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This paper examines the extent of local government support for the elderly, in the form of poor relief, in Victorian England. It presents newly constructed estimates of old age pauperism rates for each of England's ten registration divisions from 1861 to 1908, the year the Old Age Pension Act was adopted. My estimates show that the share of persons aged 65 and older receiving government assistance in the nineteenth century was far larger than most contemporaries, and many historians, believe. The share receiving poor relief declined after 1871, largely as a result of changes in relief administration, but on the eve of the adoption of the Old Age Pension Act more than one in five persons over 65 was in receipt of public assistance. In sum, government support for the elderly is not a post-welfare state phenomenon. Old age pauperism rates differed substantially across registration divisions and in general were higher in southern than in northern England. I present evidence that much of the north-south differential was due to differences in wage rates and employment opportunities and differences in the administration of poor relief, although differences in welfare customs might have played a role. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the relief of travellers in Warwickshire, England. By using an unusually rich set of Constables’ Accounts for the parish of Grandborough, it interrogates the relationship between charity, local justice, and both official and popular perceptions of migration. It argues that the large number of migrants who passed through rural parishes were categorised by the local constable according to cultural and discretionary criteria. This ‘typology’ of travellers determined the nature and extent of the relief they might receive and the actions that might be taken against them. Socially threatening migrants, such as poor pregnant women, the sick, and vagrants, also found themselves affected by this same ‘proscriptive calculation’, often to their detriment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Discusses the institutional and legal responses to begging in Medieval England. Ecclesiastical thinking about the doctrine of almsgiving; Discussion of the expressions of generosity in communal ritual and ceremony; Role of patristic thought in the molding of moral opinion.

Social commentators in the early decades of the nineteenth century considered the 'poor classes' to be a homogenous sub-group of society dependent on parish poor relief. Whilst in recent decades studies of the Old Poor Law have added much to our understandings of the complexity of poor relief practices, the concept of dependency has proved remarkably durable. This article challenges this central assumption by focusing upon the very individuals who constituted this supposedly homogenous dependent group. The relief histories of eight individuals from two cohorts who resided in the Dorset parish of Motcombe are (re)constructed and linked to demographic data to produce detailed biographies. On the basis of these biographies it is argued that even in north Dorset, where opportunities for employment and alternative forms of subsistence were few, 'the poor' experienced complex fluctuations of dependence on, and independence from, poor relief. It is also shown that traditional assumptions about the factors prompting relief, including the expansion of the family, did not have a uniform impact on all individuals. Such a methodology also makes it possible to explore how the parish managed to respond to the differing and similar needs of individuals. It is thus stressed that instead of following one policy for all, parish officials applied and tailored relief to suit each individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]