Poverty Archaeology Architecture, Material Culture and the Workhouse under the New Poor Law by Charlotte Newman and Katherine Fennelly, and Poverty, Children and the Poor Law in Industrial Belfast, 1880–1918 by Olwen Purdue and Georgina Laragy reviewed by David R. Green
Published in Victorian Studies, 2025.
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Abstract

, The New Poor Law introduced in 1834 in England and Wales, and in 1838 in Ireland, was the main institution for the provision of welfare in the nineteenth-century United Kingdom. However, it was designed not just to relieve the poor but also to reform their habits. Framers of the Poor Law were keen to specify the nature of the spaces in which relief should be provided as well as the conditions under which it should be given. To achieve these aims, they envisioned, in addition to the general workhouse, an archipelago of institutions designed to accommodate separate categories of paupers: infirmaries for the sick, asylums for the mad, and industrial schools for children. In a handful of places, where sufficient numbers of paupers made it feasible to construct separate institutions for each category, this collection of buildings emerged in its entirety, but these were the exceptions rather than the rule. In most places, the workhouse had to serve as the place of relief for several and perhaps all categories of pauper at the same time. For Poor Law historians, therefore, understanding the relationships between the conceptual spaces in which relief was discussed and arranged and the physical structures in which it was delivered, notably the workhouse, is important. This understanding lies at the heart of the two books under consideration., Designed to both relieve and reform the poor, the austere appearance of the New Poor Law workhouses constructed after 1834 represented the deterrent nature of poor relief, where none but the most desperate would accept an offer of indoor relief. And yet, important regional variations existed in how the Poor Law functioned, the ways in which different categories of paupers experienced and engaged with the Poor Law authorities, and how their treatment changed over time as societal concerns and expectations transformed. [End Page 58], In Poverty Archaeology: Architecture, Material Culture and the Workhouse under the New Poor Law, Charlotte Newman and Katherine Fennelly provide a detailed account of the materiality of the workhouse in Yorkshire, a county sufficiently distant from London to make central surveillance by the Poor Law Commissioners more challenging and less constant. Linking the physical presence of workhouse buildings with guardians’ minutes and other administrative records, the authors explore the architectural forms that typified poor relief in that county. Reform of the poor included spatial separation of different categories of pauper, and the book identifies the spaces that each of these inhabited within the workhouse, together with an intriguing chapter on those who staffed the institution itself. Separate chapters examine the spaces devoted to the sick, the elderly, the young, the “mad,” and the workers in a range of workhouses in urban as well as rural locations. Not surprisingly, perhaps, larger urban unions were more likely to develop separate buildings for the relief of each set of paupers: infirmaries for the sick (later named hospitals to avoid the stigma of pauperism), industrial schools for children, and separate and more spacious accommodation for the elderly. The growing professionalization of medical staff was also reflected in the construction of separate nurses’ homes, particularly in larger urban unions which increasingly catered for the old and the sick. In rural unions with smaller numbers of paupers, and therefore less need for nurses, separate provision was less likely to have been provided. With so many of the original post-1834 workhouses demolished or (thankfully) repurposed, the book is a timely reminder that appreciating the importance of space matters to historians no less than to geographers., Gaps remain, however. The spaces assigned to the relief of the able-bodied poor, though a diminishing proportion of the pauper population, do not appear in this book. The crusade against outdoor relief from the early 1870s would have diminished the number of able-bodied poor, but it did not entirely prevent them from seeking relief, especially in the larger towns and cities. For the authorities, the casual poor, those who sought relief for a night, were perhaps the most difficult category of pauper with which to contend. They were frequently unruly, often applied late at night, and were likely to refuse to work in return for their keep. Providing casual wards was a bigger concern...