Social ordering and welfare conditionality, or benevolence and opportunity? Experiences of poor relief in England in the nineteenth century

Murphy, Anthony (2024). Social ordering and welfare conditionality, or benevolence and opportunity? Experiences of poor relief in England in the nineteenth century. Journal on European History of Law (In press).

Abstract

This paper is concerned with how poor relief in the nineteenth century - poor relief in its broadest sense - was experienced by those at the margins of society by exploring working-class autobiographies. This is primarily in the context of London, but it is also set within the wider national context. A critical paradigm of welfare is utilised to explore the extent to which those writing about their lives understood their engagement with poor relief processes akin to the arguments of critical writers on social welfare. The findings suggest that experiences of poor relief tended to be negative, or at least those writing about their experiences had critical points to make. Themes of social control and ordering, hierarchy, and conditioning are reflected within the autobiographies.