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In Their Own Write - Contesting the New Poor Law, 1834-1900 (Paperback)
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In Their Own Write - Contesting the New Poor Law, 1834-1900 (Paperback)
Series: States, People, and the History of Social Change
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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Few subjects in European welfare history attract as much attention
as the nineteenth-century English and Welsh New Poor Law. Its
founding statute was considered the single most important piece of
social legislation ever enacted, and at the same time, the coming
of its institutions - from penny-pinching Boards of Guardians to
the dreaded workhouse - has generally been viewed as a catastrophe
for ordinary working people. Until now it has been impossible to
know how the poor themselves felt about the New Poor Law and its
measures, how they negotiated its terms, and how their interactions
with the local and national state shifted and changed across the
nineteenth century. In Their Own Write exposes this hidden history.
Based on an unparalleled collection of first-hand testimony -
pauper letters and witness statements interwoven with letters to
newspapers and correspondence from poor law officials and advocates
- the book reveals lives marked by hardship, deprivation,
bureaucratic intransigence, parsimonious officialdom, and sometimes
institutional cruelty, while also challenging the dominant view
that the poor were powerless and lacked agency in these
interactions. The testimonies collected in these pages clearly
demonstrate that both the poor and their advocates were adept at
navigating the new bureaucracy, holding local and national
officials to account, and influencing the outcomes of relief
negotiations for themselves and their communities. Fascinating and
compelling, the stories presented in In Their Own Write amount to
nothing less than a new history of welfare from below.
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