Daunton M. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume 3: 1840-1950
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responsible for the bulk of investment of public funds. The depression put a
heavy burden on local as well as national finances, and that burden varied accord-
ing to the economic, social and political structure of urban areas.
12
To take just
one feature, local variations in services depending on political decisions made at
a local level could affect infant mortality.
13
The variety of cities is matched by the range and fragmentation of social ser-
vices whose aim is to support ‘the material welfare of the people, either through
the maintenance of incomes or provision of services’.
14
There is no generally
accepted view of what services should be included under the general heading of
social welfare, though there is agreement that their aim is the ‘enhancement of
the personal welfare of individual citizens’
15
or ‘collective responsibility for indi-
vidual contingencies’.
16
Some analysts include areas such as education, housing
or workmen’s compensation, and others do not.
17
This chapter will concentrate
on the provision of urban social services concerning poverty and health, espe-
cially ‘critical life situations’ associated with unemployment, low wages, life-
cycle stages (young married couples, the elderly, etc.), illness and death.
‘Impersonal environmental services such as public sanitation, street lighting,
housing and town planning’
18
and moral and cultural services such as education
will be excluded.
Thus, this chapter focuses on the continuities and changes in the provision of
social services with regard to poverty and health. It explores alternative sources
of assistance and their interrelationships in the mixed economy of welfare, exam-
ining to what extent these changed during the period and paying particular
attention to whether there were distinctive urban aspects and to variations
among urban areas.
(ii) , ,
‒
Self-maintenance and family maintenance were the aims of the provision of
welfare in Britain throughout the century from , whatever the balance of
Marguerite Dupree
12
M. A. Crowther, British Social Policy – (Basingstoke, ), pp. –.
13
L. Marks, Metropolitan Maternity (Amsterdam and Atlanta, ); E. P. Peretz, ‘The costs of
modern motherhood to low income families in interwar Britain’, in V. Fildes, L. Marks and H.
Marland, eds., Women and Children First: International Maternal Welfare – (London, ),
pp. –; and E. P. Peretz, ‘Infant welfare between the wars’, in R. C. Whiting, ed., Oxford
(Manchester, ), pp. –.
14
Crowther, British Social Policy, p. .
15
PEP, Report on the British Social Services:A Survey of the Existing Public Social Services in Great Britain
with Proposals for Future Development (London, ), p. .
16
Digby, British Welfare Policy, p. .
17
For example, Crowther, British Social Policy, includes housing but not education, while PEP,
Report on the British Social Services, p. , includes education but not housing.
18
PEP, Report on the British Social Services, p. .
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the welfare mix.
19
Self-reliant, provident behaviour, ‘help from within’, was the
secure basis on which individuals could make arrangements for their own
welfare.
20
In the mid-nineteenth century voluntarism, directed toward encour-
aging and sustaining independence and self-maintenance, was the logical
outcome of laissez-faire ideology, not its opposite, and it dominated the welfare
mix.
21
Its continuing presence and vitality was a major feature throughout the
century, even as its limitations became increasingly apparent and the central
state’s role in provision grew to emerge as the dominant partner in the mix after
. Yet, the dominance of voluntarism in the mid-nineteenth century was not
a by-product but an integral part of the contemporary concept of the ‘minimal’,
‘enabling’ central state in which a high level of discretion and initiative was del-
egated to local government within the framework of national law and supervised
by the central authority. A vast network of voluntary organisations, together
with elected local officials, superintended, financed and initiated, within limits
established by law, most welfare services.
22
In short, social welfare provision in the mid-nineteenth century was locally
financed and locally administered and thus highly variable, even more so in
Scotland than in England, as will be seen below. As R. J. Morris argues in
his chapter in this volume, the growth of a range of voluntary associations
was important in creating the stability of British society in the growing towns
of industrialising Britain as voluntarism became municipal and increasingly
mutually interdependent with the local state of local government and the
poor law. First in the larger incorporated industrial cities such as Birmingham,
Sheffield and Leeds and after in middle-size industrial towns such as
those in the Black Country the common assumptions helped to forge a
middle-class identity, while in older cities with a legacy of institutions, such
as Bristol with its endowed charities, there were bitter divides within the
elite.
23
This predominance of voluntarism and local government in the pro-
vision of social welfare in general had the confidence of contemporaries that
it could cope with the problems of urbanisation and urban poverty: low wages
and irregular demand for labour; personal circumstances which few families
could provide against such as sickness, handicap, injury, widowhood, old age,
large numbers of children, rapid immigration and high incidences of disease.
It also encouraged and made possible the wide range and influence of women
The provision of social services
19
J. Lewis, ‘Family provision of health and welfare in the mixed economy of care in the late nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries’, Social History of Medicine, (), .
20
Finlayson, Citizen, State and Social Welfare, p. .
21
Ibid., p. .
22
P. Thane, ‘Women in the British Labour party and the construction of state welfare –’,
in S. Koven and S. Michel, eds., Mothers of a New World (London and New York, ), pp.
–.
23
Below, pp. ‒; D. Smith, Conflict and Compromise (London, ); Trainor, Black Country
Elites; M. Gorsky, Patterns of Philanthropy (Woodbridge, ).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
in voluntary organisations and their influence in local government, allied to
their role of informal providers.
24
As indicated above, historians have divided voluntarism into several sectors:
informal, voluntary and commercial. The informal sector included the provision
of welfare within kinship networks and neighbourhoods. The aim of the volun-
tary sector was to benefit the community without financial gain to itself. It
included both self-help or mutual aid, whose object was the well-being of the
individual or group choosing to take part in it. Voluntarism also included charity
(the advancement of the interests of others, rather than of self ) and philanthropy
(upper- or middle-class concern, often generalised or institutionalised, for those
who occupied a lower station in life) whose aim was to promote the interests of
others. Finally, the commercial sector included welfare initiatives for profit, such
as insurance companies or private medical practice.
25
The continuing importance of family and kin as sources of assistance in the
face of the potential disruption of urbanisation and industrialisation is one of the
striking features of the mid-nineteenth century. Family and kin were not
demoted to a subsidiary role in the provision of welfare; nor was it a ‘golden age
of family responsibility’. Families often provided assistance with finding a job or
accommodation for members migrating to cities and, depending on the housing
supply, they huddled together at times of unemployment. Also, at different stages
in the life cycle families were particularly important in providing assistance with
accommodation. For young men in urban areas in the mid-nineteenth century,
for example, the age at leaving home was higher than in rural areas or in earlier
periods. Again, depending on the housing supply, newly married couples fre-
quently co-resided with parents, and sometimes where mothers worked outside
the home there was a co-residing grandmother or other relative to provide child
care. At the same time considerable numbers of children without their parents
resided with grandparents.
26
In the mid-nineteenth century the reliance on families for the provision of
social welfare may have been even greater in urban industrial towns than rural
areas and small towns. Irish immigrants to London and Lancashire towns were
noted especially for their assistance to relatives.
27
This may in part have been due
to the limits that the laws of settlement and the local control of poor relief placed
on the entitlement to relief. Irish migrants could legally reside where they wished
in Britain, and English law required short-term relief to be given where an appli-
Marguerite Dupree
24
Lewis, ‘Family provision of health and welfare’, –; J. Lewis, ‘Gender, the family and women’s
agency in the building of “welfare states”: the British case’, Soc.Hist., (), –; Thane,
‘Women in the British Labour party’, p. .
25
These definitions follow Finlayson, Citizen, State and Social Welfare, pp. –, .
26
M. Dupree, Family Structure in the Staffordshire Potteries, – (Oxford, ); M. Anderson,
Family Structure in Nineteenth-Century Lancashire (Cambridge ).
27
L. H. Lees, Exiles of Erin (Manchester, ), p. ; J. Denvir, The Irish in Britain (London, ),
p. .
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cant applied. But, if applicants accepted relief they could be removed to their
place of settlement, i.e. Ireland in the case of the Irish-born, unless they rented
property with a rateable value of £ a year (or s. per week) for at least a year,
or after , as will be seen below, resided in the parish long enough to become
‘irremovable’. The extent of the problem of relief for the Irish differed from
place to place, as a large number of Irish poor had settled into a relatively small
number of British towns. London and Liverpool, in particular, exported Irish
paupers at a high rate in the s. Yet, the cost of removal was high and local
officials had discretion over the provision of relief. In six county towns the Irish-
born made up a small proportion of the population and an even smaller propor-
tion of the paupers on relief lists – slightly over per cent of the population and
per cent of those on the relief list in York; virtually no paupers were sent back,
and those whose settlements were examined were given relief. The number of
Irish deported dropped overall in the s and access to poor relief eased.
28
Doubt remains about the relative importance for the aged poor of the role of
the family in relation to collective poor relief. In England the poor law statute
of , which remained in force until , specified that certain relatives – the
father and grandfather, mother and grandmother and children – were liable if
they were ‘of sufficient ability’ to relieve and maintain ‘every old, blind, lame
and impotent person or other poor person not able to work’. The statute was
rarely enforced and court decisions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
narrowed its interpretation; local poor law officials saw no reason to pursue poor
men for payments they could not afford. Children were expected to provide
support, but only if they could afford it without impoverishing themselves or
their children. Family support and poor relief were not alternatives but shifting
components in the bundle of support that maintained the elderly. The poor law
was a residual provider of relief in most cases; its relief was intended to encour-
age family support by supplementing the little that families could afford to give.
While the poor law made an important contribution to the incomes of the aged
poor, it was not dominant; families generally contributed more, though not nec-
essarily in cash or even co-residence.
29
There were significant local variations in the mix of the components of
support for the elderly. In northern industrial towns such as the Potteries or
Preston families were a particularly significant source of support. Over per
cent of those age sixty-five and over lived with family or kin, and roughly per
cent lived with one or more children. This pattern contrasts with the picture of
relatively little sharing with children which appears to have been the case in rural
areas and small towns ‘where time after time, for place after place, the percent-
age of elderly who lived with a child were found not to be above per cent,
The provision of social services
28
L. H. Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers (Cambridge, ), pp. –.
29
P. Thane, ‘Old people and their families in the English past’, in Daunton, ed., Charity, Self-Interest
and Welfare (London, ), pp. –, .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
with a few more per cent living with some other kin, especially grandchildren,
nieces or brothers or sisters’.
30
Thus, the collectivity, particularly the poor law,
played a more central role in rural areas and small towns. In industrial towns such
as the Potteries the importance of family and kin may in part have been due to
the combination of relatively little need with a relatively large capacity for family
care. In the Potteries in there were only people age seventy-five and
over out of a population of over ,. Moreover, it was more likely that an
elderly person age seventy-five or over would have a female carer available than
in England in the twentieth century. In the Potteries in the ratio of women
age fifty to fifty-nine (those most likely to assume caring roles) to persons age
seventy-five and over in the population was :, compared with ratios for
England of : in , : in and less than : in .
31
Throughout the
country the elderly in workhouses tended to be those without relatives.
While family and relatives tended to provide assistance for more important
and more long-term difficulties, for mundane day-to-day problems and urgent
crises proximity could be more important than kinship as the framework for
negotiating assistance:
32
many nineteenth-century commentators remarked on
the prevalence of the assistance of the poor to the poor. In the Potteries, for
example, Emily Rowley sent the ten-year-old girl living with her to buy pota-
toes for herself and her next-door neighbour; and Mary Ann Culverhouse
knocked on the wall to summon the next-door neighbour when her mother
collapsed and died from the shock of finding that Mary Ann had given birth.
The neighbourhood beerhouse could also serve as a focus for the provision of
general assistance for neighbours. In the Potteries in there were , beer-
houses patronised by both men and women, who could be ‘an open-hearted and
open-handed lot; ever ready to help the suffering in any form – sickness, dis-
tress, or whatever it was. A subscription list was always open for cases of urgent
necessity . . . for we knew all calls for assistance were deserving ones.’
33
While the continuing importance of family, kin and neighbours as sources of
assistance should not be underestimated, the growth of the voluntary sector and
its relationships with the informal and the statutory provision of welfare are dis-
tinctive features of urbanisation in Britain and reflect its variety. A vast expan-
sion of mutual aid and philanthropic activity in the face of the economic and
demographic hazards characterised the provision of social welfare in mid-
nineteenth-century cities. Yet, their extent and the form they took varied
between England and Scotland and among cities, and were related to the eco-
nomic, social and political structure of urban areas as much as to the hazards faced.
Marguerite Dupree
30
D. Thomson, ‘Welfare and the historians’, in L. Bonfield, R. Smith and K. Wrightson, eds., The
World We Have Gained (Oxford, ), p. .
31
For the figures from to see M. Bulmer, The Social Basis of Community Care (London,
), p. .
32
Dupree, Family Structure, pp. , , .
33
J. Finney, Sixty Years’ Recollections of an Etruscan (Stoke-on-Trent, ), p. .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Mutual aid, or help from within a group of like-minded people, was widely
practised over a wide range of working-class activity in towns and cities. Among
the working class it originated as a barrier against poverty and as a route to self-
help and some degree of financial security and personal welfare. Not thrust upon
them by other groups, it involved a collective strength absent from the middle-
class pursuit of self-help by individual enterprise.
Particularly prominent were friendly societies. They provided a means of
insuring against illness, old age and death, with weekly allowances when ill,
funeral payment to widows and medical attendance received in return for weekly
contributions, often made at convivial meetings in public houses. There was a
substantial number of local societies in the early nineteenth century (, in
), but the key feature between and was the growth of affiliated
orders of local societies, providing greater financial stability and viability. By
there were about . million members of friendly societies in Britain,
mostly in urban areas, such as those in Lancashire where relatively high wages
allowed workers to afford contributions. While both of the main affiliated orders
originated in south-east Lancashire, the Oddfellows were strongest in the indus-
trial North, and the Ancient Order of Foresters, with flexible rates of contribu-
tion and benefit, attracted members in lower wage areas in southern England.
34
Trade unions also provided collective self-help with pay for strikes, sickness
and unemployment for about , members in . After major
national unions, notably the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and the
Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, developed among skilled arti-
sans, similar to the affiliated orders of friendly societies but including relief for
the unemployed. Yet, regional autonomy survived in the non-tramping trades
and trade union societies grew in the coalfields throughout the country and in
the three main centres of unionism in the earlier nineteenth century: London
with societies in a wide range of occupations, particularly artisan and riverside
trades; the Lancashire cotton industry; and the sailors and shipwrights in the
north-eastern coal trade.
35
The pattern of union membership with its access to
unemployment pay could reflect the local economy where there was a marked
cyclical pattern as in shipbuilding. Similarly, the Co-operative movement, with
between , and , members in , was especially successful in
medium-size towns in the textile districts (the biggest societies were in Halifax,
Leeds, Bury and Rochdale), the mining villages of North-East England and the
shoe and hosiery districts of the East Midlands where there were relatively stable
earnings; they were less successful both in large centres, especially London and
Birmingham where small workshop employment predominated, and in low-paid
The provision of social services
34
Finlayson, Citizen, State and Social Welfare, pp. –; M. Purvis, ‘Popular institutions’, in J. Langton
and R. J. Morris, eds., Atlas of Industrialising Britain, – (London, ), pp. –.
35
Finlayson, Citizen, State and Social Welfare, p. ; H. Southall, ‘Unionisation’, in Langton and
Morris, eds., Atlas, pp. –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
agricultural areas. The Co-ops covered a variety of provident activity, providing
a system of automatic accumulation or self-imposed forced savings through the
dividend that could be drawn on in times of need. Regional variations of divi-
dends and prices existed. They were highest in Scotland and the North of
England where Co-operative societies dominated the grocery trade in many
towns and villages and could set the market price; in the South, especially in
London, the Co-ops faced stiff competition from other retailers. In addition, the
Co-ops were a major provider of costless credit for the well-to-do artisans in
periods of irregular income.
36
In addition, there were specialised groups such as
burial societies and penny banks, especially popular in cities among those with
lower incomes. Burial societies had . million members in and Glasgow
had penny banks and , depositors in .
37
Mutual aid organisations
were particularly important in the provision of medical care. In Huddersfield and
Wa ke field, and elsewhere, these affected far more people than were hospital in-
patients.
38
With relative economic prosperity in the s and s active participation
in such societies by skilled artisans became a sign of respectability. Although the
assumptions and practices within the societies were egalitarian they led paradox-
ically to inegalitarian results emphasising differences between the skilled and
unskilled within the working class. Nevertheless, the pride in working-class
mutuality and meeting in public houses meant that the convergence of mutual
aid and the values of middle-class individualistic self-help was never complete.
The philanthropic activity and paternalism in mid-nineteenth-century cities
offered help from without even though it involved interference in the market
economy, at the same time as those involved in these activities constantly
preached the virtues of provident behaviour. Church activities, for example,
included ‘philanthropy which probably did more for the poor, and more
humanely, than the poor law’.
39
The paternalism of individual employers was a
notable feature, particularly in the cotton and woollen towns in Lancashire and
Yorkshire with Titus Salt’s Saltaire only one of the most prominent manifesta-
tions.
40
But paternalism, even combined with the benefactions of individuals and
other traditional forms of charity – including endowed trusts, almsgiving and
casual visiting – clearly grew inadequate to meet the growing demands in
expanding towns. Increasingly voluntary societies, financed by subscriptions and
Marguerite Dupree
36
Finlayson, Citizen, State and Social Welfare, pp. –; M. Purvis, ‘Popular institutions’, in Langton
and Morris, eds., Atlas, pp. –; P. Johnson, Saving and Spending (Oxford, ), pp. , –.
37
Finlayson, Citizen, State and Social Welfare, pp. , .
38
H. Marland, Medicine and Society in Wakefield and Huddersfield, – (Cambridge, ).
39
J. Cox, The English Churches in a Secular Society (New York and Oxford, ), ch. ; H. McLeod,
‘New perspectives on Victorian working class religion: the oral evidence’, Oral History, (),
.
40
P. Joyce, Work, Society and Politics:The Culture of the Factory in Later Victorian England (Brighton,
); J. Reynolds, The Great Paternalist (London, ).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
governed by committees, developed which intervened in the relationship
between benefactors and the needy and called on the support of the public at
large. Town-based benevolent societies were one example, and a city such as
Manchester developed a variety of such organisations to make voluntary provi-
sion for the poor.
41
A prominent example of philanthropic activity, and often a source of civic
pride, were the voluntary hospitals whose number grew rapidly in the mid-
nineteenth century. Between and charitably financed general hospi-
tals increased from to , with an additional rise in the number of specialist
voluntary hospitals.
42
Despite the overall increase there was considerable varia-
tion in the provision of voluntary hospitals among urban areas – variations
related not to perceived medical needs but to the economic, social and political
structures of towns. It is worth exploring two examples of this general feature
of urban social provision in some detail.
In her comparison of medical provision in Huddersfield and Wakefield in the
mid-nineteenth century, Hilary Marland points out that in the former town
charitable provision developed early. A charitable dispensary was established in
; a purpose-built infirmary followed in which admitted workers on the
borderline of pauperism, thereby reducing poor rates. Huddersfield was a fast-
growing textile town with a population increase that made charitable provision
all the more necessary; there was money from the expanding industry available
to fund charitable provision; and the town’s merchant-manufacturers were able
to provide wealth and leadership. In contrast, in Wakefield the committee of the
dispensary was reluctant to admit paupers and a purpose-built infirmary was not
opened until . Wakefield was a traditional market and service centre, with a
slow rate of population growth and retarded industrial development, leaving less
money available to fund charitable enterprises, less incentive to provide large-
scale medical relief and a lack of strong leadership to direct fund raising or policy
making. The small scale of medical charities forced the Wakefield Guardians to
provide medical relief, and a higher proportion of the Wakefield population
received medical treatment via the poor law than in Huddersfield.
43
In Lancashire too in the thirty years between and new or larger vol-
untary hospitals were built in all the major towns, not because of changes in
medicine or perceived medical need, but because the economic and social
climate changed in ways that made these institutions attractive to a range of polit-
ical views. What was gained were medium-size urban hospitals which provided
not so much medical care (already available via friendly societies) as nursing and
healthy surroundings. With the cotton famine over, charity funds were available.
The provision of social services
41
Finlayson, Citizen, State and Social Welfare, pp. –; A. J. Kidd and K. W. Roberts, eds., City,
Class and Culture (Manchester, ).
42
F. K. Prochaska, Philanthropy and the Hospitals of London (Oxford, ), p. .
43
Marland, Medicine and Society, pp. –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
In Wigan and Oldham, for example, mill owners used infirmaries to establish a
public presence and begin to rival local gentry. Infirmaries were established espe-
cially where large employers dominated as in Rochdale, Bolton and Bury and
where the Conservative party was strong. At the same time Liberals and non-
conformists saw hospitals as not corrupting like other charity. Also workpeople’s
contributions in Preston and Blackburn were significant in supporting the build-
ing of infirmaries.
44
Voluntary hospitals could also be contested sites within
cities. Medical staff clashed with lay governors over issues such as the length of
stay of patients. As workingmen’s contributions became increasingly important
in the finances of many hospitals, they demanded representation on the boards
of governors.
45
In the nineteenth century three notable innovations in the organisation of vol-
untary societies became prominent which were geared to urban problems:
branch societies, district visiting and agencies for the coordination of charities
and the dissemination of practical information.
46
Like friendly societies in the mid-nineteenth century, voluntary organisations,
such as the Charity Organisation Society or the National Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children, developed branch societies in cities through-
out the country.
District visiting ‘represented the charitable world’s most significant contribu-
tion to relieving the nation’s perennial ills, especially in their urban manifesta-
tion’.
47
The rationale behind visiting was that those who could not provide for
themselves could only be helped by the agency of another human being. The
visiting societies existed primarily in cities and were usually organised around
parishes, bringing the ‘face-to-face charity of the country village to city slums’.
Earlier in the nineteenth century the Glasgow clergyman Thomas Chalmers
articulated and implemented visiting among the poor in St John’s Parish: ‘each
applicant for relief was treated on his merits, closely scrutinised by responsible
neighbours and after all possibilities of family support were exhausted, aided
from voluntary funds. Chalmers believed that the best system of relief was vol-
untary, mutual aid within the local community: family responsibility and per-
sonal independence were the pillars of a Christian society.’
48
Chalmers’ views
were highly influential. Another notable experiment in visiting was the
Ranyard Mission in London, initiated as a response to the problems of urban
life, whose visitors, ‘Bible women’, were working-class women drawn from the
Marguerite Dupree
44
J. V. Pickstone, Medicine and Industrial Society (Manchester, ), pp. , .
45
B. Abel-Smith, The Hospitals – (London, ); K. Waddington, Charity and the London
Hospitals, ‒ (Woodbridge, ).
46
Prochaska, Philanthropy, p. ; Frank Prochaska, The Voluntary Impulse:Philanthropy in Modern Britain
(London, ), pp. –.
47
Prochaska, The Voluntary Impulse, p. .
48
M. A. Crowther, ‘Poverty, health and welfare’, in W. H. Fraser and R. J. Morris, eds., People and
Society in Scotland, vol. : – (Edinburgh, ), p. .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
neighbourhood but supervised and paid by middle-class superintendents from
outside the district.
The proliferation of voluntary societies and charitable organisations, com-
bined with their independence and lack of coordination, led both to fears of
duplication and indiscriminate, overlapping relief and to the emergence of
organisations for the coordination of charitable relief, particularly the Liverpool
Central Relief Society established in and the COS established in .
These coordinating societies utilised visitors to disseminate practical information
and distinguish the deserving from the undeserving poor. Most of the coordi-
nating charities dealt with poor relief, promoting self-help schemes, providing
information, attacking malpractices (particularly indiscriminate almsgiving) and
seeking coordination between charities and poor law officials. They attempted
to apply ideas from social science to parish administration to encourage more
sophisticated approaches to welfare provision. By the mid-nineteenth century in
England a division of responsibilities emerged in the wake of the poor law
Amendment Act with charity intended to assist the ‘deserving’ who could be
aided by preventive or remedial action, while the poor law was to deal with the
‘undeserving’ in workhouses where hard conditions were imposed on the able-
bodied.
The relationship between charity and the poor law, however, was never this
neat, varying considerably over time and place. For example, in the early s
in the face of massive, long-term urban industrial poverty in Lancashire during
the Cotton Famine – when thousands were out of work or on short time
through no fault of their own and the income of shopkeepers and landlords
dropped – many guardians and charitable workers refused to hold to the strict
enforcement of the poor law. ‘Guardians proved active and flexible enough to
cope with thousands of extra applicants.’ Charitable efforts were coordinated by
a Central Relief Committee. Collecting money, deciding how it was to be spent
and financing local efforts that functioned alongside the poor laws, it ‘supple-
mented rather than supplanted, the official machinery’. Yet, ‘only by redefining
the labor test and by encouraging public employment could work be made a
requirement of relief to the unemployed. Only by massive, voluntary efforts
could industrial poverty be dampened during a depression.’
49
Furthermore, London remained problematical. In the later s when pau-
perism declined in the rest of the country and both skilled and unskilled workers
found their real incomes and standards of living rising, there was no decrease of
pauperism in the capital. A host of social commentators warned of the ‘demor-
alisation’ of the poor in the metropolis, initiated by the operation of public and
private charity and the segregation of the rich and poor. The number and extent
of charities in London were thought to have increased to an unprecedented
The provision of social services
49
Lees, Solidarities, pp. –.
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