Patrick Marcoux

The New Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 introduced some severe order into the poor legal system. It was inspired by new principles and set up new administrative duties. The foremost objective of this new law declared that poor relief should be granted to able-bodied poor and their dependents only in well-regulated workhouses. The Poor Law Commission, those who enforced the New Poor Law, began grouping independent parishes into unions. Each union, under an elected board of trustees, decided how much relief each family or dependent pauper would receive. The Poor Law Commissioners, as representatives of authority, felt that those who were poverty stricken deserved some sort of stigma. Under the authorization of the Poor Law Commissioners, men and women in receipt of relief under the New Poor Law were not only subject to a special discipline and compelled to wear pauper uniforms as a symbol of their inferiority; but they were also robbed of their civil and political rights, including the right to vote. This stigma proved that the New Poor Law of 1834 was a severe poor relief system in England.

According to the conservative London Times, "the New Poor Law was heartless" (Roberts 99). The London Times exposed the misuse of income from endowments by parish union commissioners. These commissioners would take funds, which were intended for charitable purposes, and to provide substantial incomes for parish officials. Instead of issuing adequate relief to paupers, these corrupt commissioners would simply "pocket" a significant sum of the money given to the parish union by private philanthropists and government taxes.

There was an inevitable reaction in the nineteenth century against the excessive harshness of poor law administration. The attempt to treat all children, women, and men as a group in need of assistance was bound to create social as well as administrative difficulties: "To place under the same stringent discipline the young, the sick, the aged, and the able-bodied proved as much of a strain to the administrators as it was a grievance to the poor themselves" ("The Poor Law"). The New Poor Law, in consequence, became almost as subject to local differences as the Old Poor Law of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In many parts of England it proved totally impossible to abolish outdoor relief, like giving alms to the poor in return for their work services. In other parts of England, separate poor law institutions were created for the young and the sick; and in some district parishes, boards of guardians paid small weekly allotments to old men and women who were unable to work. Such signs of philanthropy were bitterly attacked by the faithful supporters of the principles of the New Poor Law. As a result, the development of English democracy helped to relieve some of the harsh behavior of the New Poor Law administrators.