The Languages of Factory Reform

Industrialisation is as much a process of cultural as economic and social change. Workers, employers and observers formulated languages in which to negotiate the relationships between each other and to a changing environment[1]. The factory was a concentrated metaphor for hopes and fears about the direction and pace of industrial change and its significance extended beyond the direct impact of factory labour. Language and the construction of public debate is a central concern. Power in society is exercised partly through the privileging of certain modes of discourse and the disqualifying of others. Different discourses address different areas of life and, even in relatively stable periods, the boundaries can be ill defined, debated and re-negotiated. The debate over the 'factory question' was one of the creations of discourses addressed to different audiences in the early 1830s, a narrowing of this range during the 1840s and an effective closure of the debate in the 1850s and 1860s.

Early thrusts: a movement for conflict?

The early ten hour movement had a number of strands, loosely held together by a rhetoric variously composed of evangelical religion, conceptions of a due social balance threatened by unregulated economic change, populist radical ideas of fair employment and labour as property, and patriarchal values. Such rhetoric embodied notions of a 'moral economy' in opposition to the aggressive economic liberalism of the manufacturer's lobby. This clustering of views can be represented in terms of appeals to tradition and a paternalist mutuality of interests, with the values of 'rural' society taken as a touchstone to judge the excesses of industrialism. This articulation of a moral voice is seen best in the writings and speeches of Richard Oastler, who played a pivotal (if self-dramatised) role in organising the ten hour movement round such feelings.  Oastler brings together the elements of the early factory movement to produce a kind of populist traditionalism or 'Tory Radicalism'.  Evangelical religion and gothic romanticism are particularly important. Oastler speaks of the 'monstrous' nature of the factory system and the 'terrors' of child labour. He denounced political economy as 'earthly, selfish and devilish' and pointed to the abnormality of 'the tears of innocent victims [wetting] the very streets which receive the droppings of an Anti-Slavery Society'.

Substantial sections of the propertied classes, merchants, gentry and professional men saw their interests and values as identified with he artisans and domestic economy and feared the threat of unchecked factory concentration to community cohesion and social balance. These attributes cut across the political spectrum from traditionalist Tories to Whigs, to a patrician radicalism. The radicalism of artisans and factory workers shared many of these views. It was saturated in romantic imagery, of the 'golden age' of domestic production and of seeing their labour in terms of 'freedom', 'tyranny' and 'slavery'. The difference was that their accounts of abuse were based on experience rather than observation.

1. Textile employers did not constitute a homogeneous group. There was a significant Tory and Anglican presence and, within the liberal community, differences between the narrow economism and the broader vision of more established manufacturing firms. The claims of 'Manchester Liberalism' to speak for the manufacturing interest as a whole, or even for Manchester itself, are open to question:
2. Attitudes to factory reform arose from readings of the legitimate economic interests of employers and of the 'manufacturing interest' of which they felt themselves to belong but also from wider considerations of their status, cultural aspirations and claims to authority.
3. Economic interests were rarely understood in narrow cash nexus terms and the aspirations of the average businessman was perhaps less to maximise profits than to reproduce his position and that of his family. Paternalism was not confined to Oastler and the ten hour movement and many manufacturers accepted their civic duty as men of property to engaged actively in schooling, management of housing, charity and moral surveillance. Paternalistic controls over the labour force were justified in a language of mutual obligations and the mission of the enlightened manufacturer as improver of the poor. Conversely competitive effectiveness and further accumulation of capital enabled employers to fulfil their moral mission -- in this sense there was no contradiction between the economic ethics of political economy and the moral imperatives of industrial paternalism.
4. Textile manufacturers found themselves in a vulnerable and isolated position when the factory issue exploded in the early 1830s and were divided over their response to it. 'Evils' were recognised, but in terms far removed from the language of factory slavery.
5. The language used by employers, whether in favour or against legislation, provided interesting contrasts between sectors and regions. In the cotton districts opponents pointed to the diminished rate of profit and the material increase in the cost of manufacture with a consequent reduction in labour employed. The responses from woollen and worsted manufacturers were less standardised. Opponents emphasised the threat from foreign competition and the absolute rights of property.

The variation in employers attitudes and opinion cannot adequately be explained in terms of big, technically progressive and small, technically-backward factories. Legislation had different implications for cotton with its higher proportion of steam power and great urban concentration. The question of stopping the moving power is only the best known aspect of such differences. Even employers who favoured reform could differ on the proper balance between state and voluntary initiatives.

Redefining the question: towards conciliation?

The redefining of the factory question is part of the shaping of the Victorian state and the accommodation of interests within it. If the 1830s saw the elaboration of Benthamite responses to reform and vigorous resistance to them, at both popular and ruling-class levels, the 1840s saw modifications to this project through its incorporation into a broader consensus that shaped the agenda of the 'condition of England' question. This had several dimensions:

1. The writing of the new public agenda owed something to expert knowledge and the role of the factory inspectorate. Initially the inspectors had been inclined to defer to the expertise of leading employers but the pressure of public agitation pushed them into taking a more independent line.
2. Popular unrest and the desire to contain unrest pushed inspectors, parliament and elite public opinion to take a firmer line on enforcement. In 1840, Leonard Horner, a leading inspector, presented the benefits of factory regulation in terms of the growth of more rational attitudes among both employers and employees. He presented a case of moral order and economic efficiency appealing to the longer-term rational interests of employers and workers and projected the role of state servants in monitoring this diffusion of rationality.
3. The issue became one, not of introducing new legislation, but fulfilling the intention of existing law by taking action to remedy defects in the 1833 Act. The key issue was enforcement, especially the vexed questions of age certification and the rights of entry to factories. Opposition to legislation was not solely in the interests of employers but of workers as well. Reducing instances of child labour led to reductions in family budgets, hence much working class opposition. Adult labour had been left unaltered by the 1833 Act.

Oastler and the ten hour movement in the 1830s had projected a vision in which the regulation of the factory, and the protection of labour generally was the key to remedying social distress. The factory question in the 1840s can be seen through the language of negotiation within a growing consensus in favour of further regulation: the prosperity of trade and the welfare of the nation were increasingly seen as two sides of the same coin. Two particular emphases worked to incorporate social criticism about the distress, moral degeneration and Chartist threat and the awareness of working class conditions, into a liberal vision of a rationalised factory system:

1. The development of state regulation and the associated public debate tended to project a series of distinctions between 'good' and 'bad' factories and of the need to improve the 'bad'.
2. The agenda of the 'condition of England' extended into mines, child and female labour generally, the weavers, out-work and sweating and urban conditions. As a result the factory lost its centrality as a focus of social concern.

Public opinion saw social problems as separate and the evils of the factory as by no means the worst, though possibly the most readily remediable form of social distress. Education and a morally improved working force became the key. The debate continued to embody distinctive workers' perspectives, though these were perhaps less challenging than in the 1830s. Ten-hour legislation insisted on the minimal protection of labour, including adult men's labour. This was constructed as a moral imperative and a necessary limitation of the sphere of political economy. The eventual introduction of a fairly effective Ten Hours Act could be seen as a logical development within this framework.

A symbolic resolution

The Ten Hours Act, together with the repeal of the Corn Laws, came to form part of the symbolic 'social settlement' underpinning the apparent social harmony of the mid-Victorian period. The absence of factory acts became part of a collective memory of the 'bad old days', an unacceptable face of capitalism that no doubt worked to make its current face seem more benign. From the 1860s the factory agitation could be recalled as part of the general progress of society. For employers, the improvements associated with the Acts became part of an image of the well-regulated factory as the site of that economic, social and moral progress that the Victorian middle classes liked to represent as its mission in life. The factory inspectors saw themselves as agents of moral improvement among the operatives, as much as their protectors from unscrupulous employers.

Factory reform had some bearing on the making of mid-Victorian industrial paternalism. The consensual rhetoric of factory reform could, however, have different meanings in particular contexts. For workers, they were important as a symbol of 'industrial legality', especially where trade unions were relatively weak. The construction of women and children as protected categories reinforced notions of the adult male 'breadwinner' as an independent free labourer. Much of the debate concerned the drawing of boundaries -- between morality and the market, dependent and free agents, the state and the rights of property, the household, the factory and the school. Factory reform reflected a recognition that the market of liberal economics existed in a moral and legal framework. This contention was open to debate in the 1830s but from the 1840s the boundaries appear more settled and with an authoritative discourse of reform and moral improvement framing economic and Benthamite language with a moralising social commitment.

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[1] For what follows see Robert Gray 'The languages of factory reform in Britain c.1830-1860' in Patrick Joyce (ed.) The historical meanings of work, pp.143-179.

Factory Reform: Legislation of the 1840s

The ten-hour movement had been out-manoeuvred by the Whigs and its campaign against the 1833 Act proved ineffective. In October 1833 Oastler formed the Factory Reformation Society to continue the campaign but in November Robert Owen and John Fielden announced a Society for Promoting National Regeneration with the impractical but popular demand for an 8-hour day with 12 hours pay. Oastler rejected 'Regenerationist' invitations and it failed during the general Owenite collapse of 1834 carrying with it much of the Short Time agitation. From 1834 the Factory Movement had a chequered history. Oastler and his supporters became increasingly involved in anti-Poor Law campaigns and there were growing local differences:

1. Lancashire reformers, experienced in evasions of previous legislation, demanded that mill engines should be stopped at set times to make enforcement certain -- a policy Oastler supported but 'dare not ask for'.
2. Some of the parliamentary spokesmen, such as Hindley and Brotherton, were prepared to compromise on the Ten Hours demand and adopted a gradualist approach by arguing for 11 hours.
3. In Scotland the committees in Aberdeen, Arbroath, Edinburgh and Paisley tended to rely on the support of professional men and Presbyterian ministers while the Glasgow committee was under working class control until 1837.
4. Yorkshire was less prone to division and controversy within the organisation but even here there were differences.

The pace of the campaign of the 1840s varied considerably. Ashley Cooper failed to inject 'ten hours' into unsuccessful bills in 1838, 1839 and 1841. By 1840 the Inspectors were also in favour of further reform and hopes rose with the return of the Conservatives under Sir Robert Peel in 1841. Peel remained steady in his opposition to the Ten Hour movement right up to the passage of the 1847 Factory Act. He had adopted the argument of political economists that wages would fall under a ten-hour day and the cost of production would increase with consequences for rising prices.  This was not a doctrinaire approach but one grounded in a genuine concern for the welfare of workers.  In 1841, however, this concern was mistaken by a West Riding short-time deputation as an acceptance of the ten hour principle. This led to widespread and misleading publicity, raising then shattering workers' hopes and intensifying their hostility to the government during 1842.

Peel was, however, prepared to accept intervention to control working conditions when convinced that the moral case was overwhelming.  He opposed Ashley over ten-hour legislation because he believed that the moral case was weaker than the economic one. But was prepared to accept the moral arguments implicit in the Mines Act 1842. Working conditions in collieries were dangerous and children and women played an important part in mining coal. In 1840 a Royal Commission was established to investigate the working conditions of children in coalmines and manufactories. Its findings were horrific with children as young as five or six working as 'trappers' [operating doors to enable air-coursing]. There were also many comments about the poor health of the mining community. Artists were employed to go underground and make sketches of workers.  These appeared in the Commissioners' Report published in 1842. They were graphic and immediate and public opinion was shocked. Shaftesbury drafted a bill that became law at the end of 1842. It

1. Made the employment of women underground illegal.
2. Said boys under 10 could no longer work underground.
3. Said parish apprentices between 10 and 18 could continue to work in mines.

There were no clauses relating to hours of work and inspection could only take place on the basis of checking the 'condition of the workers'. Many women were annoyed that they could no longer earn much needed money. In 1850 a further Act widened the authority of colliery inspectors; they could now check the condition of machines.

Peel's good intentions were insufficient to dampen class and sectarian antagonisms that intensified during the industrial distress and disturbances of 1841 and 1842. The 'Plug Plots' of mid-1842 speeded government action and in March 1843 Graham introduced a Factory Bill that would restrict children aged 8-13 to 6½ hours' work with three hours' daily education in improved schools largely controlled by the Church.  Fear and prejudice came together in the massive campaign by nonconformist groups, stressing the virtues of 'voluntaryism' and professing concerns about the 'Romanising' effects of the Oxford Movement. Peel and Graham agreed on the importance of improving educational provision for the working population and making the educational clauses of the 1833 Factory Act effective. Graham's proposal for state assistance in the education of factory children -- motivated by the need to raise the 'moral feeling' of the people as a counter to radical agitation -- was thought by Nonconformists and Roman Catholics to favour the Church of England unfairly.  Parliamentary and extra-parliamentary opposition resulted in the whole bill being withdrawn in the summer.

Oastler mounted a major campaign in the spring of 1844 but he was unable to graft a '10 hour clause' on to the revised factory bill, shorn of its contentious educational clauses, which was reintroduced in early 1844. Ashley moved a ten hour amendment that carried with 95 Conservatives  supporting it.  Peel refused to accept ten hours or compromise with eleven hours and the bill was only passed  by threatening resignation unless his wayward supporters  rescinded their earlier vote. The Factory Act 1844 actually effected considerable improvements:

• children [8-13] became 'half-timers', working six and a half hours
• dangerous machinery was to be fenced in
• women shared the young persons' 12 hour restriction
• it was permissible for a factory to operate for fifteen hours in a day

There was, however, considerable disappointment in the textile towns and this provoked compromises and local negotiations. A series of conferences sought to maintain unity by reviving the Ten Hours Bill in Parliament, and after a wide winter campaign Ashley Cooper moved for leave to introduce it in January 1846. However, the debate over industrial conditions was now overshadowed by the nation-wide controversy over the Corn Laws. Ashley felt morally obliged to resign his seat and Fielden took his place as parliamentary leader but lost his seat in May. As another campaign was mounted in the autumn a gathering industrial recession weakened the case for opposition. Final Whig attempts to compromise on 11 hours were defeated and Fielden triumphed in May 1847 with the Ten Hours Act receiving the royal assent in June.

Northern rejoicing was still premature. From 1848 there were reports of evasions in Lancashire and of masters' campaigns to repeal the Act. Several employers resorted to the relay system that meant that hours of work could not be enforced: the 15 hours per day clause in the 1844 Act had not been repealed. Gradually, a new campaign emerged to protect the Act but it was increasingly obvious that the Factory Movement was divided: Ashley Cooper and a 'liberal' group were prepared to accept some compromise while Oastler was not. A test case on the illegality of the relay system -- Ryder v Mills -- was heard in early 1850 and failed. The Factory Act 1850 increased weekly hours from 58 to 60 hours in return for banning relays by establishing a working day between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Attempts to include children in the standard day failed and, as a result, men might work 15 hours, aided by relays of children beyond the hours allowed for women and young persons. Children only received their fixed day in the 1853 Factory Act and Disraeli only restored the ‘10 hours’ in 1874. In the meantime, however, similar legislation had been extended to a wide range of workers.

Factory Reform: The problem and the 1833 Act

The industrial revolution cannot be viewed as a simple transition from an agricultural and domestic economy to one dominated by factory regimes but rather as a restructuring of economy and society equivalent to that of the 1920s and 1930s and which entailed the decline of old industries as much as the growth of new ones. For individual workers this meant the abandoning of old skills as well as the development of new ones, while increasing regional specialisation of industry created differing impacts from one locality to another. Although contemporaries placed considerable emphasis on the development of large-scale factory production, domestic production and small workshops dominated manufacture until the mid-nineteenth century [1].

The Factory problem

Technological change and the development of new work conditions had gained sufficient strength by the 1830's to necessitate a serious and sustained effort by the state to regulate their application. Both employers and workers believed themselves locked into a system of attitudes, actions and responses. Employers regarded their position as defined by the laws of a competitive market of which they had no control. Insensitive, repressive and largely indifferent to the conditions of their workers, many were motivated by a belief in profit, a belief buttressed by their subversion of religious piety.  Endemic drunkenness among the workforce, as escape from these pressures, seemed to confirm employer belief that the workforce could and would not respond to better treatment.  These attitudes percolated down into the workforce itself and there is ample evidence of the exploitation of and cruelty towards workers, especially children, by fellow workers.  Masters and workers had been related to each other by simple contract and face-to-face contact  but industrialisation had created a new set of relationship patterns. Workers had become 'operatives', human extensions of new technology, 'dehumanised' and 'dehumanising'.

By no means were all factories similar and there was a wide range of work experience within any one factory unit. Many late eighteenth and early nineteenth century textile mills were rural and recruited labour from the local domestic industries. Families often moved together to a new factory so that all members of a household could gain employment. A weaver used to the workings of a small weaving shed would be familiar with many aspects of the work environment -- if not the scale -- within a factory. Boys would probably be apprenticed to weaving, power spinning or in the machine shop; girls might work in the carding room before moving to other low-technology jobs within the mill. Generally, as new technology was adopted, men took control of the new processes in spinning and weaving while women were left with the older machines and more poorly paid jobs.

Increasingly, as factories moved to steam-powered sites, the labour force moved from rural mills to towns. The new large urban mills offered greater opportunities and a wider range of employment in towns was some insurance against recession and unemployment. But factory work altered labourers' lives in a variety of ways. Most obvious was the loss of freedom and independence, especially for men who had previously been their own masters. Factory workers could no longer intersperse industrial work with agricultural labour or other activities. Many factory masters introduced rigid and draconian regulations to keep the workforce at their machines for long hours and to break their irregular work patterns.

The Ten Hour Movement and the 1833 Factory Act

The emergence of the short-time or Ten Hour movement after 1830 has its origins in the late eighteenth century when concerns about the deteriorating conditions in child employment initially developed. Early legislative efforts, however, depended largely on benevolent individuals. Sir Robert Peel senior was behind both the 1802 and 1819 Acts but he received considerable popular support from Lancashire cotton spinners, in liaison with at least three distinguishable groups:

1. Old labour aristocracies such as the east Midland framework-knitters, Yorkshire woollen croppers and the ubiquitous handloom weavers saw the factories with their technological innovations as threats to both their social status and their incomes.
2. Some pioneers of social medicine drew attention to the pernicious effects of factory labour on health.
3. Northern clergymen played important roles in successive factory campaigns. Both clergymen of the old High Church tradition and those tinged with new Evangelical enthusiasm took part. Oastler wrote in 1836 that 'his only object was to establish the principles of Christianity, the principles of the Church of England in these densely people districts....the Factory question was indeed .... a Soul-question -- it was Souls against pounds, shillings and pence....'

The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802 was extended in 1819 from pauper apprentices to cover all cotton factory children restricting them to twelve hours daily labour.  A further burst of agitation in the 1820s by the cotton spinners led only to John Cam Hobhouse obtaining minor improvements to existing legislation in 1825 and 1829, as the Lancashire cotton operatives became disillusioned with the lack of enforcement of existing law and demoralised by the collapse of strikes against wage reductions. It is, however, clear that the Factory Movement began in Lancashire rather than with the better known Yorkshire agitation begin by Richard Oastler in 1830 and that it was the militant Cotton Spinner's Union that first created the rudiments of a popular organisation and gained support from the radical press.

The early industrial reformers had little or no organisation. The campaign between 1825 and 1829 had achieved little but it was at this stage that Richard Oastler, a Tory land steward from Huddersfield, burst upon the scene when he sent his celebrated letter to the Leeds Mercury on 'Yorkshire Slavery'. Most of the founders of the Ten Hour Movement were Tories and Anglicans from northern industrial towns, committed to a romantic and paternalistic model of society which, if necessary, might be promoted through state intervention. They were as deeply hostile to parliamentary reform and workers' organisations as they were to Dissenters, orthodox political economy and the newly rich manufacturers. Many of those who financed the movement, like Michael Sadler, were themselves well established factory owners and members of the Tory urban elite facing a challenge locally from Dissenting entrepreneurs.  It is possible to identify four principal pressure groups in favour of factory reform[2]:

1. There were the mill operatives themselves and their supporters, of whom Richard Oastler was the most prominent. Their demands for a 10-hour working day used to debate over child labour both as a way of exposing the hardship of the children and as a way of seeking a limitation on the working day of adults. In the laissez-faire atmosphere of the period, any direct attempt to achieve State regulation of the hours of adult males was doomed to failure. But because juveniles aged 10-13 were an essential part of the workforce it was hoped that restrictions on their hours would percolate through to the rest. The reformers did not opposed child labour as such but were merely against unregulated labour. They judged legislation not by its direct effect on child labour but by its indirect effect on the position of adult workers.
2. Secondly, there were the Tory humanitarians among whom Lord Ashley was most active. They were concerned about the moral and religious deprivation of young workers and the ineffectiveness of existing protective legislation.
3. Romantics like William Wordsworth, Robert Southey and William Cobbett looked back to a pre-industrial 'golden age' and blamed the industrial revolution for alienating workers from the land and forcing children to play a major role in the workforce.
4. A fourth body of reformers came to the fore in the debates over amendments to the factory legislation that occurred in the 1840s. They included active supporters of laissez-faire principles, such as Thomas Babington Macaulay, but who argued for regulation on economic and moral grounds. Child labour, they suggested, damaged the health of youngsters who were then later in life not able to achieve their potential productivity. Restricting child labour was a rational means of promoting investment in the country's future workforce.

During the winter of 1830-1 there was a furious controversy in the Yorkshire press and rival views became polarised. Oastler acted as the pivot and central organiser. He possessed considerable oratorical skills and journalistic gifts; he controlled the central funds and he imparted a crusading verve to the movement. The question of child exploitation was a 'moral' one and he became head of a network of 'short-time committees' that demanded the ten-hour day. Pamphlets, petitions and tracts were issued by the thousand, as 'missionaries' were despatched throughout the textile areas of England and Scotland to highlight the horrors of child labour in the mills. Thousands of workers were willing to ignore the hostility of the Factory Movement's leaders to their political aspirations (1830-32 also saw the agitation for parliamentary reform) and put aside their hostility to the Church of England and turned a blind eye to the darker side of paternalism with its insistence on a harsh penal code, savage game laws and low wages and living conditions for the rural labourer and support the Movement[3].

In the event, Oastler and his movement had little success with the Whig government and Peel and the Conservative opposition kept the agitation at arm's length. When Michael Sadler moved a Ten Hour Bill in March 1832 he was obliged to accept the appointment of a Select Committee to take evidence from the operatives. Meanwhile the factory masters organised a vigorous lobby to resist further legislation, arguing that shorter working hours could result only in a victory for foreign competition, leading to lower wages and unemployment. The dissolution of Parliament in 1832 led to Sadler's defeat at Leeds in December and to his replacement, at the suggestion of the Reverend George Bull, by the young Evangelical Anthony Ashley Cooper as parliamentary spokesman for the Ten Hour campaign. The publication of Select Committee report in January 1833 brought the stark realities of conditions and led Anthony Ashley Cooper to introduce a factory bill. Criticisms, largely justified, that the 1833 report was somewhat one-sided  as it had only heard the workers' views resulted, in April 1833, in the government setting up a Royal Commission to investigate the employment of children in factories.  The Whigs had effectively taken reform out of the hands of the Ten  Hour Movement and became a government sponsored issue.

Why did the Whigs take control of factory reform? Extra-parliamentary agitation occurred not only in the context of conflict between capital and labour but of other economic and social rivalries.  Social, ideological, religious and political rivalry  between industrialists and neighbouring agriculturalists was exploited by operatives who turned for protection  from millowners to county JPs. The result was an Anglican Tory-Radical alliance on the factory question, grounded in notions of paternalism rather than the tenets of political economy and less inhibited in their support of the industrial poor than Whig Radicals. This alliance was weakened by the reform agitation of 1831-2  but remained important till the late 1830s and the onset of Chartism.  Parallel to this Tory paternalist approach was one supported  by some Whig radicals and a  group  of  philanthropic millowners in which nonconformist belief was a unifying  force.

The agitation in Yorkshire had already convinced the Whigs that a factory  act was inevitable. Determining the composition of the Royal Commission ensured that the range of options available  to them would be wider and less unpalatable to manufacturers than a Ten Hours bill. The Royal Commission Report was placed in the hands of Edwin Chadwick.  The report, produced in forty-five days, looked at factory  conditions far less emotionally than the Select Committee.  Its conclusions were not based on humanitarian grounds, the position adopted by the Ten Hour Movement,  but on the question of efficiency. Chadwick argued that human suffering and degradation led to less efficient production and that a good working environment would lead to health, happiness and an efficient workforce. Its recommendations were firmly placed on the question of children's employment and it was consequently criticised  for failing to deal with the issue of  adult  labour.

The Factory Act 1833 that implemented its recommendations restricted:

• children aged 9-14 [by stages] to 8 hours actual labour in all textile mills [except lace-manufacture], with 2 hours at school
• young persons under 18 to 12 hours
• four Factory Inspectors were appointed to enforce the Act

It was confined to children's work and applied only to textile mills but it did establish a small inspectorate to enforce the legislation. Inspection was the prime condition of effectiveness  making enforcement possible and, perhaps in the early stages  more importantly, providing a continuous stream of information about the conditions of workers in a range of industries.  Despite the intense criticism of the 1833 Act and the problems encountered in enforcement, it would be unfair to underestimate the Whig achievement in the area of factory reform. The debates in 1832 and 1833 led to the issue being publicly aired as never  before. The extra-parliamentary movement may have been frustrated by what had been achieved and the 1833 Act may have not been based on any real principles, but it did mark an important stage in the emergence  of effective factory legislation and underpinned the developments of the 1840s.

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[1] The  shortest introduction to factory reform is U. Henriques The  Early Factory Acts and their Enforcement, The Historical Association, 1971. J.T. Ward  The Factory Movement 1830-1850, Macmillan, 1962 is the most detailed study though it has, in part, been superseded by R. Gray The Factory Question and Industrial England 1830-1860, CUP, 1996.  C. Driver Tory Radical: A Life of Richard Oastler, OUP, 1946 and A. Weaver John Fielden and the Politics of Popular Radicalism 1832-1847, OUP, 1987 are useful biographies which go beyond factory reform.  Geoffrey  Finlayson The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury 1801-1885, Methuen, 1981 is a detailed biography  which contains much on factory conditions. Clark Nardinelli Child Labour and the Industrial Revolution, Indiana University Press, 1990 examines the most contentious of the questions surrounding factory conditions. J.T. Ward (ed.) The Factory System, two volumes, David & Charles, 1970 contains primary material.

[2] P. Horn Children's Work and Welfare 1780-1880s, Macmillan 1994 and Eric Hopkins Childhood Transformed. Working Class Children in Nineteenth Century England, Manchester University Press, 1994 are excellent on child labour. They need to be considered in relation to the contested study by Clark Nardinelli Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution, Bloomington, 1990.

[3] For a short summary of the issues see J.T. Ward 'The Factory Movement' in J.T.Ward (ed.) Popular Movements 1830-1850, Macmillan, 1970, pp.78-94.

Work in Victorian Britain

 

The advent of mechanisation and the spread of more specialist forms of farming helped changed both the nature of work and household structures. By 1800 the earning of wages became increasingly important for the survival of working class families. The process of manufacture moved outside the home though the transition had never been total. Earlier forms of domestic production, in clothing, toy-making and now even computer services, are still visible today. Employment was as diverse and the locations for that employment.  It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of work in working class life. Work helped determine two fundamental elements of working class existence: the ways in which workers spent many, if not most, of their waking hours; and the amounts of money they had to their disposal. Work also determined most other aspects of working class life: the standards of living they enjoyed; standards of health; the type of housing they lived in; the nature of the family and neighbourhood life; the ways in which leisure time was spent and the social, political and other values that were adopted[1].

A transition in work

The swing away from domestic forms of production can be roughly explained by three developments: the growth of population, the extension of enclosure with a consequent reduction in demand for rural labour and the advent of mechanised production boosting productivity and fostering the growth of new towns and cities. The result was a change in the structure of the labour market.

1. The enclosure of common lands had a profound impact on the livelihood of rural workers and their families. It led to a contraction of resources for many workers and a greater reliance on earnings. The spread of enclosure pushed rural labourers on to the labour market in a search for work that was made the more frenzied by falling farm prices and wages between 1815-35, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic war. The result of the growth in labour supply and agricultural depression was the collapse of farm service in the south and east of the country. It had been customary for farm workers to be hired for a year, to enter service in another household and to live with another family, receiving food, clothes, board and a small annual wage in return for work, only living out when they wished to marry.
2. Added to this was the development of factory-based textile production that had a profound effect on the other source of earned income for rural workers: outwork. Different parts of the country were associated with different types of product: lace-making round Nottingham, stocking-knitting in Leicester, spinning and weaving of cotton and wool in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The appearance of the mills damaged the status and security of some very skilled branches of outwork. Many rural households found themselves thrown into poverty as such work became increasingly scarce and available only at pitifully low rates of pay. The fate of the handloom weavers, stocking-frame knitters and silk weavers in the 1830s and 1840s, all reflected the impact of technological change on the distribution of work[2]. Textiles were not the only industry to experience such structural changes. In both town and country, mechanisation had a marked impact on a wide variety of employments and the position of some skilled workers was undermined while the demand for new skills grew.

Urban workers had always been more reliant on the cash nexus [wages] than had their rural counterparts. Pre-industrial towns had tended to be commercial centres [markets] rather than centres of manufacture and employment there had been more specialised than elsewhere. Small units of production in which worked skilled artisans, providing local services and goods rather than commodities for export operated largely on a domestic basis through frequently under the control of the craft guilds. These stipulated modes of recruitment and training and the quality of products and founded the vocabulary of the rights of 'legal' or 'society' men who worked in 'legal' shops that permeated craft unions in the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century saw the position of the skilled urban artisan increasingly under threat from semi-skilled and less well-trained workers.

The Elizabethan Statute of Artificers [or Apprentices] 1563 provided a legal framework of craft regulation but had fallen into abeyance long before its apprenticeship clauses were repealed in 1811. Under the old system of apprenticeship, the pupil was formally indentured at 14-16 and joined a master's house for a period traditionally specified as seven years before being recognised as a journeyman, qualified to practice the trade. It was also usual for journeymen to 'live in', entitled to bed, board and wages in return to work, only moving out on marriage. Often journeymen tramped the country in search of work in part to extend their experience and knowledge of their trade but also to escape increasingly uncertain employment prospects in their immediate locality[3]. To become a master the journeyman had to produce his 'masterpiece', demonstrating his mastery of the skills of the specific trade. From the early nineteenth century fewer apprentices were completing their indentures and journeymen's wages were falling, both signs that employers were no longer bothered about hiring only men who had served their time. This led to a dilution in the labour force and an increased blurring of the boundaries between 'society' and 'non-society' men, a situation made worse by the mechanisation of production that required fewer skills than handwork.

The nature of training for skilled work changed; apprenticeships were shortened and concentrated on specific skills rather than on an extensive understanding of all aspects of production. Lads worked alongside journeymen rather than being attached to a master's household with various adverse results

• The new system bore heavily on apprentices' families, who frequently still paid for indentures while the apprentice lived at home and could expect little or no wages for his efforts until his time was served.
• The old stipulated ratios between journeymen and boys were increasingly ignored and apprentices became a cheap alternative for adult labour thus depressing the adult labour market.
• Such developments were resented by the journeymen expected to train recruits, souring relations and often making training uncooperative.
• The fate of boys was instant dismissal as soon as they were old enough to command an adult rate

Such practices were more common during depressed times. This abuse of apprenticeship provoked sporadic industrial disputes as skilled workers tried to protect their position and to prevent their trade from being flooded [or diluted] by excess labour.

At the same time, new mechanised processes facilitated cheaper forms of bulk production. As a result the market became saturated with semi-skilled workers, who knew something of the trade but did not possess the full range of skills expected of the qualified man. Henry Mayhew[4], chronicling London's labour market in the 1840s, contrasted the position of the 'honourable' tradesman with the 'slop' workers whose wages and product undercut old recognised prices and reduced job security long assumed to belong to the man with an established craft.

The most obvious impact of industrialisation was found in the more intense and strictly disciplined nature of work in those industries transformed by the new technology: textiles, coal-mining, metal-processing and engineering. Early mills were manned by convict and pauper labour [mostly children] because the regularity of work was alien to the adult population used to a greater degree of autonomy in conducting their working lives. The higher wages available in factories provided insufficient compensation for this loss of 'freedom'. Impoverished handloom weavers would send their daughters to work on the power looms but resisted the prospect themselves. Hours in the early factories were probably no longer than those in the domestic trades but what made it far less acceptable was the mind-crushing tedium of the work involved, the loss of public feast days and holidays and, for middle class commentators, the physical consequences of long hours and the appalling conditions in the factory towns.

The growth of labour market conditions in the nineteenth century makes it quite impossible to make clear distinctions between the employed, the unemployed, the underemployed, the self-employed and the economically inactive. Subcontracting was rife, notably in the clothing trade where middlemen 'sweated' domestic women to earn a profit. The 'slop' end of the fashion and furnishing trades competed frantically for such orders as were available at almost any price. Casualism became more visible towards 1900 as cities spread in size. Short-term engagements and casual employment were particularly associated with the docks and the construction industries.

Diversities

Variations in standards of living, wages and working conditions were at least as great in towns as in the countryside. Average urban wages were certainly higher but so were rent and food so that urban dwellers were not necessarily better off than their rural counterparts. Women's wages were invariably well below those of men and families dependent on a sole female wage earner were among the poorest of the urban population[5]. Jobs guaranteeing a regular weekly wage, with little cyclical unemployment, were rare, highly prized and jealously guarded. Cyclical unemployment was the norm for most workers and was a major factor in the urban labour market and in turn had a significant impact on standards of living, quality of housing and the residential areas to which people could aspire.

The urban population was organised in hierarchical terms, largely in terms of levels of skill[6]:

At the base of the urban labour hierarchy were the genuinely casual workers who formed a residual labour force that was often entered on initial migration to a town when no other work was available. Such work as hawking and street trading, scavenging, street entertainment, prostitution and some casual labouring and domestic work fell into this category. Below these were begging and poor relief.

1. Casual trades were largely concentrated in large cities, especially London, and the number fluctuated considerably.
2. Very low and irregular incomes condemned families dependent on casual work to rooms in slums, but in London they would emerge from the rookeries of St Giles to sell their goods in the cities or in middle class residential districts.
3. Large numbers of street traders in prosperous middle class areas caused antagonism and sometimes fear so that the police were often called to control street trading activities helping to reinforce middle class stereotypes of a dirty and dangerous sub-class that should be confined to the slums.

Above the casual street traders was a whole range of unskilled mainly casual occupations in which workers were hired for a few hours at a time and could be laid off for long periods without notice. These included labourers in the building trades, in sugar houses and other factories, carters, shipyard workers and especially dockers. All towns had such workers but they were especially important in port cities such as London, Liverpool, Bristol and London and in industries like coal mining or clothing that had a partly seasonal market.

1. Precise numbers involved in casual work are impossible to determine. In Liverpool over 22 per cent of the employed population in 1871 were general, dock or warehouse labourers, many casual. When in work Liverpool dockers earned high wages, ranging from 27s for quay porters to 42s for a stevedore but few maintained such earnings for any length of time and in a bad week many earned only a few shillings.
2. Conditions changed little between 1850 and 1914. They were frequently in debt and regularly pawned clothes. In good times they would eat meat or fish but normally their diet consisted largely of bread, margarine and tea. Illness or industrial injury [common in dangerous dockland working conditions] would have led to financial disaster.
3. Casual workers needed to live close to their workplace since employment was often allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Liverpool dockers mostly lived close to the docks and this limited their housing choice to old, insanitary but affordable accommodation.

Factories provided more regular employment after 1830 as did public services as railway companies and many commercial organisations. Skilled manual labour was relatively privileged: a Lancashire skilled cotton spinner earned 27-30s per week in 1835 and a skilled iron foundry worker up to 40s. In coal mining skilled underground workers earned good wages and in key jobs such as shot-firing, putting, hewing and shaft sinking usually had regular employment although this often meant moving from colliery to colliery and between coalfields.

1. Textile towns like Manchester, Bradford and Leeds and metal and engineering centres such as Sheffield and the Black Country tended to suffer less from poverty from irregular earnings than cities like Glasgow, Cardiff, Liverpool or London.
2. Skilled engineering trades were amongst the earliest to unionise, along with artisans and craftsmen, particularly in London and northern industrial towns[7]. They protected their interests jealously and, despite some dilution in their position, they commanded higher wages and regular employment. This conferred many advantages: renting a decent terrace house in the suburbs thus avoiding the squalor of Victorian slums but with a long walk to work or the use of the 'workmen's trains'.

After 1850 the number of workings in white-collar occupations increased and a lower middle class emerged among the petit-bourgeoisie of small shopkeepers and white-collar salaried occupations of clerks, commercial travellers and schoolteachers. White-collar employment increased from 2.5 per cent of the employed population in 1851 to 5.5 per cent by 1891.

1. Such employment was found in all towns but especially in commercial and financial centres such as Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and Bristol.  White-collar workers were a diverse group: insurance and bank clerks commanded the highest incomes of over £3 per week and the greatest prestige; in contrast railway clerks often earned little more than skilled manual workers but had greater security of employment. White-collar employees certainly perceived themselves, and were perceived by others, to be in a secure and privileged position.
2. White-collar workers could afford not only a decent terrace house, but by 1880 could commute over longer distances by public transport, especially after 1880 when the suburban railway and tram network were established.
3. Despite long hours of work for clerks and shopkeepers, their occupations were less hazardous than most factory employment and, with more regular incomes and better housing, they were more likely to enjoy good health than most industrial workers.

Women were employed in all categories of work and in textile districts female factory employment was very significant. Single women often entered domestic service but married women who needed to supplement a low male wage or widows supporting several children, were severely limited in choice. Away from the textile districts most found work as domestic cleaners, laundry workers, in sewing, dressmaking, boot and shoemaking and other trades carried on either in the home of small workshops. Wages were always low with piece rates producing incomes ranging from 5s. to 20s per week.

• The proportion of women in industry declined from the 1890s, except in unskilled and some semi-skilled work but their role in higher professional, shop and clerical work increased.
• The telephone and typewriter revolution from the 1880s saw the army of male clerks replaced by female office workers.
• The revolution in retailing provided additional employment for women and by 1911 one-third of all shop assistants were female.

The number of women in commerce and many industries increased between 1891 and 1951, but the proportion of women in paid employment hardly changed and remained around 35 per cent. But the characteristics of female employment changed substantially. Before 1914 domestic service was still the overwhelming source of employment for women and girls, though the clothing and textile trades employed more women than men. Women, however, were also beginning to infiltrate the lower grade clerical and service occupations. In 1901 13 per cent of clerks were women, but by 1911 this had risen to 21 per cent, though the higher clerical grades remained almost exclusively male. Nevertheless the employment status of women remained inferior to that of men: in 1911 52.1 per cent of women occupied semi-skilled or unskilled jobs compared to 40.6 per cent of men.

The major restructuring of the British economy brought significant changes in the working conditions and operation of the labour market after 1890. Women played an increasingly important role in the workforce, new technology and machinery created different jobs demanding new and often less individually crafted skills. Older workers, particularly in heavy industries, often found it difficult to adjust to new work practices. The years 1890-1914 were a transitional period that retained many of the characteristics of the nineteenth century economy whilst signs of the new work patterns of the inter-war years began to develop.

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[1] John Benson The Working Class in Britain 1850-1939, Longman, 1989, pp.9-38 is the best introduction to this issue. Patrick Joyce (ed.) The historical meanings of work, CUP, 1987 is an excellent collection containing a seminal introduction by the editor. Patrick Joyce 'Work' in F.M.L. Thompson (ed.) The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750-1950: volume 2 People and their environment, CUP, 1990, pp.131-194 is a short summary of recent research.

[2] See Duncan Bythell The Handloom Weavers, CUP, 1969 and The Sweated Trades, Batsford, 1978 for a detailed discussion of this issue.

[3] See E.J. Hobsbawm 'The tramping artisan' in his Labouring Men, Weidenfeld, 1964, pp.34-63 and E.P.Thompson The Making of the English Working Class, Gollancz, 1963, Penguin, 1968 and 'Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism', first published in Past and Present, no.38 [December 1967], reprinted in Customs in Common, Merlin, 1991, pp.352-403.

[4] Henry Mayhew London Labour and the London Poor, 1861-2, 4 volumes, New York, 1968 and E.P.Thompson and E. Yeo (eds.) The Unknown Mayhew: Selections from the Morning Chronicle 1849-50, Penguin, 1971 provide evidence for the 1850s and should be used in conjunction with the six volumes of his The Morning Chronicle Survey of Labour and the Poor, 1849-50, Caliban, 1980. Anne Humpherys Travels into the Poor Man's Country: The Work of Henry Mayhew, University of Georgia Press, 1977 is the most recent biography.

[5] On this see Elizabeth Roberts Women's Work 1840-1940, Macmillan, 1988.

[6] For a classification of the labouring population up to 1850 see Richard Brown Society and Economy in Modern Britain 1700-1850, Routledge, 1991, pp.323-328.

[7] On the emergence of trade unions see Henry Pelling A history of Trade Unionism, Penguin, 5^th., ed., 1990, Ben Pimlott and Chris Cook (eds.) Trade Unions in British Politics: The First 250 Years, Longman, 2^nd., ed., 1991 and the more specific John Rule (ed.) British Trade Unions 1750-1850: The Formative Years, Longman, 1988.

The Northern Star

Although the Northern Star has been available for several months on-line via the British Library, unfortunately access is limited to institutions or within the British Library itself.  On 13th May, as the culmination of a three-year project entitled Nineteenth Century Serial Editions, a free, fully searchable online edition of the Northern Star and five other newspapers will become available.  This will be a real boon for anyone interested in Chartism.

The Chartist press provided an important unifying force within the movement[1]. The press provided a bridge with earlier movements, especially the ‘unstamped newspaper’ campaign involving Henry Hetherington, Bronterre O’Brien and John Cleave[2]. There was some continuity between the ‘War of the Unstamped’ and Chartism with the same people acting as agents, distributors, journalists and publishers. O’Connor was a prominent speaker for the unstamped press both in and out of parliament. In 1836, the Newspaper Act reduced the stamp duty to 1d. The Northern Star said the reduction “made the rich man’s paper cheaper and the poor man’s paper dearer”. The Northern Star was the most important and long-lived of the radical newspapers, published weekly[3]. It was important because it gave an understanding of Chartism to the working classes. It was in print before the Charter was drawn up and before the establishment of the National Charter Association. Initially it advocated factory reform and supported the Ten-Hour Movement and anti-Poor Law campaigns. These merged into Chartism. It also gave Chartism some semblance of unity. The London Working Men’s Association did not lead the way in print media.

The Northern Star existed for about fifteen years and sold at 4½d a copy in 1837, rising to 5d in 1844, a high cost, considering the targeted group. Because it was so expensive, it was common for people to contribute halfpennies towards the cost and then share the paper. The sales figures should be multiplied by about twenty to give some idea of its true audience.

How did the paper begin?

Initially, it was a Barnsley newspaper produced by William Hill in Peel Street. Hill, a preacher from Hull, was in financial difficulties so he sold the paper to Feargus O’Connor. O’Connor moved it to Leeds where he raised funds by popular subscription besides putting in his own money. O’Connor owned a landed estate in County Cork that gave him an income of £750 per annum. Comments from contemporaries suggest that Hill was a rather unsympathetic individual but under his editorship from 1837 to 1843, the Northern Star was an excellent paper. There is little doubt that in its most successful years, the paper owed an enormous amount to Hill’s guidance. Joshua Hobson and George Julian Harney then took over. In November 1844, it was moved to London.

Its full name was the Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser. The first issue appeared in Leeds was on 17^th November 1837 as a stamped paper at a cost of 4½d. It was published and printed by Joshua Hobson. The Northern Star was aggressively radical in tone. It was concerned with radical reform, violently opposed the Poor Law Amendment Act and supported the unstamped press and the Ten-Hour Movement. Even before the publication of the Charter, the Northern Star established the movement, which was to become Chartism. Other (later) editors included John Ardill, a Leeds brass-moulder, clerk and milk-seller, and Bronterre O’Brien, who had edited Hetherington’s Poor Man’s Guardian.  Distribution was a popular movement in its own right. Agents became local organisers and local organisers became agents. Its circulation in some areas was enough to provide the distributor (who might also act as a reporter) a living. The paper thus gave Chartism a semi-professional local leadership. People were encouraged to send in reports of meetings, articles, letters and comments -- and did so by the hundreds: the Northern Star therefore gave a national perspective to Chartism.

How was it financed?

O’Connor sank much of his own money into the paper, but public subscriptions were raised at £1 per share with 10% interest. The paper’s success was immediate and the subscribers got a good return on their investment. Some eventually got their money back, which usually was unheard of. £690 was subscribed; £500 of this was from Leeds, Hull, Halifax, Bradford and Huddersfield. Because the Northern Star was a stamped newspaper, accurate records of its sales are available.

 

Year	Average sales per week
1838	10,000
1839	17,640
The average sales for 1839	36,000 copies a week - the height of Chartist activity. Sales did rise to 50,000 copies a week during 1839
1840	18,000
1841	13,000
1842	12,500
1843	9,000
1845-6	6,000 or less (6,000 probably the break-even point)
1847-8	12,500
1850-1	5,000 and less

 

Throughout most of its career, the Northern Star was a financial asset to O’Connor, who seems to have poured the money straight back into the movement.

Policy

The Northern Star initially was not a vehicle for Chartism because Chartism did not exist at the time. It only became a Chartist paper after 1838. Its readership is likely to have been in excess of sales because the paper was bought by groups or placed in coffee houses and/or public houses and it was read aloud for the benefit of the illiterate. The Northern Star was a mixture of education, encouragement and advice. It reported on all aspects of Chartism and gave a complete picture of what was going on. It even included articles from rivals and opponents of Feargus O’Connor. It was a full-sized paper and had a greater circulation than the Leeds Mercury[4]. It contained advertisements, general and commercial news, national and local reports, letters, editorials and reviews. Because it had so many local reporters, its news coverage was one of the best in the country for the sort of events that interested Chartists. It was a good, professional newspaper.

How did the paper develop?

O’Connor was central to its existence, and it was an important factor in his leadership of Chartism. The Northern Star kept him in the forefront of people’s interest, even when O’Connor was in York gaol between 1840 and 1841. He emerged from imprisonment with his reputation much enhanced. There is some discussion as to whether he used the paper merely to advance his own political career or because he really wanted to educate the working class. A daily evening paper, the Evening Star, was attempted between July 1842 and February 1843 but it failed.

In November 1844, O’Connor moved the Northern Star to London as the Northern Star and National Trades Journal in an attempt to broaden the base of support. Hobson went as editor but disliked London. Harney then took over, helped by G. A. Fleming and Ernest Jones. In 1849, O’Connor and Harney quarrelled over ‘red republicanism’ and Harney left. William Rider, a Leeds radical, took over for a few months and then in 1850 Fleming took over. In 1852, he bought it for £100. On 20^th March 1852, it appeared as just The Star, a radical paper but no longer a Chartist medium.  In April 1852, it was taken over by Harney for a few months as the Star of Freedom, and then it collapsed. The end of the Northern Star in many respects marks the end of Chartism. Donald Read says of the sales figures for the Northern Star: “As well as showing the extent of working-class political enthusiasm, these [sales] figures prove that illiteracy was not an obstacle to the success of a working-class newspaper, despite the low standard of educational provision for the poor at this time”[5].

What was the importance of the Northern Star?

1. It kept Chartism alive, with a sense of continuity. Chartism was held together by the Northern Star, which welcomed and reported all radical initiatives of all types: Owenism, co-operation, trade union activity and so on. Its readership was larger than its circulation and it had a high quality of staff and news.
2. The circulation of the Northern Star, taken together with the many smaller or short-lived journals amounted to an enormous number of pages of print. If the great mass of pamphlet literature is added to this, it becomes clear that Chartism was in many places a movement of literate people. How far the printed word was a unifying force and how far it was divisive is a difficult question. The press provided a sense of national unity that the platform could not provide. It reached districts regularly, which would have been inaccessible to speakers or organisers. But it also allowed oppositional views to be circulated and some papers, like the National Reformer published in the Isle of Man between 1844 and 1847, were largely concerned with carrying on personal vendettas against other leaders.
3. Its popularity helped O’Connor to dominate Chartism. His letters and speeches were given prominent coverage.
4. It played on the baser instincts of the workers and encouraged class conflict by flattering the virtues of Chartists, and hence was opposed by such men as Lovett and Place. The paper appealed at some level to most of the active people in the movement.
5. As an early exercise in mass working-class propaganda, it alarmed the government.

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[1] Dorothy Thompson The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood Press, 1984, pages 55-70 contains an excellent discussion of the Chartist press.

[2] Short biographies of John Cleave can be found in J. Bellamy and J. Saville (eds.) Dictionary of Labour History, volume VI, 1982, pages 59-64 and Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, volume 2: 1830-1870, Brighton, 1984, pages 138-141

[3] Stephen Roberts ‘Who wrote to the Northern Star?’, in Owen Ashton, Robert Fyson and Stephen Roberts (eds.) The Duty of Discontent: Essays for Dorothy Thompson, Mansell, 1995, pages 55-70 is a valuable study of readership.

[4] Donald Read Press and People 1790-1850: Opinion in Three English Cities, Arnold, 1961 examines the development of the largely middle class press in Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield. He also discusses the Northern Star, pages 49-50 and 98-102.

[5] Donald Read Press and People 1790-1850: Opinion in Three English Cities, Edward Arnold, 1961, page 101.

Voluntary action: Mutual Aid and Self-Help

Mutual aid started spontaneously on a local level. It became a custom for groups of men to meet in the local inn for a drink on payday, and to contribute a few pence a week to a common fund. From these simple beginnings, friendly societies, trade unions, housing associations, people's banks and co-operatives were all to develop.

Rose's Act of 1793 required friendly societies to register and laid down rules for their operation. The provision made by friendly societies varied. Some were primarily burial societies, protecting the working classes against the feared pauper's funeral. Some provided for widows and children, or for sick or aged members. Some were 'collecting' societies, pre-cursors of the People's Banks. Some were 'dividing' societies that had a share-out from time to time, often at Christmas. It was almost exclusively a male movement, though there were three 'female' clubs in the villages of Cheddar, Wrington and Shipham in the 1790s.  The first housing society was founded in Birmingham in 1781 and by 1874 there were some 2,000. They developed in two rather different ways:

1. Housing associations that had a philanthropic element, and built for the working classes.
2. Building societies that were mainly a means of investment for the middle classes.
3. Many subscribers made quarterly payments -- they were not weekly wage earners. Building societies were not friendly societies and their legal position was obscure until the passing of the Building Societies Act 1836.

People's Banks grew naturally out of the collecting societies. As wages improved for some classes of skilled workers, they needed a safe place to keep their limited reserved. By the second half of the nineteenth century there were village banks and municipal banks among many other forms of savings institutions. The Post Office Savings Bank dates from 1861 -- an innovation by Sir Rowland Hill, who introduced the penny post in 1840.

The co-operative movement had its origins in the eighteenth century and in the pioneering work of Robert Owen. But the idea of linking labour directly to the sale of goods without the intervention of the capitalist class survived until in 1844 a group of flannel weavers in Rochdale set up a shop in a warehouse in Toad Lane to sell their own produce. They sold at market prices but gave members of their society a dividend on their purchases that could be reinvested. This encouraged 'moral buying as well as moral selling'. Co-operative production did not last more than a few decades but co-operative retailing flourished.

'Heaven helps those who help themselves'. Samuel Smiles announced at the beginning of Self-Help published in 1859[1]. An example of his own philosophy, he was apprenticed to a group of medical practitioners at the age of fourteen after his father died of cholera and studied in his spare time gaining a medical diploma from Edinburgh university. He abandoned medicine, first for journalism and then for the exciting world of the developing railway system. From 1854 he managed the South-Eastern Railway from London. His experience provided Smiles with his main theme: 'The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.... help from without is often enfeebling, but help from within invariably invigorates.'

Bad luck or lack of opportunity was no excuse. There were many examples of development by men who started from humble beginnings and achieved wealth and fame: Isaac Newton, James Watt, George Stephenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  Smiles preached a gospel of social optimism. Self-Help was followed by a series of other books with similarly promising titles: Character [1871], Thrift [1875] and Duty [1880]. These never achieved the overwhelming success of Self-Help and over the years the message became somewhat repetitive; but it had made its mark.

In Victorian Britain, philanthropy, mutual aid and self-help were contrasting and often competing philosophies. The three voluntary movements were in many respects complementary to one another, providing different pieces of the jigsaw of future social service provision. Philanthropy was tender-minded, stressing the extent of social misery. At worst it was patronising and snobbish, but at best, it had the merit of reaching the poorest and most disadvantaged classes in a divided society and developing a public conscience about conditions. Mutual aid was an intensely practical movement for the better-off sections of the working classes. It was not a way out of poverty, but it was a means for supporting and protecting members of society against sudden financial disaster. Self-help was tough-minded, of greatest use to the individualistic and hardworking who were prepared to strive in order to further their own ambitions.

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[1] On Smiles see the chapter in Asa Briggs Victorian People, Penguin, 1975 for a short introduction. Adrian Jarvis Samuel Smiles and the Construction of Victorian Values, Alan Sutton, 1997 considers the issue of respectability from a revisionist perspective

Voluntary action: Philanthropy

If the development of the poor law system was an expression of the 'collectivist impulse', many groups and individuals were trying to tackle the worst evils on a voluntary basis[1]. In 1948 William Beveridge, the author of the modern welfare state, identified three distinct types of voluntary social service:

1. Philanthropy was the movement between the social classes, from the haves to the have-nots.
2. Mutual aid was the attempt by working men to support each other against the predictable crises in their lives: unemployment, sickness, disability, old age and to protect their dependants in the even of their early death.
3. 'Personal thrift' was a matter of making what provision was possible for oneself.

Victorian philanthropy is a highly controversial subject. In its own day, and until recently, it was much admired. By the 1960s a reaction had set in. There was increasing awareness of the humiliation often involved in the ways recipients were offered 'charity' and of the social climbing that often went with charity dinners, charity balls and royal patronage. Derek Fraser expresses this view in mild, but pointed way[2]: 'The Victorian response to the powerlessness (or, as it was often conceived, the moral weakness) of the individual was an over-liberal dose of charity. The phenomenal variety and range of Victorian philanthropy was at once confirmation of the limitless benevolence of a generation and an implicit condemnation of the notion of self-help for all. It was small wonder that self-congratulation was so common a theme in contemporary surveys of Victorian philanthropy. So many good causes were catered for -- stray dogs, stray children, fallen women and drunken men...'

Neither the cynicism of today nor the hero-worship of the past really explain the complexities of philanthropic activity in the Victorian period. Victorian philanthropy is an umbrella term covering a wide range of different activities that took place at many different places and in almost every community by people with a variety of very mixed motives. During this period philanthropy changed both in methods and scope. There were at least four different, though overlapping phases:

• Small-scale voluntary giving of the kind common in the eighteenth century: a landowner might look after his cottagers, a merchant might bequeath a sum of money for the relief of apprentices or indigent seamen or the aged poor of the parish.
• Pioneer work by outstanding individuals like Florence Nightingale, Lord Shaftesbury, Dr Barnardo, General Booth of the Salvation Army, or Octavia Hill, the housing reformer, who brought particular social evils to the public notice. Who were the pioneers and what motivated them? Many of them were neither rich nor aristocratic, though they all had time to spare from the daily grind of earning a living. Lord Shaftesbury[3] was an exception among the landed classes, most of who confined their charitable activities to their own tenants. Many philanthropists came from the comfortable upper middle class. Elizabeth Fry, the prison reformer, was the daughter of a banker and the wife of another. William Tuke, who founded the York Retreat, a model for the humane management of asylums, was a prosperous grocer. Florence Nightingale was the daughter of a wealthy dilettante. Some has a more precarious social background. Octavia Hill was a banker's daughter but the family fell on hard times after her father's death and the girls had to support themselves by some fairly low-level teaching. General Booth was the son of a speculative builder but was apprenticed to a pawnbroker at thirteen. Dr Barnardo went to work at the age of ten as a clerk in a wine merchant's office. Most philanthropists were people of religious conviction. Shaftesbury was a leading Evangelical Churchman and his work as a reformer was a logical consequence of his faith. The Quaker contribution, by such families as the Frys, Tukes, Cadburys and Rowntrees, was particularly innovative. Roman Catholics, Anglo-Catholics and Jewish groups were to develop their own organisation for social care in the second half of the century, but the Evangelicals led the way.
• The work of major national societies and associations often set up by the pioneers, but sometimes developing out of more widely supported local philanthropic effort. In 1861 one survey estimated that there were 640 charitable institutions in London, of which nearly half had been founded in the first half of the century and 144 in the decade after 1850. By the late 1880s, the amount of money involved was very large -- voluntary societies in London alone were handling between £5.5 and £7 million a year.

Practically every denomination had its own 'benevolent' society to cater for its own poor. Anglicans, Nonconformists and Catholics all maintained their own charitable funds and in 1859 the Jewish board of Guardians was set up. These religious societies were often the source of temporary charities in times of economic distress, either national or local. It is important to note that other types of society developed in this period.  Visiting societies attempted to bridge the gap between the so-called 'Two Nations' by personal contact. Many were denominationally based.  The Relief Association launched in 1843 was an Anglican charity led by Bishop Blomfield. These societies made a positive effort to go out and see people in their own homes, while other societies were seeking to provide a sort of refuge for the needy. Housing charities such as the Peabody Trust sought to provide cheap homes for the working classes but it was only Octavia Hill's housing experiments that really reached the destitute. Ragged schools associated with Mary Carpenter and Lord Shaftesbury.

Most of the major modern charitable societies had their origins in the Victorian period and it is important to ask what motivated such a torrent of charity raining down on the poor. It would appear that charity was a response to four types of motivation:

1. A fear of social revolution: there is little doubt that many in the upper and middle classes had a genuine and persistent fear of social revolution and that charity could lift the masses from the depths of despair and out of the hands of radical agitators.
2. A humanitarian concern for suffering: there was a society-wide increase in sensitivity to the suffering of others. Charity was a Christian virtue and many in the nineteenth century and many were moved to try and save souls in the belief that, as Andrew Reed with a lifelong concern with orphans and lunatics put it, 'the Divine image is stamped upon all'. Increasingly religious activity became socially oriented and religion became imbued with an essentially social conscience.
3. A satisfaction of some psychological or social need: charity was seen as a social duty to be done and be seen to be done. Charitable activity was imbued with social snobbery and a royal patron could considerably enhance a society's prospects. Charity assumed the guise of a fashionable social imperative.
4. Charity as a means of social control: many philanthropists preached respectable middle class values -- cleanliness, sobriety, self-improvement and responsibility. The widespread practice of visiting was in effect a cultural assault on the working class way of life. Poverty was seen by few as a function of the economic and social system. The majority assumed that it stemmed from some personal failing. Charity was a way of initiating a moral reformation, of breeding in the individual the self-help mentality that would free him from the thraldom of poverty. Philanthropy was an essentially educative tool; in the words of C.S.Loch 'Charity is a social regenerator.... We have to use charity to create the power of self-help.'

Increasingly by the 1850s doubts were expressed about the effectiveness of the multifarious charities. Two accusations were noted.  First, there was a built-in inefficiency that was an almost inevitable result of the stupendous growth in the number of charities. There was a great deal of duplication of effort and much wasteful competition between rival groups in the same cause. There was sometimes conflict between London and the provinces in national organisations, and the same Church versus Dissent antagonism that characterised Victorian politics plagues Victorian charity.  Secondly, charity was, like the Poor Law, counter-productive, helping to promote that very poverty is sought to alleviate. The radical William Lovett once remarked that 'Charity by diminishing the energies of self-dependence, creates a spirit of hypocrisy and servility.' It may be an over-generalisation to say that the whole concept of charity tended to degrade rather than uplift the recipient. The problem was not lack of effort but the unscientific nature of Victorian charity. The question of whether it reached those who needed it most was one of the main reasons for the creation of the Charity Organisation Society in 1869.

The activities of the Charity Organisation Society, founded in 1869 as the Society for the Organisation of Charitable Relief and the Repression of Mendicity. The COS attempted to place a mass of unregulated charitable activity on a more constructive basis, but earned a reputation for rigidity and harshness in its approach to poor people. Much of the criticism directed against philanthropy relates to the operation of this organisation in the late Victorian period. If any group gave charity a bad name, it was the COS. The problem was that the COS propounded its views in a manner that was punitive, moralistic and highly offensive to other charities.

• The COS was founded at the same time as an important policy statement from the Gladstone government known as the Goschen Minute. George Goschen was President of the Poor Law Board and was concerned to tighten up the Poor Law, which he believed had become too generous, and its administration too lax. It is not clear who inspired whom but the Goschen Minute formed the basis for the activities of the COS. Many of its members were also members of their local Boards of Guardians and they applied themselves with energy their tasks. It is important to make a distinction between the social casework of COS and its social philosophy:
• In method the COS was a pioneering body which was of great significance in the development of professional social casework in the nineteenth century.
• The social philosophy of the COS was rigorously traditional and it became one of the main defenders of the self-help individualist ethic long after it had been challenged on all sides.
• The COS had an essentially dualistic attitude to its work: it was professionally pioneering but ideologically reactionary.
• The early leaders Charles Bosanquet, Edward Denision, Octavia Hill and above all Charles Loch (secretary from 1875 to 1913) all believed that the casework methods should be geared to the moral improvement of the poor and that this was the real purpose of charity. All charities had to be on their guard against fraudulent applicants and this, for the COS, was justification for indiscriminate charity being ended by the vetting of every applicant.

By 1900 there were more than forty COS district offices in London and some 75 corresponding societies in other parts of the country. Their enquiries into individual cases were detailed, severe and highly judgmental, based on the conviction that poverty was a personal failing and that the poor needed to be forced back into self-sufficiency. The COS came into conflict with Dr Barnardo and opposed the Salvation Army with particular bitterness claiming that its work actually created homelessness. Their approach was abrasive, to both potential clients and other more compassionate relief organisations, and earned much of the opprobrium that has been since directed against philanthropy in general. The dominance of the COS approach can be best seen in the Majority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor 1905-09.

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[1] P.H.J.H. Gosden Self-Help: Voluntary Associations in Nineteenth Century Britain, Batsford, 1973 provides a detailed study of ways in which working people provided for themselves against poverty. It should be considered in relation to E. Hopkins Self-Help, UCL, 1995. F. Prochaska The Voluntary Impulse, Faber, 1988 is brief and pithy. O. Checkland Philanthropy in Victorian Scotland: Social Welfare and the Voluntary Principle, John Donald, 1980 extends the argument. G. Finlayson Citizens, State and Social Welfare in Britain 1830-1990, OUP, 1994 is perhaps the best book on the subject of voluntary efforts.

[2] D.Fraser The Evolution of the British Welfare State, 2^nd., ed., pp.124-5.

[3] The definitive biography of Shaftesbury is by G.B.M.Finlayson.

Further reform of the Poor Laws

The effectiveness of the workhouse test in the north was never really verified. From 1837 to 1842 it lay in the grip of hunger and the intermittent collapse of industries. Whole communities went suddenly out of work and in these circumstances the new poor law was impossible to institute or operate. Fanatical opposition to the poor law became a central theme of Chartism and, because it posed a threat to public order, produced a ceaseless campaign against the Commissioners. The Central Board had only been given a five-year lease of life and it was so unpopular when it came up for renewal it was only extended for one year. The result was the abandonment of the workhouse test and less eligibility principle in the north with a return to outdoor relief.

By 1842 the industrial working class had largely won back outdoor relief and the worse of the economic distress was over. The Commission was given five more years of life but its days were numbered. A humanitarian attack began on the conditions in the new workhouses. This criticism gained strength from a series of mistakes, epidemics and scandals that provoked public inquiries and ultimately public demands for reform of the worst abuses. In 1842 the first scandal led to the withdrawal of the rule imposing silence at all meals; the bringing together of families separated into male, female and infant; and the first attempts to separate prostitutes, lunatics and infected persons from the general body of paupers. This process continued gradually until 1847 and the Andover scandal of 1845-6 was the last straw. When the Commission came up for renewal once more in 1847 it was swept aside. The 1847 Act set up a new board consisting of a president, accountable as a member of government to Parliament, and two secretaries, one of whom might be an MP. The 1847 Act had two great merits:

1. It remedied the weakness caused by the old board's independent status: the government was now genuinely responsible and there was a proper channel between the board and parliament.
2. It stilled the long agitation against the new poor law and mean that the new board could undertake a common-sense policy of gradual improvement in peace. It was aided in this by the improved economic situation and by the fact that the laws of settlement were also swept away in 1847.

The achievements of the board between 1847 and 1870 were small but a beginning was made in several fields. In 1848 the first schools for pauper children were set up; in the 1850s outdoor relief was frankly admitted and regulated; by 1860 segregation of different classes of pauper into different quarters of the workhouse was virtually accomplished and the harshness of the old uniform regulations was softened. Even by the 1870s the workhouse was still barbarous in many places and as a system but important changes had taken place:

• More and more money was being spent on the poor and unfortunate without protest.
• Pauperdom, especially for the able-bodied poor, was being increasingly regarded as misfortune rather than a crime or cause for segregation. The stigma of disfranchisement was not removed until 1885.

By the 1860s the Poor law service had moved away from controversy and into a phase of consolidation. The administration became less centralised, less doctrinaire and to some extent less harsh[1]. Inspectors turned to advising on workhouse management rather than applying blind deterrent policies. Boards of Guardians had more freedom to respond to local conditions and outdoor relief was given more frequently. The Lancashire cotton famine of the early 1860s brought matters to a head. Poor law and charity solutions proved inadequate and government, both central and local, thought that it was justifiable to intervene to create employment. The Public Works (Manufacturing Districts) Act 1863 gave powers to local authorities to obtain cheap loans to finance local improvements. This Act, as much as anything, symbolised the failure of the nineteenth century poor law to cope with the problem of large-scale industrial unemployment. Poor law financing was changed in the Union Chargeability Act 1865 that ended the system whereby each union was separately responsible for the cost of maintaining its own poor. In 1871, the Local Government Act set up a new form of central administration -- the Local Government Board combining the work of the Poor Law Board, the Medical Department of the Privy Council and a small Local Government section of the Home Office.

There were attempts by the Local Government Board and its inspectorate during the next decade to reduce the amount of outdoor relief by urging boards of guardians to enforce the regulations restricting outdoor relief more stringently. This meant that using the poor law system as a device to cope with unemployment more difficult and led to the unemployed seeking relief for their condition from other sources. This trend was given official recognition in 1886 when Joseph Chamberlain, the President of the Local Government Board, issued a Circular urging local authorities to undertake public works as a means of relieving unemployment.

The poor law system of the late nineteenth century was gradually moving towards greater specialisation in the treatment of those committed to its care. This can be seen in the increase in expenditure on indoor relief by 113 per cent between 1871-2 and 1905-6, though the number of indoor paupers only increased by 76 per cent. In the conditions of the late nineteenth century the focus shifted from pauperism to an increasing awareness of poverty and to the growing demand for an attack on it. While the Boards of Guardians retained control over paupers, other agencies became more important in dealing with various kinds of poverty:

1. Urban school boards from 1870 and local education authorities after 1902 played a vital role in exposing and dealing with child poverty. School feeding and medical inspections developed out of the work of these bodies not out of the poor law system.
2. At the other end of the age spectrum, opinion was moving in favour of old-age pensions in some form to take the poor out of the sphere of the poor law. A Royal Commission on the Aged Poor that reported in 1895 favoured the improvement of poor law provisions for old people but rejected the pension idea. Four years later, however, a Parliamentary Select Committee on the Aged Deserving Poor reported in favour of pensions.
3. The policy of the Chamberlain Circular of providing work for the unemployed was continued both by local authority and by some philanthropic bodies such as the Salvation Army. In 1904, with unemployment worsening, the Local Government Board encouraged the creation of joint distress committees in London to plan and co-ordinate schemes of work relief for the unemployed. The Unemployed Workmen Act 1905 made the establishment of similar distress committees in every large urban area in the country mandatory. The committees were also empowered to establish labour exchanges, keep unemployment registers and assist the migration or emigration of unemployed workmen. This Act, it has been maintained, marked the culmination of attempts to deal with unemployment through work relief schemes.

With poor relief costs and the numbers on outdoor relief increasing, there were fears for some that the evils of the old Poor Law were being resurrected. The result was the establishment in November 1905 of a Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and the Relief of Distress.

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[1] Poverty in the cities is analysed by J. Treble Urban Poverty in Britain 1830-1914, Batsford, 1979, L. Rose 'Rogues and Vagabonds' Vagrant Underworld in Britain 1815-1985, Routledge, 1988 and Carl Chinn Poverty amidst prosperity: the urban poor in England 1834-1914, Manchester University Press, 1995.

The Andover Workhouse Scandal

The feature of the 1834 legislation that caught the attention of contemporary opinion was not the system of central administration but the threat of seeking relief, with special emphasis being paid to the workhouse test. Official records are stronger on administration that relief, but they do give more attention to the inmates of the workhouse than to those on outdoor relief. In many respects this is unfortunate since the majority of paupers were normally those in receipt of outdoor relief. The statistics of the period suggest that over 80 per cent of paupers were on outdoor relief. In 1837 11 per cent of all paupers had been workhouse inmates; by 1844 the figure was no more than 15 per cent.

The workhouse test was designed to deter the able-bodied poor, but the majority of workhouse inmates were normally the impotent; the physically and mentally disabled, the aged and a wide variety of sick. In dealing with the able-bodied the workhouse test was invariably offered to those regarded as of bad character: aged or diseased prostitutes, ex-criminals, mothers with more than one illegitimate child, known alcoholics and vagrants. Regarded as a refuge for undesirables, the workhouse gave its inmates a greater stigma than applied to those in receipt of outdoor relief.

The Victorian workhouse was faced with the impossible task of providing a refuge for the impotent while deterring the scrounger. In that the mass of the poor regarded the workhouse with considerable dread the deterrent feature had been successfully conveyed, despite the fact that the majority of the inmates were usually unsuitable for such treatment. Indeed for the Webbs, the workhouse became 'shocking to every principle of reason and every feeling of humanity'.

This dismal view corresponds to that of contemporary critics of the 1830s and 1840s such as The Times and the novelist Charles Dickens. The picture of the workhouse presented by its early opponents suggested a life of horror. For even the mildly awkward there were savage beatings and solitary confinement in the most unsuitable of cells. For the majority, existence was endured on a starvation diet, families were ruthlessly separated in the interests of classification, accommodation was overcrowded and unhealthy and daily life was a monotonous routine supervised by unsympathetic officials. Finally, for those unfortunate enough to die in the workhouse, the end was a pauper burial without dignity or respect.

For the modern historian the picture is no longer entirely a study in black. There was much variation between workhouses and those that paid most attention to the directives of the central authority probably provided better food and accommodation than was available to many of the poor who struggled to survive outside. In the case of children and the sick, foundations were being made for future progress, though developments were slow and partial up to the mid -1860s. Most historians accept the conclusions of David Roberts that the sensational stories of cruelties were either false or the result of survivals from the former regime. In a number of cases, such as the flogging of young girls at the Hoo Workhouse or the scandal at Andover, the local authority could be shown to have ignored the directives of the central authority. However, this did not entirely excuse the inadequacy of the supervision that allowed such things to take place.

The Andover scandal was not unique but it was highly publicised and used by those critical of or opposed to the new system. Bone crushing was used in some workhouses as a 'useful' occupation for paupers. Sir Robert Peel's Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, disapproved of it as a means of employing the poor but Commissioner George Nicholls was a great enthusiast and a second Commissioner, Sir George Cornewall Lewis vacillating in his attitude. Andover was regarded, from the Commissioners' point of view, as a model union. All outdoor relief was stopped as soon as the workhouse was opened and it was one of the few unions not to relax this rule during the 'great freeze' of January 1838. The Board's ruthlessness shocked even the Rev. Thomas Mozeley, a convinced opponent of the old system.

At Andover, the work was hard, the discipline strict and the diet scanty. No little indulgences were allowed to creep in. This was due to the choice of ex-sergeant Colin M'Dougal, a veteran of Waterloo, as workhouse master and his wife, Mary Ann, as matron. The local Guardians acknowledged that even this admirable couple had their faults but were only too ready to leave the management of the union's affairs to their domineering chairman. Attempts to end bone crushing at Andover in December 1844 were voted down by the chairman and his supporters. However, during the next few months ugly rumours began to circulate about what went on in the bone-yard in terms of inmates eating the marrow from the decomposing bones. The Guardians took no action, apart from suspending bone crushing during hot weather. Hugh Mundy, a local farmer frequently at odds with his colleagues whom he infuriated by paying his labourers ten shillings a week, two shillings more than his fellow landowners, went public. He turned to Thomas Wakley, who on Friday 1 August 1845, rose to ask the Home Secretary about paupers eating bone marrow at Andover. Sir James Graham replied that he could not believe this situation but promised to institute an enquiry. The following day Henry Parker, the Assistant Commissioner responsible for Andover, was dispatched to ascertain the facts.

His enquiry began on Monday 4 August 1845 and by the next day he was able to report back to London that the charges were true. On 14 August Parker was instructed to investigate any alleged 'neglect or misconduct on the part of the Master or officers of the workhouse'. M'Dougal offered his resignation on 29 September but when Parker, now summoned back to London, suggested consulting the Commission's solicitors about prosecution the lawyers advised against it. The Commission was left with a hostile press, a critical Parliament, a seriously alarmed public and no scapegoat.

Parker now found himself cast in this role. When he drafted a letter from the Board to the Andover Guardians he was accused of trying to throw the blame on the Commissioners. On 16 October Parker was called upon to resign and his only reward for years of devoted service was a suggestion that he should seek work with one of the expanding railway companies. If the Commissioners felt that they had saved themselves by dismissing Parker, they were mistaken. The former Assistant Commissioner published a long pamphlet in his own defence, which indicted his recent superiors, and his case was rapidly taken up by a group of anti-Poor Law MPs.

The public were unhappy about Parker's dismissal and the Commission compounded their error by peremptorily ordering another Assistant Commissioner, William Day, to resign after years of loyal service, nominally because he had been ill for several weeks after falling down some steps. This provided too valuable an opportunity for Edwin Chadwick, still bitter about his treatment by the Commission, who encouraged MPs to keep the issue alive. On 8 November 1845 the Poor Law Commissioners tacitly acknowledged the justice of the attacks made on bone crushing by issuing a General Order forbidding it. This came too late. Public opinion was now seriously alarmed and the government bowed to it. On 5 March 1846 a Select Committee of the House of Commons was established to investigate the Andover scandal, the conduct of the Poor Law Commissioners and the circumstances surrounding Parker's resignation. The fifteen members of the 'Andover committee' -- including three well-known opponents of the workhouse, John Fielden, Thomas Wakley and Benjamin Disraeli -- began work two weeks later. For the next three and a half months they heard evidence from witnesses and their words were reported at length in the press. The New Poor Law, the Whigs who had created it and the gentry who administered it were on trial.

The Report was published in August 1846. It filled two large volumes totalling several thousand pages and contained a scathing indictment of everyone involved. The government announced that it proposed to take no action but it had privately decided that the Commission must go, partly to placate public opinion but also because it had done its work. The poor rates had been cut; outdoor relief for the able-bodied had all but ceased and almost the whole country had been unionised. The time had come when 'the three kings of Somerset House', as the Poor Law Commissioners had been nicknamed by their critics, could safely be replaced by a body with fewer dictatorial powers and directly responsible to Parliament.

When the Act that had extended the life of the Poor Law Commission ran out in 1847 it was not renewed and the Poor Law Board Act was passed in its place. It set up a new body, the Poor Law Board, consisting in theory of four senior ministers [the Home Secretary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord President of the Council and the Lord Privy Seal]. In practice, like the Board of Trade, it was a mere fiction and never intended to meet. The real power lay with its President, who was eligible to sit in Parliament, and his two Secretaries, one of whom could become an MP. It was expected that the President would sit in the House of Lords and the Permanent Secretary in the Commons but in practice both ministers were usually MPs.