Protesting about Pauperism: Poverty, Politics and Poor Relief in Late-Victorian England, 1870–1900 (review)

The story of the late-nineteenth-century crusades to cut the cost of poor relief by restricting and, where possible, removing outdoor relief in order to force both the deserving and undeserving poor into the workhouse has been eclipsed by historians' perceptions that, by the turn of the twentieth century, attitudes towards poverty had taken a more humanitarian turn. In this meticulously researched book, Elizabeth Hurren reminds readers that the last three decades of the nineteenth century witnessed one of the most punitive episodes in the life of the poor law. The crusades against outdoor relief began as an attempt to force able-bodied, idle, and habitual beggars into the workhouse, but an influential lobby of politicians, civil servants, and well-known philanthropists pushed for the complete withdrawal of outdoor relief. Driving such extreme measures was a desire to cut taxes, framed within a rationale based upon classic political economy and a self-help ethos. As Hurren observes, the removal of outdoor relief shifted philanthropic rhetoric away from a "mixed economy of welfare" and the "makeshift" economies of the poor to emphasise individual responsibility. Throughout the book Hurren italicises the terms "crusader" and "crusade." This mirrors existing historiographical language, but the italics also underline the fervour with which crusaders pursued their cause. Indeed, Hurren's scholarship bristles with a sense of the injustice of punitive reforms packaged in the rhetoric of welfare-to-work schemes.

Hurren's book is divided into three parts. Part 1 offers a rigorous and informative overview of the machinery, rationale, and administration of the New Poor Law in a national context alongside a comprehensive introduction to the key arguments of the crusaders and those who opposed their measures. Part 2 introduces Hurren's case study analysis of the crusades in practice, first, by setting the regional stage for poor law administration and, second, by outlining the implementation of the crusades within the Brixworth Union, a relatively large rural poor law union in Northamptonshire. Part 3, the bulk of the book, unpicks the particulars of agricultural labourers' experiences of poverty, their responses to the reforms, and the campaigns to reinstate outdoor relief. While contributing to the wealth of historical material on "being" poor, Hurren's chief success is integrating that story within a broader appreciation of mixed local welfare economies. Her rich empirical material also enables Hurren to establish the personal networks driving poor law governance and philanthropic organisation, an area that remains under-researched in the busy field of poverty studies.

Hurren's decision to focus on the Brixworth Union is important. One of the book's key arguments is that historians' concentration on urban contexts has fostered the perception that the crusades had relatively limited impact. Examining Brixworth, one of the seven most effective crusading unions, Hurren demonstrates the enormous consequences (psychological, communal, personal, and financial) of removing outdoor relief. Unpicking the minutiae of a rural seasonal economy, Hurren highlights why outdoor relief was so pivotal to the makeshift economies of the agricultural labouring classes and, consequently, why the removal of a "right" to outdoor assistance had such devastating effects: parish guardians refused to pay for burials and sent families literally "begging" for charitable assistance in burying their dead. Indeed, the success of crusading rested partially on forcing the poor to turn to other charitable agencies for welfare aid. Similarly, Hurren demonstrates the importance of the rural within the national administrative framework: the successes of the crusades in Brixworth were championed by the Local Government Board while national criticism of the crusades used Brixworth as an example of the harsh economic impact on respectable labourers—particularly the aged poor—and the potential for poor law reform to ignite social unrest. Moreover, that the management of the poor law in Brixworth was engineered primarily by just three key players—a prominent landowner, a Conservative MP, and a parson—illustrates the dynamism...