Social Discipline and the Refusal of Poor Relief under the English Old Poor Law, c. 1650–1730

Abstract

There has been debate about the extent to which the English old poor law could operate as a system of social discipline. This article looks closely at an almost completely neglected set of sources, petitions by local communities asking to stop (or cut) a pauper’s relief, to assess how far poor relief was used as a disciplinary tool. Taking 182 appeals by Lancashire townships from the Civil War to the appearance of workhouses in the county, it suggests that poor relief operated robustly as a system of labour discipline, but only weakly as a wider tool of behavioural control. There is some evidence that townships wanted to end doles to those engaged in ‘bad’ behaviour, such as excessive drinking, gambling, or insubordination, but such cases were infrequent. Far more important were attempts to stop relief where paupers could work or could support themselves through their own productive assets. In turn, townships’ focus on the ability to work suggests that ‘deserving’ poverty was understood in terms of bodily impotence, whilst the need to restrict poor relief to those who were ‘necessitous’ required officers to engage in close surveillance of the poor and their bodies.