Poverty and Welfare in England, 1700-1850: A Regional Perspective (review)

The scholarship on the Poor Laws is so vast, so valued, and apparently so well-known in Britain that King can assume his readers to be familiar with "institutional, administrative, and legal approaches" to the subject (2, 18). For example, on the legal approach (as in the works of Sidney and Beatrice Webb) and on how local administrators might have interpreted the laws, King shrugs, "[t]his is an old potato, and one which has been covered in a variety of other works" (18).¹

The novelty of the book is in its attempt to establish a "regional picture" and interpretation of poverty and welfare in England. King wants to "refocus attention" away from "enormous generalizations" about a national system and toward regional, and therefore multiple, stories of "community responses to poverty." It is easy to sympathize with King's intent. In the United States, even the diligent reader could be pardoned for believing that America had no Poor Laws west of the Great Lakes or south of the Ohio River. A leading text by Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse (New York, 1986), tells the nation's story with a couple of case studies of Erie County, New York. Unfortunately, King grieves extensively over the proper methodology for mapping distinct regions, thereby tripling the length of the book.

Drawing upon primary and secondary materials collected from scattered attics and archives for more than a decade, King argues "there was a distinct spatial flavour to the character and role of the old and new poor laws" (256; his emphasis). He pulls back from the emphasis. He is a historian, not a game theorist (256).

An examination of account books allows King to observe that the benefit package in the south "tended to be substantially higher than the package offered in the north and west. By the end of the eighteenth century, regular allowances of at least 2-3s. per week were common in southern and eastern communities, and regular pensioners could expect to supplement their pension income by an average of 30 per cent through irregular payments in cash and kind" (257). King believes that relief in the south and east was given "with good grace" and that southern welfare—including the workhouse—was "humane." By contrast, he finds that the income replacement in the north and west was 10 or 20 percent. He distinguishes "two cultures" of welfare—a "harsh north and west against a more relaxed and inclusive south and east—a culture of making do against a culture of dependency" (258-259).

Regrettably, the book does not contain a statistical appendix, showing how the data were collected and the statistics estimated. King's interpretation of Figure 4.1, "National Welfare Expenditures in England," does give one pause (81). The figure suggests little change in capital and administrative expense from 1813 to 1850—an odd constant, to say the least, for a nation of workhouses.

Chapter 4, "Defining and Measuring Property," obscures more than it reveals. Specifically, the chapter is on a meaningless and anachronistic search for a "foundation" to the line of poverty. (Note his use of a 1980s American conservative neologism, "culture of dependency," to describe 150 years of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England.) King struggles through his own speculations to suggest that "one-third" of the population was in "poverty"; later, he says "a half," before he retreats to the attitude that maybe this is too "ambiguous" (82). It is an old potato. I agree with Himmelfarb: The search for a poverty line in eighteenth-century England is not the worthy enterprise of a historian.² Begin with the first poverty lines, such as one finds in Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People of London (London, 1891-1903), and work your way up.

All of the grieving and posturing...