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What problems, if any, did the workhouse solve
In this essay I intend to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the workhouse system. By starting with a brief introduction to how and why the need for a workhouse arose, with references to relevant journals and websites, I hope to illustrate how the initial benefit scheme was abused and later abolished. Thus showing the origin of the present day social benefit system.
Workhouses are said to have dated back from 1601 when, through the Act for the Relief of the Poor, local parishes were assigned responsibility of the poor in their parish. In the parishes that could afford to do so, small workhouses were built in order to employ both the poor, and children whose parents were deemed too poor to look after them. It was not regarded as a place of punishment, but was even referred to in some cases as, ‘Pauper Palaces,’ as some thought conditions were reasonable and often better than those found living at home employed in the workplace. This meant parish relief had come to be seen, by those that did not want to work, as an easy option and so something had to be done. As well as workhouses, poor relief often went further and money or food was given to those deemed unable to work, for example, the lame, old, and blind, etc. living at home. This was called the Speenhamland System, set up in 1795 in Berkshire, where a Poor Rate was distributed, with the amount received depending on the size of the family and the price of a large loaf of bread at the time. The cost of giving relief to the poor was increasing dramatically, and so was the number of people claiming to need this relief. For example, in 1831 the amount of money spent on poor relief was £7,037,000 when in 1776 the amount was only £1,520,000. Tax revenue or a ‘tithe’ as it was termed, normally about one tenth of an income, was collected from every member of the community and paid for the cost of the relief of the poor. However, there was a great dislike amongst the community of having to pay for what they thought was others’ laziness. In 1830, due to high prices and unemployment among agricultural workers, the “Captain Swing" riots took place. Landowners, who were also the employers, were threatened and it was thought that if they had the ability to control the way in which poor relief was administered, then they would also have control over the behaviour of the labourers. In a bid to regain social control a Royal Commission reviewed the Poor Law in 1832 in order to scrutinize how the law was implemented and to suggest possible amendments to it. However, its fate had already been decided, as on the 26 December 1841 a letter from Sir James Graham to Sir Robert Peel, wrote that even before the Commission had been established, the government had already planned what to do with the poor.
In 1834, The Poor [next page]