First century of welfare : poverty and poor relief in Lancashire, 1620-1730 / Jonathan Healey.
2014
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Items
Details
Title
First century of welfare : poverty and poor relief in Lancashire, 1620-1730 / Jonathan Healey.
Created/published
Suffolk, UK ; Rochester, NY : Boydell Press, 2014.
Description
xv, 319 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Associated name
Series statement
People, markets, goods : economies and societies in history, 2051-7467 ; volume 4
Summary
The English 'Old Poor Law' was the first national system of tax-funded social welfare in the world. It provided a safety net for hundreds of thousands of paupers at a time of very limited national wealth and productivity. The First Century of Welfare, which focuses on the poor, but developing, county of Lancashire, provides the first major regional study of poverty and its relief in the seventeenth century. Drawing on thousands of individual petitions for poor relief, presented by paupers themselves to magistrates, it peers into the social and economic world of England's marginal people. Taken together, these records present a vivid and sobering picture of the daily lives and struggles of the poor. We can see how their family life, their relations with their kin and their neighbours, and the dictates of contemporary gender norms conditioned their lives. We can also see how they experienced illness and physical and mental disability; and the ways in which real people's lives could be devastated by dearth, trade depression, and the destruction of the Civil Wars. But the picture is not just one of poor folk tossed by the tides of fortune. It is also of agency: about the strategies of economic survival the poor adopted, particularly in the context of a developing industrial economy, of the support they gained from their relatives and neighbours, and of their willingness to engage with England's developing system of social welfare to ensure that they and their families did not go hungry. In this book, an intensely human picture surfaces of what it was like to experience poverty at a time when the seeds of state socail welfare were being planted. -- from back cover.
Bibliography, etc.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 258-298) and index.
Contents
Introduction: The first century of welfare
Marginality and misfortune: poverty in the first century of welfare
Historians and the poor
Conclusion: 'deserving' poverty
Part I: Contexts
1. Lancashire, 1600-1730: A developing society
Landscape and people
Population and demography
Agriculture
Industry and trade
Social structure
Conclusion: a developing society
2. The arrival and growth of poor relief
The sixteenth-century background
The response to '39 Elizabeth'
The Civil War and after
Parish and township
Obtaining relief: meeting needs to resources
Conclusion
3. Pauper tales
Records of relief: the account of overseers of the poor
Censuses of the poor
Voices of the poor? Pauper petitions
The politics of petitioning
Understanding poverty and poor relief
Part II: Marginality
4. Marginal people: Descending into poverty?
Decayed households? Social mobility in pauper petitions, 1626-1710
Conclusion
5. Resourceful people: Survival strategies of the Lancashire poor
Self-sufficiency: land, property and labour
Dependence on others: kin, neighbours and charity
Conclusion
Part III: Misfortune
6. Dependent people: Endemic poverty
Multiple hardships
Old age
Ill health
The nuclear household: formation and breakdown
Economic risk
Environmental risk
Conclusion
7. Crisis poverty
Poverty crises in Lancashire, 1630-1715: a chronology
Crises, 1630-70
Dearth and depression: the crisis of 1674-75
Crises, 1680-1715
'Never so sickley a time known': the crisis of 1727-30
Conclusion
Conclusion: Worldly crosses.
Marginality and misfortune: poverty in the first century of welfare
Historians and the poor
Conclusion: 'deserving' poverty
Part I: Contexts
1. Lancashire, 1600-1730: A developing society
Landscape and people
Population and demography
Agriculture
Industry and trade
Social structure
Conclusion: a developing society
2. The arrival and growth of poor relief
The sixteenth-century background
The response to '39 Elizabeth'
The Civil War and after
Parish and township
Obtaining relief: meeting needs to resources
Conclusion
3. Pauper tales
Records of relief: the account of overseers of the poor
Censuses of the poor
Voices of the poor? Pauper petitions
The politics of petitioning
Understanding poverty and poor relief
Part II: Marginality
4. Marginal people: Descending into poverty?
Decayed households? Social mobility in pauper petitions, 1626-1710
Conclusion
5. Resourceful people: Survival strategies of the Lancashire poor
Self-sufficiency: land, property and labour
Dependence on others: kin, neighbours and charity
Conclusion
Part III: Misfortune
6. Dependent people: Endemic poverty
Multiple hardships
Old age
Ill health
The nuclear household: formation and breakdown
Economic risk
Environmental risk
Conclusion
7. Crisis poverty
Poverty crises in Lancashire, 1630-1715: a chronology
Crises, 1630-70
Dearth and depression: the crisis of 1674-75
Crises, 1680-1715
'Never so sickley a time known': the crisis of 1727-30
Conclusion
Conclusion: Worldly crosses.
Series
People, markets, goods ; v. 4.
Place of creation/publication
Great Britain -- England.
Item Details
Call number
HV245 .H43 2014