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  • Crime and Poverty in 19th-Century England: The Economy of Makeshifts by A.W. Ager
  • Rosalind Crone (bio)
Crime and Poverty in 19th-Century England: The Economy of Makeshifts, by A.W. Ager; pp. xi + 197. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014, £65.00, £24.99 paper, $120.00, $39.95 paper.

Over the last couple decades, historians of nineteenth-century Britain have successfully appropriated French historian Olwen Hufton’s concept of “the economy of makeshifts” (The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750–1789 [Clarendon, 1974]). Far from being dependent on limited government assistance or on charity dispensed by philanthropic individuals, the Victorian laboring poor had at their disposal a range of legitimate and illegitimate activities which could be employed to aid survival during hard times. Most importantly, studies on aspects of the makeshift economy have substantially contributed to the larger project pursued by the current generation of Victorian scholars: the restoration of agency to the working classes. The laboring poor were not a docile group at the mercy of an expanding, penny-pinching state, but instead individuals who retained some control over their own lives and had the ability to act.

Given the lack of substantial book-length studies of the makeshift economy in the Victorian period, A.W. Ager’s Crime and Poverty in 19th-Century England: The Economy of Makeshifts appears promising. While many of the more in-depth treatments of the makeshift economy span the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Ager firmly locates his work within the period 1830 to 1885. Massive social upheaval caused by [End Page 727] industrialization and urbanization in the first half of the nineteenth century not only increased the vulnerability of agricultural laborers to economic fluctuations by replacing men with machines and forcing the widespread casualization of the workforce, but also curtailed, or even eliminated, crucial aspects of the makeshift economy, such as access to common land and gleaning. At the same time, new discourses about poverty prompted radical legislative change. For example, the 1834 New Poor Law aimed to reduce government spending on welfare by abolishing handouts to able-bodied paupers and by ensuring that conditions in workhouses would deter as many as possible from seeking assistance.

To investigate the impact of these factors, Ager focuses on two specific areas in southern England: Ploughley Hundred in Oxfordshire, a largely rural environment boasting one medium-sized market town and largely untouched by either industrialization or urbanization, and the Medway Basin in Kent, which, although still reliant on agriculture was rapidly becoming more urbanized and included several military towns. It is a sensible and welcome approach. The composition of the makeshift economy is likely to change according to place and space, not to mention peculiar local conditions. And by focusing on documents retrieved from local archives, Ager is able to add some more detail to our understanding of the way in which the New Poor Law, for example, operated at the local level.

But on all the essentials, this book fails to deliver. First, there are serious problems with both Ager’s understanding of the makeshift economy and his attempts to broaden its definition. While chapters 1 through 3 aim to highlight the distinctiveness of the Victorian economy of makeshifts as a result of industrialization, urbanization, and the New Poor Law, Ager concludes this part of his study by stating that the poor had two options: either to enter the workhouse or turn to crime to support their households. This is, frankly, untrue. Even Ager acknowledges much later in the book that out-relief, even for the able-bodied, continued in Southern England under the New Poor Law. And nineteenth-century historians have shown that the poor could also make use of a range of legitimate or legal activities, from pawning possessions to taking in lodgers and keeping livestock. At no point does Ager provide this vital context.

Even Ager’s approach to the criminal aspects of the makeshift economy is flawed. Including forms of protest and vagrancy in the list of options is confusing at best because protest, though usefully showing discontent, was more likely to detract from than add to available resources, and because vagrancy is a...

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