found that the poor people were acting under the grossest deception…

Poor Law Commission Second Annual Report, Appendix B, No. 9, 1836

Source 3: Reverend J.R. Stephens

The people were not going to stand this, and he would say, that sooner than wife and husband, and father and son, should be sundered and dungeoned, and fed on “skillee” – sooner than wife or daughter should wear the prison dress – sooner than that – Newcastle ought to be, and should be --- one blaze of fire, with only one way to put it out, and that with the blood of all who supported this abominable measure…

Extract from a speech January 1838 printed in R.G.Gammage History of the Chartist Movement, 1854, page 64.

Source 4: Richard Oastler

Christian Reader.

Be not alarmed at the sound of the Title. I can not bless that, which GOD and NATURE CURSE. The Bible being true, the Poor Law Amendment Act is false! The Bible containing the will of God, --- this accursed Act of Parliament embodies the will of Lucifer. It is the Sceptre of Belial, establishing its sway in the Land of Bibles!! DAMNATION; ETERNAL DAMNATION to the accursed Fiend!!

Richard Oastler Damnation, Eternal Damnation, 1837, frontispiece.

Source 5: John Knott

The 1834 Poor Law was a focus for popular discontent, rather than its sole cause. When the popular radicals of Bradford drew up A Petition to Parliament Against the New Poor Law Act in early 1835, they did not confine themselves to criticising the Act’s poor relief policy: they also mentioned the hardship and suffering caused by the use of steam power and machinery in factories, and of the failure of the 1832 Reform Act to extend the franchise to the labouring population…..Boom and depression punctuated their lives; they were frightened by the 1832 Anatomy Act and the introduction of the New Police; the 1832 Reform Act and the 1833 Factory Act fell well short of their demands; and now the 1834 Poor Law held out the spectre of lower wages and possible starvation. It was hard to escape the conclusion that all these things were part of an orchestrated attempt to grind the labouring population down even further.

John Knott Popular Opposition to the 1834 Poor Law, Croom Helm, 1986, page 247.

Source 6: Nicholas Edsall

The emergence of spontaneous resistance early in 1837 revived the opposition’s hopes, but not their realistic prospects. Only something approaching a national movement with effective representation in Parliament would have been sufficient to check let alone reverse the progress of the Poor Law Commissioners, and there was never the slightest chance of these conditions being fulfilled…..This did not mean, however, that the popular resistance movement was pointless or that its importance lay solely in its legacy to northern Chartism. It failed only in terms of its own over-ambitious goals; judged by any less exacting standards it was a success. Without popular resistance the administrative machinery of the New Poor Law would have been introduced long before the end of 1837…The most that the anti-Poor Law movement could realistically hope to achieve was what had been achieved by 1844, delay, a demonstration of the inadequacy of the Law, and some modification of its rigors. Anything more substantial would have to wait until a positive alternative to the New Poor Law was put forward, and that was not to happen for more than half a century.

Nicholas C. Edsall The Anti-Poor Law movement 1834-44, Manchester University Press, 1971, pp. 258, 262.

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[1] Opposition to the introduction of the 1834 Act can be found in N. Edsall The Anti-Poor Law Movement 1833-1844, Manchester U.P., 1971 and J. Knott Popular Opposition to the 1834 Poor Law, Croom Helm, 1985.

Operating the Poor Law

The Poor Law Amendment Act was implemented with speed and determination[1]. Nine assistant commissioners were appointed and this rose to sixteen within a year. Poor Law Unions were created with some rapidity. By the end of 1835 2,066 parishes had been incorporated into 112 Unions. In 1836 the score reached 365 Unions of 7,915 parishes and by December 1839 13,691 parishes out of some 15,000 had been incorporated into 583 Unions, leaving 799 mostly Local Act or Gilbert Act Unions outside. The new Poor Law territorial system was nearly as complete as it would be until 1871, although some restructuring of Unions occurred later.

• The resulting reduction in costs was considerable. By 1838 the Commissioners reported that the country had been relieved of some £2,300,000 'direct annual taxation'. Although after 1837 costs began to rise again, it was long before they reached the level of 1834. This was a success for those who aimed chiefly at reducing the poor rate.
• For those who propagated the 1834 Act as a measure of social rehabilitation it was also claimed as a success. By 1835 the Commissioners were claiming that it had already brought more prompt and adequate relief to the aged, inform and sick; was improving the education of pauper children. They were encouraging industry and moral habits in the able-bodied and thereby increasing their welfare and helping farmers to provide more employment and higher wages; was improving the relationship between rural employers and their workers. There was a decline in chargeable bastardy and better sexual morals in the countryside.

The Commission produced annual reports and the propaganda features of the 1834 Report reappeared regularly. It remains, with the help of regional studies, to see how far their claims were justified.

Implementation

The southern counties felt the impact of the new poor law even before the new Unions were created. Some places took the opportunity to reduce poor relief wholesale: the Uckfield Union in Sussex reduced its costs in one year from £16,643 to £8,733 of which only £5,675 was spent on the poor, the remainder being used to build a workhouse. Immediate reductions occurred in widely separated areas, even if not on the Uckfield scale. In East Yorkshire expenditure fell by 13 per cent in 1835 and by 27 per cent between 1834 and 1837. These examples hide the extent of opposition, the poor geographical construction of some Unions and the role of the landed classes:

1. The Commissioners wanted the Unions to consist of a circle of parishes round a market town and some Unions did conform to this pattern. But others did not. Most of Anglesey formed a large Union of 53 parishes while five parishes in the east of the island were attached to Caernarfon to which they were linked by ferry and 16 more were attached to Bangor across the Menai straits.
2. In some rural areas the Assistant Commissioners were compelled to obtain the support of the landed nobility by drawing the boundaries of Unions round their estates. In Northamptonshire the Union of Potterspuy encompassed the Duke of Grafton's interest, Aynho, the Cartwright's interest and Daventry, Charles Kingsley's interest. Anthony Brundage sees this as a process by which the great landowners created Unions to suit their own interests and so maintain their control over Poor Law administration. Peter Dunkley challenges this view. He observes that in urban areas and in some rural districts lacking great landowners, yeomen farmers or town shopkeepers and artisans secured control of the Boards of Guardians.

There was therefore considerable disparity in the size, shape, population and wealth of the Unions. Far from uniformity, the 1834 Act inaugurated a period of considerable variegation and experiment in local administrative areas.

Administrative services

The success of central policies was dependent on the character and efficiency of the Poor Law Union officials. The new government service included Clerks to the Boards, Relieving Officers, Workhouse Masters and Medical Officers. Some of these posts were part-time and the salaries varied according to the size and population of the Union. The officials in the front line were the Relieving Officer and Workhouse Master, sometimes one person holding two posts:

1. The Relieving Officer decided the fate of applicants for relief; whether they should be relieved at home, enjoy free medical treatment, be sent to task work or 'offered' the workhouse. He was also supposed to supervise outdoor relief.
2. The Workhouse Master ran the House. He served two masters, the Commission and the Board of Guardians, who not infrequently issued conflicting orders. He was required to fulfil the demands of Medical Officers for the supply and treatment of pauper patients. He needed to be of firm character and the Commissioners hoped that the Guardians would use their powers of patronage to appoint both Relieving Officers and Workhouse Masters from the police or military NCOs. Even so between 1835 and 1841 90 Relieving Officers were dismissed for theft, neglect of duty, misconduct or drunkenness.

The inevitable result of local patronage was the dismissal and then re-appointment of officials from the old poor law system.  imilar problems occurred in establishing professional Poor Law medical services. Initially the Commissioners encouraged Unions to offer part-time medical posts at the lowest tender but this led to many complaints of neglect and ill treatment before the Select Committee of 1837. After this Unions appointed qualified doctors at reasonable wages. From 1842, when the first General Medical Order was issued, attempts were made by the Commissioners to regulate the improvement the service. Unions were divided into medical districts each with its own Medical Officer. Workhouse infirmaries did provide indoor medical treatment and increased in number but they were often overcrowded and without adequate equipment or staff. They failed to improve until 1867, when the Metropolitan Poor Law Act, began the process of taking the London infirmaries out of Union control. In 1885 the Medical Relief Disqualification Act removed some of the stigma of pauperism from those who received only medical assistance from the poor law and the poor law authorities administered three-quarters of all hospital beds.

The workhouses

The well-regulated workhouse was the centrepiece of the new system[2]. Chadwick never intended that the deterrent workhouse test should apply to all. He intended to build new workhouses for orphans, the old and infirm while driving the able-bodied to provide for themselves and their families. Existing parish workhouses were to be included in the Unions for the separate treatment of classified paupers, the old, the young and the able-bodied. He hoped to extend this principle to the separate housing of lunatics, the blind and other special categories. This proved impractical and a single large Union workhouse was more efficient with the result that the 'deserving poor' were treated little different from the 'undeserving' able-bodied.

The Commissioners never intended that workhouses should be places of repression for the able-bodied. Paupers might be better fed and housed than in a labourer's cottage. But they would be put to heavy work and subjected to discipline including the denial of tobacco and alcohol and the separation of men from women. But the workhouses were to be intended as 'prisons without crime'.  Dietaries published by the Commissioners were not wholly insufficient and took notice of local eating habits but food was stodgy and monotonous.  Inmates had to wear workhouse uniform but the Commissioners resisted the attempts of some Guardians to clothe unmarried mothers in yellow as a badge of shame.

The picture of a stern and uniform regime in the workhouse -- a picture reinforced by radical writers called them 'Bastilles' -- belied the facts. Just how cruel the new poor law workhouses were is a question often obscured by propaganda and myth. They were often overcrowded but their character varied between areas. The character of the Master and Matron, the Union boards and the regional Assistant Poor Law Commissioner regulated the actual conduct of the workhouses. The new workhouses were often less crowded and insanitary than those built before 1834. The most resented deterrent effect of the new poor law, and the most obvious contrast with the old system, was the strict workhouse routine and the increasing stigma attached to pauper status.

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[1] D. Fraser (ed.) The New Poor Law in the Nineteenth Century, Macmillan, 1976 is a collection of excellent essays on the operation of the system.

[2] The workhouse is discussed in N. Longmate The Workhouse, Temple Smith, 1974, A. Digby Pauper Palaces, Routledge, 1978 and M. Crowther The Workhouse System 1834-1929: The History of an English Social Institution, Methuen, 1984. Felix Driver Power and pauperism: the workhouse system 1834-1884, CUP, 1993 is a useful recent study.

Reforming the Poor Law

The reform of the Poor Laws extended the growing chasm between the middle classes and the working population.  The poor law, as it existed in the early 1830s was not a system but, in Sidney Checkland's words, "an accretion", determined by statutes passed two centuries earlier in a different economic and social world, without central organisation and left to the discretion and vagaries of local parishes. Any attempt to reconstruct the poor law would have to be both bold and grand. The old poor law, constructed in the late sixteenth century, touched almost every aspect of domestic government. It provided the only general social securities and the only general regulation of labour. But its main characteristic was perhaps the almost compete lack of either central control or uniform policy. The old poor law also provided no clear answers to certain critical questions: was unemployment to be regarded as an offence or a misfortune? Was relief to be administered as a deterrent, as a dole or as a livelihood?  Economic distress in the mid 1790s led to the introduction of 'allowances on aid  of wages', generally though not accurately known as the 'Speenhamland system' after its first application in Berkshire in 1795.  What was initially perceived as a temporary expedient became a necessity for the labouring population in the depressed agrarian south after 1815.  Escalating costs, changing ideological perceptions and the 'Swing' riots of 1830 led to  an increasingly focused challenge to the existing system which was seen  as corrupting and lenient and for demands that more  rigour should be imposed on the poor[1].

Retention or reform?

Broadly speaking, opinion on the poor laws was divided into three: into those who wished to retain them, those who wished to modify them and those who wished to abolish them.

1. Humanitarians, sentimental radicals and paternalistic Tories belonged to the first group. They believed that there was a strong imperative of humane social responsibility in providing a basic measure of social security for the labouring poor and this seemed to them to outweigh its disadvantages.
2. The second group, who wished to modify the existing system, were to some degree motivated by the same sentiments but were alarmed by its escalating cost and sought to reduce it.
3. The third group was the most influential and powerful if the least numerous. Its guiding lights were political economy and Malthusianism. They believed that labourers must operate within the framework of the free market economy and 'social discipline'.

The latter had the better of the argument and by the early 1830s it had become  a commonplace wisdom among the middle classes and many of the aristocratic elite, especially the Whigs, that the poor laws encouraged indolence and vice.

A Royal Commission

The Royal Commission set up in 1832 to investigate the workings of the poor law was weighted towards 'progressive' opinion and quickly confirmed what the Commissioners had set out to prove. There may have been exaggeration of the abuses of the old poor law in the 1834 Poor Law Report. Mark Blaug has shown that its economic consequences were not understood by contemporaries or  by  later historians but there was no misunderstanding of purpose by those who framed the Poor Law Amendment Act, especially Edwin Chadwick its guiding force. Chadwick could not adopt any of the approaches argued by the three groups. He objected to the basic security conception of the humanitarians and to the notion of the 'parish in business'. He, however, differed from the Malthusians and political economists in two important respects:

• The idea of abandoning any attempt at control was deeply opposed to his bureaucratic temperament.
• He did not agree with the Malthusian proposition that population must inevitably outrun resources and asserted that there was no economic problem that greater and freer productivity could not solve. His primary objection to the old poor law was that they held down productivity by effectively pauperising the independent labourer and the laws of settlement immobilised a huge labour force that factories were crying out for. Chadwick wanted to 'de-pauperise' the able-bodied poor and drive them into the open labour market.

This could be achieved, Chadwick believed, by making it the labourer's interest to join the free labour market through the process of less eligibility. This would induce the majority of able-bodied paupers to refuse poor relief and provide capital for development and productivity.

The 1834 Act

The 1834 Act did not aim to deal with the nature or lack of provision, but only with excess. It had not been  politically practical to abolish public relief completely but the relief for those unwilling to unable to make provision for themselves was to be on terms less favourable than those obtained by  the  lowest paid  worker in employment [the principle of 'less eligibility']. This would eliminate abuse and fraud. Pauperism was a defect of character as there was always work available at the prevailing market price if it was sought strenuously enough.   Hard work and thrift would always ensure a level of competence, however modest the level at which individuals were working. These values, reflecting emergent middle class ideology, made a lasting impression on society for the rest of the century.  The sense of shame at the acceptance of public relief, the stigma of the workhouse and the dread of the pauper's funeral were central facets of the attitudes of the working population. They played a major role in the definition of 'respectability' that emerged among both the middle classes and labourers.  The 1834 Act embodied the ideology of the political economists but it could be presented by its opponents as an abuse of the poor: the poor law agitation before 1834 was aimed at amelioration but after 1834 the rigour of the system generated a counter-pressure in favour of easement[2].

The 1834 Act was important in three respects.

1. First, unlike factory or mine reform, the thinking behind the act was  rural rather than urban in basis. This led to the adoption of a programme  entirely unsuitable and unworkable in the industrial urban setting of northern England and accounted for the widespread opposition to its introduction after 1836.  A simple reversal from relaxation to rigour could succeed in the agrarian south to a considerable extent but matters were different in the industrial north.  There the new poor law was  politicised, first by the anti-poor law agitation and  then by the effects of the introduction of the electoral principle into poor  law  affairs.
2. Secondly, 1834 was the result of a generalised view of a whole range of problems and contained a moral rather than an environmental view of the poor and within this framework aimed at comprehensiveness and internal consistency.
3. Finally, it created the first effective element of centralised British  bureaucracy, intended to preside over a general social policy with central control and supervision with local administration.

The standardising intentions of national legislators  almost immediately came into conflict with the responses of local people who dealt with the realities of immediate situations. Localities could and did ignore or evade the instructions of the Commissioners.  Outdoor relief could not be withheld in seasonal employment like agriculture or during trade depressions in industrial centres. Checkland has argued that this "generated a kind of schizophrenia when placed alongside the concepts embodied in the governing Act  of  1834....[producing] concessions to common sense and common humanity."

Despite this there is no doubt that imposing 'rigour' resulted in much  hardship under the Act.   There are accounts of deficient diet, penal workhouses, families torn apart and the denial of dignity to the old.  The poor were abused because of  a combination  of indifference to their plight and social  zealotry because of the dogma enshrined in the enabling legislation.

The  Act was intended as an attack on a structural problem:  the conditions and behaviour of the labouring poor, especially in agrarian regions, the intention of reducing abuse, and to stop confusion between wages and relief. Can this be seen as an expression of middle class values grounded in the  ideology of political economy?   In simplistic terms it probably can  but the  relationship between political economy and poor law policy was  in practice far more complex. The uniformity of support by the middle classes for political economy can be easily over-exaggerated  and the nature of the trade cycle resulted  in their refusal  to implement the full rigour of the 1834 Act  in their industrial centres.

The Poor Law Report may have been over-optimistic in believing that uniformity of practice was possible but its principles  established  attitudes to poverty, which still have current significance. Ursula Henriques maintains that "In 1834 the new development was given a scope, a momentum and a character which  made  it irreversible.   The  change  was more immediate  and more complete in the south than in the north,  but it  was  lasting.... The Victorian workhouse  and  all  it  stood for.... was  perhaps the most permanent and binding institution of Victorian England.   Not until the working class had obtained the vote  and entirely different attitudes to poverty in general  and unemployment  in particular began to creep in at the turn of  the century did the principles of 1834 start to lose their grip."

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[1] The  debate over the poor laws is best approached through  J.R. Poynter Society  and  Pauperism:  English Ideas on  Poor Relief  1795-1834, Routledge, 1969  and R.G.Cowherd Political Economists and the English Poor Laws, Ohio U.P., 1978. G.R. Boyer An Economic History of the English Poor Law 1750-1850, CUP, 1990 is an important defence of Malthusian ideas. G. Himmelfarb The Idea of Poverty: England in  the Early Industrial Age,  Faber, 1984 is a challenging study.  J.D. Marshall The Old Poor Laws 1795-1834,  Macmillan, 2^nd. ed., 1985 is a brief  bibliographical essay.

[2] A. Brundage The Making of the New Poor Law 1833-39, Hutchinson,  1979, S.G. and E. Checkland (eds.) The Poor Law Report of 1834, Penguin, 1974, A. Digby The Poor Law in Nineteenth Century England and Wales,  The Historical Association, 1982, D. Fraser (ed.) The New Poor Law in the Nineteenth  Century, Macmillan, 1976, M.E. Rose  The  Relief  of Poverty 1834-1914, Macmillan, 2^nd ed., 1985 and P. Wood Poverty and the Workhouse in Victorian England, Alan Sutton, 1991 are the  most useful books on the introduction and operation of the 'new' poor  law.

The causes of poverty

The causes of poverty revealed by the early poverty surveys were as surprising and disturbing to most contemporaries as the calculations of its extent. The common belief was that poverty was caused by idleness, drinking and other personal shortcomings, a belief that was used to justify the stigmatic nature of the Poor Law. Booth found that only a quarter of his 'submerged one-tenth' was impoverished chiefly by drink, idleness and 'excessive children'. More than half were in poverty as a result of insufficient earnings and a further 10 per cent due to sickness and infirmity. The crucial point was that a very considerable part of poverty was not 'self-inflicted' but derived from low wages and other circumstances over which the poor had little control.

1. Low wage rates and unemployment must have both been serious causes of poverty earlier in the century when real wages were lower, when more men and women were engaged in declining domestic industries, in arable farming with its erratic labour requirements, and at casual work and occupations liable to be disrupted by poor weather, by uncertain transport or loss of power. In these circumstances slumps were accompanied by high food prices and fewer workers had made provisions against unemployment. However, the workings of the trade cycle was still a major source of poverty in 1900: school medical reports show significant variety in the height and health of school children that reflect the amount of work available in their vulnerable early years. The only unemployment figures historians have for the second half of the nineteenth century are those for trade unionists and they show a long-term average rate of between 4.5 and 5.5 per cent. These figures hide localised slumps such as the Lancashire 'cotton famine' during the American Civil War and that which impoverished Coventry when the silk trade was opened to foreign competition in 1860 and the effects of major strikes and lock-outs after 1890.
2. Old age was not as important a cause of poverty as low wages in 1900 but it was much more important than Booth and Rowntree at first suggested. Booth did not pay sufficient attention to families in which the chief wage earner was elderly and as a result ascribed only 10 per cent of poverty to illness or infirmity. Rowntree said that only 5 per cent of primary poverty resulted from old age or illness but he omitted the numerous elderly inmates of workhouses and poor law infirmaries. In 1890 well over a third of the working class population aged 65 or over were paupers and in 1906 almost half of all paupers were aged 60 and above. This is not surprising since state pensions were not paid until 1909.
3. Sickness was still among the important causes of poverty in 1900 and was probably even more important earlier in the century. Chadwick and early public health campaigners pointed to the enormous economic cost of preventable disease and emphasised how poor rates were swollen by the deaths of working men and by the vicious circle of sickness, loss of strength and reduced earnings that delayed economic recovery. Rising wages after 1850 reduced the amount of poverty directly attributable to ill health. This was aided by the increasing number of working men who joined friendly societies that provided sickness insurance.
4. Women were the chief sufferers from most of the causes of poverty. They were prominent by a ratio of two to one among elderly paupers largely because of their outliving their husbands. Widows and spinsters also suffered from wage rates that reflected the assumption that all females were dependent. Working class wives deserted by their husbands and the majority of unmarried mothers almost invariably became paupers. Women were also affected by hardships often hidden from investigators. The male breadwinner was almost always also the meat eater and there is ample evidence of the uneven distribution of income within the family that was to the detriment to the health of wives and children. Uncertain and fluctuating earnings made budgeting difficult and led too easily to dependence on pawnbrokers and retail credit to smooth economic fluctuations.
5. Drinking was the greatest single cause of secondary poverty in York in 1899 and an average working class family spent a sum equivalent to a third of a labourer's earnings on it. Heavy drinkers claimed that beer was necessary to their strength but drink was an extremely expensive way of obtaining nutrition. Some men could not easily avoid drinking. Wages were often paid in public houses. Drinking was obviously a consequence of poverty as well as one of its causes. The public house was often warm and cheerful and full of friends and was certainly more attractive that squalid and overcrowded homes. One sign of the importance of drink among the causes of working class poverty was extensive temperance activity[1]. The temperance movement has been characterised as overwhelmingly middle class concerned to impose bourgeois value on a degenerate workforce. However, the middle class had not monopoly of the Victorian virtues and temperance was as much a working class trait as drunkenness.
6. Large families were also shown by Booth and Rowntree to be less important among the causes of poverty than many had believed. Nevertheless they were important and, like drink, were indirectly responsible for some of the poverty ascribed to low wages and other causes. Rowntree calculated that almost a quarter of those in primary poverty in York would have escaped had they not been burdened by five or more children.

Low earnings, irregular employment, large families, sickness and old age were the root causes of poverty in the nineteenth century rather than intemperance or idleness. By 1900 new levels of poverty were discovered showing clearly that official statistics for pauperism revealed only the tip of the iceberg and that comfortable assumptions based on the belief that poverty would melt away in the warm climate of economic prosperity must be considerably modified.

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[1] Brian Harrison Drink and the Victorians, Faber, 1971, revised edition, Keele University Press, 1995 is a work of major importance on the 'drink question' between the 1830s and the 1870s. It should be supplemented with the study by W.R.Lambert Drink and Sobriety in Victorian Wales, University of Wales Press, 1984.

The Meaning of Poverty

Between 1830 and 1914 there were two period when state intervention in British social policy significantly increased. The first of these was in the 1830s and 1840s, and the second in the Edwardian years at the beginning of the twentieth century. Fundamental in the first burst of reforming activity was the New Poor Law of 1834, which centred round the workhouse system. It gave conditional welfare for a minority, with public assistance at the price of social stigma and loss of voting rights. Some Edwardian reforms still retained conditions on take-up, as in the first old-age pensions in 1908, where tests of means and character eligibility were reminiscent of the Poor Law. Three years later, in 1911, there was a radical departure in the national scheme for insurance against ill health and unemployment that conferred benefits as a result of contributions. It was still a selective scheme in that it was limited to a section of the male population and entirely left out dependent women and children.

The nineteenth century had inherited the attitude that such a state of affairs was both right and proper. Many contemporary writers regarded poverty as a necessary element in society, since only by feeling its pinch could the labouring poor be inspired to work. Thus it was not poverty by pauperism[1] or destitution that was regarded as a social problem. Many early Victorians adopted the attitude that combined fatalism, 'the poor ye have always with you' and moralism: destitution was the result of individual weakness of character. Fraser's Magazine in 1849 commented that: 'So far from rags and filth being the indications of poverty, they are in the large majority of cases, signs of gin drinking, carelessness and recklessness.'

Such cases if congregated together in large numbers seemed to constitute a social menace[2]. It was thinking of this sort that provided the impetus to poor law reform in 1834. Relief continued to be offered but only in the workhouse where the paupers would be regulated and made less comfortable than those of their fellows who chose to stay outside and fend for themselves -- this scheme was known as 'less-eligibility'. Those who were genuinely in dire need would accept the workhouse rather than starve. Those who were not in such straits would prefer to remain independent and thus avoid contracting the morally wasting disease of pauperism. The Poor Law of 1834 provided an important administrative model for future generations -- central policy-making and supervision, local administration -- but the workings of this model were often profoundly disappointing to the advocates of 'less-eligibility' as a final solution to the problem of pauperism. But the issue was not one of pauperism, the issue on which contemporaries focused, but poverty itself.

Poverty is a term that is notoriously difficult to define. In simple terms the failure to provide the basic necessities of life --- food, clothes and shelter -- results in a state of poverty[3]. Put diagrammatically

 

POVERTY OR LACK OF FOOD, CLOTHES,	OR SHELTER
POSSIBLY CAUSED BY	MAY LEAD TO
UNEMPLOYMENT [LAZINESS OR ECONOMIC RECESSION]	MISERY
OLD AGE	DEMORALISATION, RESENTMENT, APATHY
SICKNESS	VIOLENCE
LOW WAGES	CRIME
HIGH PRICES	SQUALOR

 

British society in the nineteenth century was poor by modern standards. The net national income per head at 1900 prices has been estimated as £18 in 1855 and £42 in 1900. Even the higher paid artisan might find himself at a time of depression unable to get work even if willing and anxious to do so. Most members of the working class experienced poverty at some period of their lives and, compared to the middle classes, their experience of poverty was likely to be a far more frequent, if not permanent one.

It was not until near the end of the nineteenth century that poverty was first measured in any systematic fashion and most of the evidence of the extent and causes of poverty is from around 1900. The number of paupers had long been known: they amounted to about 9 per cent of the population in the 1830s and fell to less than 3 per cent by 1900. But far more suffered from poverty than ever applied for workhouse relief. In 1883 Andrew Mearns in his Bitter Cry of Outcast London claimed than as much as a quarter of the population of London received insufficient income to maintain physical health. Impressionistic claims like this led to scientific investigation, encouraged by Charles Booth to begin his survey of the London poor in 1886. He found that as much as 30 per cent of the population of London and 38 per cent of the working class lived below the poverty line.

Many people criticised Booth's conclusions and pointed to the unique position of London. However, B. Seebohm Rowntree did a similar survey of his native York and in 1899 published conclusions that mirrored those of Booth. He distinguished between 'primary poverty' and 'secondary poverty'. Primary poverty was a condition where income was insufficient even if every penny was spent wisely. Secondary poverty occurred when those whose incomes were theoretically sufficient to maintain physical efficiency suffered poverty as a consequence of 'insufficient spending'. 10 per cent of York's population and 15 per cent of its working classes were found to be in primary poverty. A further 18 per cent of the whole population and 28 per cent of the working classes were living in secondary poverty. Rowntree also emphasised the changing incidence of poverty at different stages of working class life -- the 'poverty cycle' with its alternating periods of want and comparative plenty.

Other surveys followed the work of Booth and Rowntree. The most notable was the investigation in 1912-13 of poverty in Stanley [County Durham], Northampton, Warrington and Reading by A.L.Bowley and A.R.Burnett-Hurst. They found that the levels of poverty reflected different economic conditions and that among the working class population primary poverty accounted for 6 per cent, 9 per cent, 15 per cent and 29 per cent in the respective towns. These conclusions undermined the assumption made by both Booth and Rowntree that similar levels of poverty might be found in most British towns. In fact, the diversity of labour market conditions was reflected by great variety in the levels and causes of poverty. It is important to examine the reliance that can be placed on the results of early poverty surveys.

Few of the results can be accepted with complete confidence:

1. Booth relied heavily on data from school attendance officers and families with children of school age -- itself a cause of poverty -- were over-represented in what he supposed to be a cross section of the population.
2. Rowntree's estimates of food requirements were later regarded as over-generous by nutritionists and he later conceded that his 1899 poverty lines were 'too rough to give reliable results'.
3. Working class respondents, confronted by middle class investigators were notoriously liable to underestimate income. Most poor law and charity assistance was means tested and the poorer respondents, suspecting that investigators might have some influence in the disposal of relief, took steps not to jeopardise this. Income acquired illegally was particularly likely to remain hidden.

It is difficult to compare these levels with poverty at other times. Recent attempts by historians to assess approximate numbers that lives below Rowntree's poverty line in mid-nineteenth century Preston, York and Oldham all suggest poverty levels higher than those at the time of the 1899 survey. This is not surprising as between 1850 and 1900 money wages rose considerably and many more insured themselves against sickness and other contingencies.

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[1] A 'pauper' can simply be defined as an individual who was in receipt of benefits from the state. A labourer who was out of work was termed an able-bodied pauper, whereas the sick and elderly were called impotent paupers. Relief was given in a variety of ways. Outdoor relief was when the poor received help either in money or in kind. Indoor relief was when the poor entered a workhouse or house of correction to receive help. The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 said that paupers should all receive indoor relief.

[2] It is very important to remember the 'revolutionary psychosis' that afflicted many during the first half of the nineteenth century. Poverty was seen in this revolutionary light.

[3] On this subject the best and briefest introduction is M.E. Rose The Relief of Poverty 1834-1914, Macmillan, 2^nd. ed., 1986.

Living in the countryside

There is a tendency for studies of nineteenth century Britain to concentrate on urban life and neglect the rural dimension. This reflects a period of unparalleled industrialisation, urbanisation and unprecedented urban problems. Yet in 1851 nearly half of the population of Britain lived in rural areas and many more had been born in the countryside or had experienced rural life. It can be argued that for most of the nineteenth century a rural view of the world continued to exert a significant influence in Britain. Successive Reform Acts may have redistributed power after 1832, much political power and personal wealth remained in the countryside until the late nineteenth century[1].  Two further myths about rural life should be dispelled.

First, there is a view that rural life was in some way separate and distinct from that of towns. In fact rural life in Britain had never been separate from the towns and, as nineteenth century urbanisation developed, the interconnectedness of rural and urban became stronger and more obvious. Even in the 1830s few areas had no contact with urban areas and by 1850 few rural dwellers had no contact with the nearest market town; by the 1890s even upland Wales and the Highland and Islands of Scotland were being integrated socially and economically into a regional system focused increasingly on the larger towns. This connection took various forms:

• Communications developments, especially the railways, linked most villages into a comprehensive and complex transport system.
• Towns were economically dependent on rural labour.
• Through rural to urban migration which could lead to family links between town and countryside.
• In some cases through the rural-based but urban-financed putting out industries.
• Through social interaction between rural and urban at fairs, markets and other meeting places.

Secondly, that life in the countryside was easier than that of urban dwellers. Commentators like Engels misleadingly contrasted the images of an idyllic rural life and the horrors of urban living: 'They did not need to overwork; they did no more than they chose to do and yet earned what they needed. They had leisure for healthful work in garden or field, work which, in itself, was recreation for them, and they could take part besides in the recreations and games of their neighbours....They were, for the most part, strong well-built people....Their children grew up in the fresh country air....while of eight or twelve hours work for them was no question.'

In 1830 rural housing was a mixture of poor quality decaying older properties, poorly built new houses and a minority of decent stone or brick-built cottages for the more prosperous. The nature of work was, in some part, a determinant of the nature of rural housing. Living space was more important for the domestic weaver or knitter who spent much time indoors, than for the farm labourer who toiled for 12 hours a day in the field. In contrast the single migrant who left home to seek work might have been hired at a hiring fair and either given accommodation as a lodger in the master's house [most common in the north and west of England] or housed and fed in sheds or outhouses along with other hired hands as in the arable counties of England in the early nineteenth century. Population growth since the mid eighteenth century had resulted in a crisis in rural housing that had several consequences:

1. Many families were permanently overcrowded.
2. Individual privacy was difficult and much of life, especially the development of friendships and courtship, was lived outside the home in lanes, woods and fields.
3. Marriage was often delayed due to the lack of opportunity to set up home.
4. Epidemic diseases such as smallpox or typhus fever spread rapidly in overcrowded and insanitary conditions.
5. Some landowners maintained 'closed' villages, where accommodation was limited to keep down the size of the population, made the housing situation worse.

In 1830 living conditions could be as unhealthy and harsh as in many towns: a combination of poor housing, lack of employment and poor social prospects frequently impelled townward migration rather than any specific urban attractions. The density of occupation of rural housing was often as high or higher than that in towns. High natural increase in rural areas mostly offset migration losses and rural population densities continued to increase up to the 1840s. In many rural areas the housing supply expanded more slowly than population; indeed some large landowners demolished cottages and took less responsibility for housing their labour force. Many rural parents brought up eight or more children in tiny two-room cottages[2].

The quality of rural housing varied greatly and for the very poor it was often worse than its urban counterpart. Increasingly, urban housing had proper foundations, solid walls and slate roofs. In contrast much rural housing was severely substandard when first built. Most landowners accepted little responsibility for the provision of decent homes and, even in more prosperous areas such as north west England, cottages were often small, cold and wet. In southern England, where there was more abject poverty, cottages often had mud walls, earth floors and neglected thatch roofs.

Such conditions persisted until the 1850s but during the remainder of the century, housing gradually improved as out-migration lessened pressure on the countryside and sanitary and housing reforms began to percolate into rural areas. On large estates and big arable farms there was considerable rebuilding from the 1860s. Nevertheless, not all rural housing was bad: surviving nineteenth century houses include not only good quality homes of landowners, farmers and artisans, but well-built estate cottages and good-quality late eighteenth century dwellings of rural factory workers.

For many rural families poor housing was combined with acute poverty. Between 1815 and the mid-1830s arable England underwent a deep depression. Population growth led to a rural labour surplus that, except in areas where there was alternative employment, led to low wages. James Caird found, in his agricultural survey of 1851, that there was considerable variety in wages between the 'high wage' north and west and 'low wage' south and east. In the West Riding wages were 13-14s per week but in southern counties like Berkshire and Suffolk they were only 7-8s per week. Northern wages were higher because of the greater prosperity of mixed and pastoral areas compared to wheat-growing counties and, particularly, to competition for labour from industrial towns where wages were generally higher. This led to widespread rural distress and rural protests like the Captain Swing riots of 1830 in southern England.

Rural industrial workers were usually better off. In such areas as the south Pennines survival of a dual farming-weaving economy gave some protection against poverty though, as the textile industry became more mechanised and centralised in factories, the distress of rural textile workers became more documented. The effects of rural poverty can be seen in malnutrition and associated ill health. A survey of 1863 showed that most English rural labourers relied heavily on a diet of bread and potatoes, with meat consumption varying from season to season and area to area, though men were generally better fed than the rest of the family. Even so, the food supply in the countryside was rather better than that available to the urban poor: it was fresher and there were more opportunities to supplement it informally or illegally from fishing to poaching or from the cottage garden.

The social composition of rural areas changed during the period 1830 to 1890 in several respects:

1. Selective rural out-migration removed many younger and more active members of the community.
2. Areas close to towns began to experience urban to rural movement of rich families seeking a house in the countryside.
3. Commuter villages grew around cities like Leeds, Manchester and especially London particularly where there were good rail connections.
4. Rural resort areas also began to expand. In the late nineteenth century Windermere became a centre of the invasion of the Lake District for recreation. This was especially true of Manchester merchants who could afford to establish second homes around the fringes of Lake Windermere and elsewhere.

The image of the rural idyll had by the 1890s become firmly implanted as a middle class vision of the countryside that was increasingly imprinted on rural areas through residence, landownership and conservation movements. The National Trust was founded in 1895. However, the reality of rural life in the early years of the twentieth century was, for many, harsh and often unpleasant. Despite increasing mechanisation agricultural work was still hard and poorly regulated, while rural labourers worked longer hours for less pay than most other workers. The National Union of Agricultural Workers was established in 1872 but its membership was low and much of the welfare legislation passed between 1900 and 1914 did not apply to or was ignored by the agricultural sector.

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[1] The  most  useful general works on rural society are P.Horn The Rural World 1780-1850, Hutchinson, 1980 for the early period and G.E.Mingay The Social History of the English Countryside, Routledge, 1990 throughout. See also the collection edited by Brian Short The English Rural Community, CUP, 1992. A.Howkins Reshaping Rural England, Harper Collins, 1991 deals with the post-1850 period.

[2] W.Hasbach A history of the English Agricultural Labourer, 1908 despite its age, contains much useful information but should now be read in conjunction with  W.A.Armstrong Agricultural Workers 1770-1970, Batsford, 1988. Howard Newby Country Life, Weidenfeld, 1987 is a major and readable study. K.Snell Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England 1660-1900, CUP, 1984 is a mine of information and recent interpretation.

'Municipal Socialism'

The role of local authorities in improving amenities was a matter of importance and some controversy before 1914. A Medical Officer of Health was first appointed in Liverpool in 1847 but other cities did not do so until the 1860s, for example Manchester in 1868, or 1870s. As the interventionist role of local authorities was defined, especially in the legislation of the 1870s and 1880s, the number of local authority employees increased[1]. This resulted in various responses:

1. Frederic Harrison commented in 1875 that local self-government might stand for 'local mis-government and local no-government'.
2. Ratepayers understood that increased staff meant increased rates and landowners saw their rents decline if they needed to improve their properties.
3. Councillors wanted to maintain their autonomy and restrict the role of what they saw as meddlesome inspectors.
4. Working class people were invariably hostile, in the cherished cause of liberty and privacy. This was, in part, the same attitude as opponents of Chadwick exhibited in the 1850s. But this is only part of the reason. Where borough health departments were small the police were used to enforce sanitary legislation. Property and possessions were damaged by fumigation procedures whenever infectious diseases were suspected. Provision for compensation existed after 1875 but was rarely taken. To the working class inspection was highly suspected.
5. Slum clearance, even more than inspections, aroused bitter resistance. Communities were broken and dispersed by health authorities.

In 1850 municipal priorities were public order, street maintenance and lighting and the provision of basic sanitary services. There was some investment in gas and water supply but the scale of public amenities and municipal trading that developed in the next half century was altogether grander. But was this 'socialist'? Although collectivism caused unease, there were some who did not see it as socialist. The Whig authority on local government, George Brodrick, said in April 1884 that Public Health and Education Acts were 'founded on reasons of public utility, and not on the principle of equalising the lots of the higher and lower classes in the community.' By contrast, Joseph Chamberlain speaking a year later in Warrington said that 'The Poor-Law is Socialism, the Education Act is Socialism, the great part of our municipal work is Socialism; every kindly act of legislation by which the community recognises its responsibilities and obligations to its poorer members is socialistic....Our object is the elevation of the poor of the masses of the people -- a levelling up which shall do something to remove the excessive inequalities in the social condition of the people, and which is now one of the greatest dangers as well as the greatest injury to the State....'

In 1895 the later Conservative Prime Minister, A.J. Balfour, saw social legislation as the 'direct opposite and most effective antidote to socialist legislation' and that 'the adoption of what is good [in socialism] is the best preventative for what is bad': social legislation was designed to raise the standard of living and provide efficient services that did not endanger existing institutions. A.K. Rollit, from 1890 to 1906 President of the Association of Municipal Corporations and a Tory Democrat, argued that the municipality should do what individuals 'cannot do, or do so well, for themselves'. The issue by the 1890s was not whether the state, locally or nationally, should intervene in matters of public concern but the level of that intervention and the balance between public and private utilities. The major areas where intervention occurred were:

1. Water supply. Chadwick's 1842 Report on the fifty largest towns had condemned private enterprise in providing clean and efficient water supplies. Legislation in 1847-8 allowed municipalities to establish their own, or to transfer privately owned, water companies. Additional legislation in 1870 and 1875 cheapened and speeded up the process. Even so the assumption of water supply by local authorities was irregular: by 1871 only 250 of 783 urban districts provided some supply and by 1879 only 413 out of 944 urban districts were doing so while 290 were supplied by private companies. By 1914 two-thirds of the population were supplied by a public authority. There were various reasons for this situation. First, for the larger cities the massive cost of extending supplies brought local political turmoil. In Liverpool the Rivington Pike scheme unhinged party political alignments for ten years after 1847, as did the Lake Vyrnwy scheme forty years later. Secondly, supply was a serious problem. Between 1850 and 1900, for example, Manchester's population doubled and its daily water needs quadrupled from 8 to 32 million gallons. This meant piping water from areas where supplies could be found: Thirlmere in the Lake District, some eighty miles away, was tapped. Finally, purity mattered and many rivers were seriously polluted by industrial effluent and untreated sewage. Waterborne diseases had not yet been eliminated and typhoid epidemics were common into the 1870s and isolated outbreaks, as at Cambridge in 1887 and Kings Lynn ten years later, still occurred. To prevent contamination, as much as to ensure supply of water, there was a real need for co-ordination between local authorities.
2. Municipalisation of gas. It contains some different features from water but in both, as with tramways, the disturbance to public highways from the laying of services roused the municipal authorities' interest. Nine municipalities took control of gas before 1850; another 18 in the 1850s, 22 in the 1860s, 76 in the 1870s, 24 in the 1880s, 50 in the 1890s and 25 between 1901 and 1910. Over two-thirds were northern and Midland towns but several large cities -- Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle and Bristol -- remained in the hands of private companies. By 1910 local authority gas sales comprised 37 per cent of the total. The vast increase in domestic users was chiefly due to two inventions: the gas mantle and the slot meter. Towns and cities could take over gas companies in the same way as water companies. Gas companies, as local monopolies, could have exploited their position without municipal intervention. By 1906 local authorities charged on average 2s.8d. and private companies 2s.11d. per thousand cubic feet of gas. The difference can be explained by the reluctance of local authorities to take over unprofitable concerns. It was the issue of profitability that roused arguments that were absent over water supply and a deceleration of the movement to municipal ownership can be seen from the 1880s partly because of the development of electricity.
3. Electricity. The threat from electricity in the 1880s to municipal gas profits led to the 1882 Act that limited an electricity company's licence to operate to 21 years after which a local authority has the right to purchase without compensation. This so discouraged the industry that in 1888 the licence was extended to 42 years. From the 1890s, however, municipal investment accounted for two-thirds of the organisation and distribution.
4. Transport. As with electricity, technical economies and regional services were hindered by too rigid adherence to local government boundaries. This prevented local authority ownership and management of the majority of tramways. The Tramways Act 1870 chiefly licensed private enterprise and, though local authorities might build and lease tram systems, they could not operate them. By 1913, however, about 1,500 miles of local authority line existed and municipal ownership embraced 63 per cent of lines and 80 per cent of passengers carried.

There were other areas where local authorities could take a lead. The Housing Act 1890 determined public and private interests and some council housing was the consequence. Restrictions hedged other municipal ventures. Hull and several other towns established municipal telephone services; resort towns ventured into the entertainment business [Bournemouth even sponsored its own orchestra]; Doncaster managed a racecourse; Worcester a dairy and Wolverhampton a cold store. Non-profit making activities were pursued with less vigour and voluntary provision was preferred. Consider public libraries. Their finances were limited by the maximum rate of halfpenny under the 1850 Act and from 1885 to 1919 by a penny rate. Take-up was patchy: by the late 1870s only 86 rate-supported libraries existed. Since free-libraries were conceived as a service for the working classes, the question had to be argued whether those classes would really benefit and suspicion of the working class public persisted. By 1910 a sizeable reading public had emerged with library loans doubling since 1896 from 26 to 46 million book issues. But fewer than 5 per cent of the population were registered borrowers.

These enterprises did not, however, mark a transfer of control from private to municipal ownership, as many socialists wanted. 'Municipal socialism' was rarely, if ever, socialist. R.H. Tawney summed up the position in November 1914 'The motive of nearly all these developments has been a purely utilitarian consideration for the consumer, They have not been inspired by any desire to introduce more just social arrangements....They have been inspired simply by the desire for cheap services....Clearly there are no germs of a revolution here.'

A review of municipal services inevitably results in a mixed account. It may be easy to scale down achievement but civic pride had genuine foundations. There is little doubt that sanitary services in English towns enhanced the living standards of the nation. By 1914 England could boast some remarkable civic creations but there was still a great deal wanting especially in respect of housing and town planning. In 1850 it was argued that municipalising essential services was a sound way of achieving efficiency and economy. By 1914 municipalisation had been widened to encompass 'desirable' as well as 'essential' services. But there was a widespread belief that the existing provision of services and the type of municipal management could not survive without major restructuring. Nationalisation, or the bringing of services under the State, provided one solution to this problem. Privatisation provided the alternative. The development of services after 1918 was, in many respects, a dialogue [albeit on occasions a dialogue of the deaf] between these two positions.

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[1] On the development of public utilities see James Foreman-Peck and Robert Millward Public and Private Ownership of British Industry 1820-1990, OUP, 1994, chapters 1-6.

The housing problem: overcrowding in London

By the 1870s it was clear that poor housing was one of the most serious elements in the public health problem and attention tended to concentrate on the larger cities, especially London[1]. The need for action had been recognised since the 1840s, though effective measures were few. In 1851 Shaftesbury introduced a pioneering Labouring Classes Lodging Act that attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to raise money for the erection or lease of houses for the use of the poor. The Acts of 1868 and 1875 promoted by the Liberal W.H. Torrens and the Conservative Richard Cross both accepted the principle that houses must be kept in good repair. The 1875 Act enabled demolition of grossly unsatisfactory property to be effected and solid dwellings built in their place. It was, however, permissive, and met with mixed success at best. Joseph Chamberlain[2] used it in Birmingham, but more to clear the city centre for prestige buildings than to re-house the poor. Others were deterred by the cost and by 1881 only ten of the 87 municipal authorities had made use of it. Many observers pointed out that those dispossessed when their property was pulled down could not afford the rent for better property and simply moved into other overcrowded properties one or two miles away.

Building activity reached its peak in 1876, after which construction declined and rents rose at the time of bad trade when working people had little money to spare. The issue was whether state intervention could resolve the problem without, as Shaftesbury among others believed, enfeebling those it was designed to support.

1. The idea of individual endeavour to relieve distress was closely related to the basic social and religious assumptions of mid-Victorian society. The organisers of charity were committed individualists but they believed that it needed organisation. The focus for the organisers' efforts was London because the social problems were most extreme and the giving most generous.
2. The most important of the philanthropic organisations was the Charity Organisation Society founded in 1869.
3. Octavia Hill[3], who had close links with COS, worked in the intractable area of the housing of the poor. But even she insisted that housing should be made to pay. She would allow no arrears and no sub-letting and she turned out those who fell into debt.

Charity bodies and housing associations were alone unable to resolve the problem of London's housing. The 1880s saw an increasing public concern with housing as the problems of the cities grew. The publication of The Bitter Cry of Outcast London in 1883 entered a passionate plea for state direction of a housing policy. There was a parliamentary select committee on housing in 1881-2 and a Royal Commission was established in 1884-5 that was much more successful in setting out the problems than in suggesting practical remedies for them. Local authorities were exhorted to be more active, and cheap workmen's train fares were recommended to enable the poor to live away from the overcrowded centres of big cities. The Commission's recommendations, however, skirted the essential issues. A codifying Housing Act was passed in 1885 and the Housing of the Working Class Act was passed in 1890. This legislation, however, was hardly the landmark that some historians have suggested. In effect before 1914 the State exhorted but refused to insist. The permissive principle remained supreme.

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[1] G. Steadman Jones Outcast London: A Study of the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society, OUP, 1971, Penguin, 1975 is a classic study of the impact of conditions on the working population in London.

[2] On Chamberlain in Birmingham see the biography by Peter Marsh, Yale University Press, 1994.

[3] Gillian Darley Octavia Hill: A Life, Constable, 1990 is a major study of one of the foremost housing reformers of the nineteenth century.

Housing and the state

It was the concentration of people in the burgeoning towns and cities of manufacturing Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that led to a growing housing crisis[1]. The inflow of population to towns before 1830 was accommodated both by massive new buildings and through subdivision and change of use in existing buildings. Many separate builders and developers provided new building in a variety of different ways and there was no shortage of building land in and around towns.

Before 1830

The landowner was not generally the builder, though small infill developments in gardens and yards could be carried out by the original owner. Usually land was sold to a middleman or developer who would finance and organise the building process. Landowners included municipal corporations, as for example in Liverpool and Newcastle; charities, schools and churches,; large private landowners; and professional and businessmen with small parcels of land. Developers could include local merchants, tradesmen, professional men [especially lawyers] and builders who would raise capital locally to finance house construction. Land was conveyed freehold in perhaps half of all sales, or through a building lease. Urban house building before 1830 took many forms:

1. Most cities had some grand housing for the rich and leisured classes, perhaps best typified by the sweeping terraces built by John Wood in Bath and the development of Edinburgh's New Town from the 1750s.
2. Artisans' housing ranged from substantial terraced houses to small courts. In Birmingham a relatively affluent skilled craftsman might live in a two or three storey house with two rooms on each floor with an associated yard and workshop. It would cost up to £200 to buy in 1800 and would be rented for at least £8 per year.
3. Only a minority of workers could afford such rents and many houses were multi-occupied by 1830. From the 1770s rows of back-to-back houses were being constructed costing £60 to buy but could be rented for less that £5 a year. However, as pressure on space increased many of these were also multi-occupied.
4. Some of the worst housing conditions in 1830 were found in London where population pressures and constraints on space were far more acute than in provincial towns. Working class families generally lived in a single room or cellar without proper sanitation or water supply and paid 2-3 shillings per week rent. Lodging houses were also common in London, and in the poorest districts as many as 15 people would sleep in one room, each paying 1 or 2 pence for a night's shelter.

It is hard to compare rural and urban housing conditions. Contemporary descriptions tend to focus on the horrors of urban living experienced by the very poor, but the situation was little different for the rural poor. The main difference was in the density of urban living. Living literally on top of or beneath neighbours in a multi-occupied tenement was a new experience for many requiring considerable adjustments in lifestyles and daily routines.

After 1830

Victorian cities were in a state of constant social flux. Many residents in all large cities were migrants but they often did not stay long in one place: 45-55 per cent of urban populations either died or moved from a town within ten years. Most housing throughout the period 1830 to 1914 was rented and owner-occupancy rarely accounted for more than 10 per cent of the housing stock before 1918.

• Rented accommodation came in a vast array of types. In central areas most of provided through the construction of purpose-built working class housing or was in large multi-occupied dwellings filtered down from the middle classes that had moved to suburban villas or more spacious town houses.
• From 1850 terraced suburbs increasingly housed the skilled working class.
• For those on low incomes, rent levels were crucial to housing availability. Although cheap housing had been built in many cities in the early nineteenth century, by the 1850s it was increasingly difficult to built new housing to rent at much below 5s per week, well beyond the means of those on low or irregular incomes. Such families had little option but to rent lodgings or take slum housing in the city centre. Income determined where you lived and construction costs controlled the type of housing that was built in different locations.
• In such areas as Whitechapel or St Giles in London or dockside areas and commercial districts of Liverpool slum accommodation could be obtained quite easily. Accommodation was confined and relatively expensive; for example a single room 12 feet square could be rented for 1s 6d or more per week in a provincial town and for rather more in London. It could be dirty and facilities were shared with the other tenants.

By 1850 construction of new housing in the central areas of towns had almost ceased, but lower-density terraced housing was expanding rapidly in new residential suburbs of all English and Welsh towns. In Scotland tenement construction continued to be the norm. A new terraced house with four rooms, its own privy and in-house water supply would probably cost 5-7 shillings per week to rent. Relatively few such properties were multi-occupied, though the family might take in a lodger. Working class home ownership was feasible only for those with relatively stable incomes in prosperous areas because of repayments of around 10 shillings per month. High levels were found in parts of north east Lancashire, County Durham, the West Riding and South Wales. Housing provided by employers or by philanthropic organisations, like the Peabody Trust in London, was often locally significant but never accommodated more than a few per cent of the population.

The process of residential decentralisation with the construction of suburban housing estates by private enterprise gathered momentum after 1890. This was most clearly seen in London, but similar processes were operating in all large towns. Take Ilford, for example

• In 1850 Ilford was a quite village on the main railway line from London to Ipswich, seven miles from Liverpool Street station. In 1891 there were some 11,000 people in the parish, but by 1901 the new urban district had expanded to 41,240 people and its population almost doubled again by 1911.
• Two London builders, W.P. Griggs and A.C. Corbett, encouraged by the good railway communication, acquired large areas of land and began to develop massive private housing estates. In 1906 on the Griggs estate a four-room house started at £260; a four-bedroom, double-fronted house at £375 and a five-bedroom house at £450.
• Both the builders and Ilford Council provided further incentives to move to the suburbs. Corbett gave loans to purchasers to cover some of the cash deposit while Ilford Council used the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act 1899 to give cheap mortgages.

Ilford is a classic example of the ways in which improved transport, availability of land, the willingness of entrepreneurs and public bodies to invest and the demand for suburban living combined to restructure the city in the early twentieth century.

In the Housing of the Working Class Act 1890 government intervened in the free market for the first time and, in so doing, fundamentally affected the expansion and planning of towns. Though the provision of council housing was slight before 1919, some councils had begun building houses before 1890 and the Act gave further impetus to such schemes. Some 24,000 council units were built in Britain before 1914 but most were concentrated in London [9,746 units], Liverpool [2,895 units] and Glasgow [2,199 units]. These schemes were too few in number to make any real impact on housing needs and, in any case, rent levels and selection procedures tended to exclude the very poor.

There was little fundamental change in housing between 1830 and 1914. Paying rent to private owners remained the norm, accounting for 80 per cent of all houses. Council housing accounted for only 1 per cent in 1914 and housing associations 9 per cent. Though all towns spawned a succession of new residential suburbs, these were mainly for the affluent working and lower-middle class families who would leave the older parts of the city centre, and new skilled in-migrants. The poor remained trapped in low-cost, sub-standard housing. The spatial segregation of social groups was cleared structured by the economic realities, reflected in income and occupation that controlled access to different types of housing.

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[1] For  urban  housing  S.D.Chapman (ed.) The History of Working Class Housing: A Symposium, David  & Charles, 1971, E. Gauldie Cruel Habitations: a history of working class housing 1780-1918, Allen and Unwin, 1978 and J. Burnett A Social History of  Housing  1815-1985, Methuen, 2^nd.ed., 1986 are major works. R. Rodger Housing in Urban Britain 1780-1914, Macmillan, 1989, CUP, 1996 is an excellent bibliographical study.

The Irish in Victorian cities

The segregated nature of the Victorian city was simply caused by social class. Cultural origins played an important role. Most obvious were the Irish[1], but European immigrants especially Jews, also formed cohesive and distinctive communities in many towns.

There had been considerable Irish migration to Britain before the 1840s, with well-established Irish communities in London and the west coast towns. It was the famines of the 1840s that brought a flood of destitute Irish to mainland Britain and helped to create images that were to persist throughout this period. After 1850 migrants were heavily concentrated in ports like London, Liverpool, Cardiff, Bristol and Glasgow and this position had changed little by 1891 though there had been some diffusion into a wider range of towns offerings employment opportunities.

1. The majority of famine Irish was poor Catholics but the Irish community in Britain also included wealthier Catholics and Protestant Irish from Ulster. They formed quite distinct communities, yet images of poverty, Catholicism and nationalism tend to dominate the picture. In most cities the Irish-born were highly concentrated in specific locations yet, within the community, there were distinctive residential patterns: Protestants and Catholics in adjacent but separate areas and segregation between Irish of different social classes.
2. Most Catholic Irish migrants were poor and dominated the employment statistics in towns with a large Irish population. They tended to have low status occupations and live in low-cost housing. However, this view needs to be seen against the fact that in all towns the Irish were found in all social groups and occupations.
3. There have been various studies that attempt to assess the reasons for Irish residential concentration. As with other immigrants, clustering can be explained by a combination of economic and cultural reasons. Most obviously, poor Irish were constrained to live in low-cost housing areas in older central and industrial areas of cities. Within such areas many Irish seemed to cluster for cultural reasons: a grouping of Irish Catholics in a few courts provided mutual support for a religion that was still widely despised and suspected.

The Irish community in mainland Britain was a focus of both political and popular attention, fuelled by the growing political crisis in Ireland and the identification of Catholic Irish with its Nationalist cause. Although the volume of new migrants decreased after 1890, the Irish urban communities were united by their common experiences: their sense of common origin, their common experience of poverty and their perceptions of discrimination. Assimilation into English society proved difficult when cultural identity was such a central feature in their existence.

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[1] R.Swift and S.Gilley (eds.) The Irish in the Victorian City, Croom Helm, 1985 contains some seminal essays on the Irish in relation to politics and religion. This can be supplemented with the collection of papers they edited The Irish in Britain 1815-1939, Pinter, 1989 and Steven Fielding Class and Ethnicity: Irish Catholics in England 1880-1939, Open University, 1993.

Public Health 1854-1914

The cause of public health was at a low ebb after the enforced retirement of Edwin Chadwick in 1854, but even so some progress was being made.

• The Vaccination Act 1853 required parents and guardians to arrange for the vaccination of infants within four months of birth. Even though there were no provisions for enforcement by the 1860s about two-thirds of children born were vaccinated and the death rate from smallpox fell as a result.
• The Nuisances Removal Act 1855 was a consequence of the cholera epidemic of 1853-54. It required local authorities to appoint sanitary inspectors and gave magistrates the power to order the ending of nuisances and to the local authorities powers to enter a nuisance at the expense of the occupier.

There was, however, a great difference between Parliament passing acts and enforcing an effective policy against the opposition of local authorities and property owners who saw sanitary reform as a source of unjustified expense. For all the efforts that had been made progress was very slow. The death rate between 1841-45 and 1861-65 actually rose slightly and as a result it is fair to conclude that the general position remained much the same.

Public health was a far more complex problem than the pioneers of the 1840s had envisaged. For Chadwick public health was simply a matter of better sanitation and water supply. In reality the problem had far wider environmental causes -- pressure of population, bad housing and poor nutrition -- and Chadwick had steadily underestimated the importance of medical questions, especially what could be achieved by preventative medicine. In the twenty years after 1850 the progress that was made in public health matters was largely on the scientific and medical side. Indeed it can be argued that by 1870 the analysis of the causes of health problems had run considerably ahead of the existence of effective machinery for remedying them. Of major importance were:

1. The statistical analysis of mortality by William Farr in the Registrar-General's department after 1839.
2. Improvements in understanding how diseases were transmitted. Important independent investigations were made during the cholera epidemic of 1848-9 by John Snow in London and William Budd in Bristol. They both diagnosed the cause of cholera as a living organism spread in drinking water and breeding in the human intestine.

The eclipse of the career of Edwin Chadwick coincided with the rise of national celebrity of John Simon [pronounced See-mon][1]. Sir John Simon [1816-1904] was born in the City of London on 10 Oct. 1816, was sixth of the fourteen children of Louis Michael Simon (1782-1879), a member of the Stock Exchange, who served on the committee from 1837 till his retirement in 1868. His grandfathers were both Frenchmen, but having emigrated to England, each had there married an Englishwoman. Both his parents were very long lived, his father dying within three months of completing his ninety-eighth year, and his mother, Matilde Nonnet (1787-1882), within five days of completing her ninety-fifth year.

After three or four years at a preparatory school at Pentonville, John Simon spent seven and a half years at a private school at Greenwich kept by the Rev. Dr. Charles Parr Burney, son of Dr. Charles Burney. He then went to Rhenish Prussia to study with a German surgeon for a year. The familiarity with the German language that he thus acquired was of great advantage to him later. He was intended for the medical profession, and on his return from Germany he was in the autumn of 1833 apprenticed for six years to Joseph Henry Green, surgeon at St. Thomas's and professor of surgery at King's College, his father paying a fee of 500 guineas. In 1838 he became M.R.C.S. and in 1844 was made hon. F.R.C.S. In 1840, when King's College developed a hospital of its own, he was appointed its senior assistant surgeon. He held this post till 1847, when he was made lecturer on pathology at £200. a year. He eventually became surgeon at St. Thomas's Hospital, his ‘old and more familiar home,’ where with progressive changes of title he remained officer for life (Personal Recollections, privately printed, 1903). He became a great leader and teacher in pathology. In 1862-3 Simon was one of those who successfully urged the removal of the hospital from the Borough to the Albert Embankment. In 1876 he retired from the post of surgeon and was made consulting surgeon and governor of the hospital.

Ambitious of eventually becoming a consulting surgeon, Simon did not at first devote himself to his professional work with undue rigour. He spent his spare time on non-professional pursuit on metaphysical reading, on Oriental languages, on study in the print-room of the British Museum. Such distribution of interest left the impress of literary ability and culture on his future writings and tastes (Dr. J. F. Payne in Lancet, ii. 1904). As early as 1842 he had written a pamphlet on medical education, and contributed the article ‘Neck’ to the Cyclopædia of Anatomy. In 1844 he gained the first Astley-Cooper prize by an essay on the thymus gland (published with additions in the following year), and wrote for the Royal Society a paper on the thyroid gland (Phil. Trans. vol. 134), the value of which that society promptly recognised by electing him a fellow in January 1845, at the early age of twenty-nine.   The current of Simon's thoughts and activities was wholly changed by his appointment in October 1848 as first medical officer of health for the City of London at a salary of £500. a year (eventually £800.). Liverpool was the first town in England to appoint a medical officer of health; London was the second. Simon, whose continued study of pathology at St. Thomas's Hospital gave him great advantage as a health officer, set to work at once with characteristic thoroughness, and presented a series of annual and other reports to the City commissioners of sewers which attracted great attention at the time, and may still be read with profit. They were unofficially reprinted in 1854, with a preface in which Simon spoke strongly of ‘the national prevalence of sanitary neglect,’ and demonstrated the urgent need of control of the public health by a responsible minister of state. These views Simon kept steadily before him throughout his official career.

The government in 1848 had created the general board of health. It was reconstituted in 1854, and by a further act of 1855 the board was empowered to appoint a medical officer. Simon accepted the post in October 1855. The board was subject to successive annual renewals of its powers, and the new office was one of undefined purpose and doubtful stability. In 1858 the board was abolished, its duties being taken over by the lords of the council under the Public Health Act (1858), which to disarm opponents was framed to last for a single year. Simon thus became medical officer of the Privy Council. The act of 1858 was only made permanent in 1859 in face of strong opposition. Simon always held in grateful remembrance Robert Lowe, then vice-president of the council for education, whose promptitude and vigour saved the bill.  Simon made to the general board of health several valuable and comprehensive reports: on the relation of cholera to London water supply (1856), on vaccination (1857), on the sanitary state of the people of England (1858), and on the constitution of the medical profession (1858). These are reprinted in full in his Public Health Reports (vol. i. 1887). As medical officer of the Privy Council he instituted in 1858 annual reports on the working of his department, treating each year special subjects with broad outlook and in terse and graphic phrase. The most important parts were reprinted in Public Health Reports (vol. ii. 1887). During this period (1858-71) Simon was implicitly trusted by his official superiors, was allowed a free hand, and rallied to his assistance a band of devoted fellow-workers, who helped to make the medical department a real power for good.

In August 1871, in accordance with the report of the royal sanitary commission which was appointed in April 1869 to consider means of co-ordinating the various public health authorities, the old poor law board, the local government act office (of the home office), and the medical department of the privy council were amalgamated to form one new department, the local government board. Simon became chief medical officer of the new board in the belief that his independent powers would be extended rather than diminished. But neither (Sir) James Stansfeld , president of the board, nor (Sir) John Lambert], organising secretary, took his view of his right of initiative and administrative independence. Simon protested in vigorous minutes and appeals, which were renewed when George Sclater-Booth became president in 1874. In the result, after a fierce battle with the treasury, his office was ‘abolished,’ and Simon retired in May 1876 on a special annual allowance of £333l. 6s. 8d. He was less than sixty years old, and his energies were undecayed, so that the cause of sanitary progress was prejudiced by his retirement.  Simon received the inadequate reward of C.B., and was also made a crown member of the medical council, on which he did much good work until his resignation in 1895. In 1881 he was president of the state medicine section of the International Medical Congress held in London. With his friend, J. A. Kingdon, F.R.C.S., he was mainly responsible for the establishment by the Grocers' Company of scholarships for the promotion of sanitary science. Much of Simon's work was deeply affected by the cholera outbreaks of 1848-9 and 1853-4. They added greatly to his problems, but made his work much better known and his scientific authority steadily grew. Like other reformers he saw the problems of the city as moral as well as material. Until the social evils in which the poor lived were removed, he argued, the working classes could not enjoy decent family life nor acquire civilised social habits. It was justifiable to achieve this that the powers of local authorities to assume powers that they had never contemplated.

From his appointment to the Board of Health in 1855 till he resigned in 1876 Simon worked in the service of central government. The emphasis of his work shifted to statistical investigation and exact scientific enquiry as head of the able medical team that he gathered around him. He maintained that the knowledge obtained would result in appropriate practical action. In practice, until the early 1870s, scientific knowledge ran ahead of the practical solutions taken to remedy them. Between 1855 and 1858 Simon worked under the General Board of Health. The Public Health Act 1858 transferred the medical department to the Privy Council, a situation made permanent a year later. As medical officer Simon was given the duty of compiling annual and special reports that were to be presented to Parliament. This gave him the opportunity of drawing to public attention those problems that needed to be tackled.

His reports were of major importance in developing state intervention in public health issues. In 1857 Simon had published his Papers relating to the History and Practice of Vaccination. Ten years later the law was strengthened by a new act that both tightened procedures and providing ways of improving the vaccine. In the Vaccination Act 1871, following a very serious smallpox epidemic, the Boards of Guardians were required by law to appoint a paid vaccination officer. Other infectious diseases that the reports gave attention were smallpox, which re-appeared in 1865-6, typhoid, scarlatina and diphtheria. There were studies of 'industrial' diseases like the lung conditions produced among miners, potters and steel-grinders. An ineffective Adulteration of Foods Act was passed in 1860, the precursor of more far-reaching legislation in 1872 and 1875, by which local authorities had to employ public analysts to test food. The Alkali Act 1863 was the first of a series of enactments to deal with acid gas pollution.

The eleventh report of 1866 considered the need to consolidate the laws and administrative agencies relating to public health. The solid foundation of scientific and medical knowledge that had not existed in the Chadwick years, meant that effective legislation was now possible. The threat of cholera helped produce the Sanitary Act 1866, seen by Eric Evans as 'Simon's crowning achievement'. The Act

• gave to local authorities increased powers to provide house drainage and water supplies
• stricter provisions were made for the removal of nuisances
• additional powers were given to regulate communicable diseases
• it made the specific duty of authorities to inspect their districts and to suppress nuisances
• in case of failure to do this and upon complains being made, the Home Secretary had the power to send an inspector and, if neglect was established, to order the authority to act

Badly drafted as this legislation was, it did contain the vital principle of uniform and universal provision of sanitary protection, with compulsory powers of enforcement on local authorities.

In 1869 the Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone set up a Royal Commission to look into sanitary laws and administration. It reported in 1871 and its recommendations were embodied in the Public Health Act 1872. In 1871 the Local Government Board took over the duties of the Poor Law Board and of the Privy Council and the Home Office for public health and sanitary matters. The 1872 Act rationalised sanitary authorities throughout the country and made compulsory the appointment of medical officers of health. Finally, in 1875 came the major consolidating Public Health Act, covering the whole field of public health, sanitation and nuisance prevention. It was accompanied by legislation in related fields:

1. An act of 1875 regulating the sale of foods and drink
2. An act of 1876 on the pollution of rivers
3. An act of 1879 consolidating the law on contagious diseases in animals
4. The Diseases Prevention Act 1883 no longer pauperised the recipient of treatment in hospital with infectious diseases
5. The Infectious Diseases Notification Act 1889 persuaded a large number of local sanitary authorities to establish isolation hospitals, a situation extended into rural areas by the Isolation Hospitals Act 1893

Practical reforms took a long time to implement and the medical and scientific work, associated with Simon, was actually cut back in the next decade. The new Local Government Board was dominated by the old Poor Law officials an they took a different view from Simon of their duties. They took resolute action to keep Simon and the medical scientific view he represented out of policy making in favour of the merely administrative principles inherited from the Poor Law. This had the effect of contracting the power of central control that had been developed in the 1860s and to reduce national supervision over disease. As a result Simon found he could not implement the policies in which he believed and in 1876 he resigned.

The early phase of public health reform was dominated by Edwin Chadwick, the later phase by Sir John Simon. Both left office disillusioned by their inability to implement reforms in the ways they wished. Paradoxically Chadwick resigned because of criticism of too much central control and Simon because of too little. In some respects the parameters of the public health debate had shifted by the early 1880s. National administrative structure and enforcement agencies were in place. Public attention, however, shifted to concentrate on the larger cities, particularly on London that suffered problems of its own, quite apart from its sheer size. The issue became one of housing.

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[1] Royston Lambert Sir John Simon 1816-1904, MacGibbon & Kee, 1963 is the major biographical study.