In good years, when you've got a good harvest, there's perhaps just enough food to go round. But as soon as you get a bad harvest, or you' have events like wars that are disrupting ade in some kind of way, the price of bread is going to rise quite significantly. So we're just not really provid ing quite enough food to feed everybody. And the poor law is there really for these times of emergency. I mentione enclosures and em the tat sot enclosures. What what effect is that having? Well, enclosures have been going on for a very long time. Some historians would argue that it makes agriculture more efficient and therefore provides
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, from 1834, poor people across England and Wales faced new obstacles when they could no longer feed or clothe themselves, or find shelter. Parliament, in line with the ideas of Jeremy Bentham and Thomas Malthus, feared hand-outs had become so attractive, they stopped people working to support themselves, and encouraged families to have more children than they could afford. To correct this, under the New Poor Laws it became harder to get any relief outside a workhouse, where families would be separated, husbands from wives, parents from children, sisters from brothers. Many found this regime inhumane, while others protested it was too lenient, and it lasted until the twentieth century.
The image above was published in 1897 as New Year's Day in the Workhouse.
With
Emma Griffin
Professor of Modern British History at the University of East Anglia
Samantha Shave
Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Lincoln
And
Steven King
Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Leicester
Producer: Simon Tillotson