Ingresos, costes e inversión

Introduction

The notion that most healthy able-bodied males of working age in Lancashire should, during 'normal' times, have a job and the means to maintain themselves, their families and, in many cases, their wider kin, underpinned the development of Poor Law policy in the county during the nineteenth century. We have seen that it led to a system which played a particularly marginal role in the makeshift economies of the poor, with Guardians emphasising the importance of independence and kinship support as the primary means of mitigating poverty. However, what we have yet to examine is how Poor Law officials in Lancashire responded to those able-bodied males who, rather than remaining independent and supporting their families as they were expected to, came before them for support. The question is an important one, even though Karel Williams has argued that the New Poor Law had succeeded in excluding healthy able-bodied males from outdoor relief by 1850.¹ While Williams’ contention, reached using the central authority's annual pauperism statistics we examined in Chapter 3, is persuasive at the national level, his failure to include dependents in his calculations and to consider regional variation constitutes a notable oversight.

For the picture was very different in Lancashire, where families headed by able-bodied males accounted for, on average, 26 per cent of outdoor paupers at any one time between 1848 and 1859.

Of this group almost half were relieved for work related reasons, i.e. unemployment or low wages.

Healthy able-bodied males therefore, far from excluded from relief, remained a not insignificant pauper group in Lancashire throughout our period.

The continued provision of relief to healthy able-bodied men and their families in Lancashire was facilitated by the absence of the Prohibitory Order, which was fiercely and successfully resisted during the organised anti-Poor Law campaign of the late-1830s.² A question here arises: why, if Guardians in Lancashire operated a particularly marginal system which strongly emphasised independence among the working population, were they resolutely opposed to regulations prohibiting outdoor relief to able-bodied men? The answer in part lies in their simple desire to retain autonomy, but far more important was the view that it was unnecessary, cruel and, above

1 K. Williams, From pauperism to poverty (1980), pp.59-90.

2 N. C. Edsall, The anti-Poor Law movement, 1834-1844 (1971).

all, totally impractical to ban outdoor relief to men in a manufacturing district.³ This brings to the fore a unique aspect of pauperism in an industrial community. While the working-class of Lancashire were, on the whole, comparatively well off in financial terms, the fact includes crucial caveats. First, industrial prosperity was created at the expense of traditional handicraft industries which, nonetheless, survived in areas of Lancashire beyond mid-century despite the increasingly desperate condition of some of its workforce.⁴ Second, most able-bodied males were only well off as long as they avoided protracted life-cycle crises which included sickness, childbirth, the death of a spouse and, of particular interest here, unemployment.⁵ Few working men in Lancashire were able to withstand a long period of time without work, particularly when they had families to support, and many during periods of intense industrial depression were in receipt of relief as we have seen. It shall be shown that the decline (but survival) of handicraft industries, and the boom and bust nature of the industrial economy, led to the development of relief polices in Lancashire which extended entitlement to outdoor relief to many healthy able-bodied male hand loom weavers and cyclically unemployed operatives, and that the right to give relief to these groups was vehemently defended.

Against this backdrop, the introduction of the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order into Lancashire in 1852 is of particular interest. The Order sought to prohibit outdoor relief to healthy able-bodied men unless they undertook a task of outdoor labour, and was similar in design to the Outdoor Labour Test Order introduced into some industrial midlands unions in 1842.⁶ Driver has argued that the 1852 Order marked an important concession on the part of the PLB, who recognised the futility of trying to apply the Prohibitory Order in Lancashire, but this was of little conciliation to many local Guardians who saw it as an affront to established local practice.⁷ The response to the Relief Regulation Order in Lancashire has received only passing attention by historians, who have noted

3 D. Ashforth, ‘The Urban Poor Law’, in D. Fraser (ed.) The New Poor Law in the nineteenth century (1976), pp.95-115; R. Boyson, The history of Poor Law administration in north east Lancashire, 1837-1871 (1960), M.A thesis, p.249; Driver, Power and pauperism, pp.147-163; E. C. Midwinter, Social administration in Lancashire:

Poor Law, public health, police, 1830-1860 (1969), p.49; A. Miller, Poverty deserved? relieving the poor in Victorian Liverpool (1988), pp.3-4.

4 D. Bythell, The handloom weavers: a study in the English cotton industry during the Industrial Revolution (1969); J. S. Lyons, The Lancashire cotton industry and the introduction of the power-loom, 1815-50 (1977), PhD thesis, pp.34-100; G. Timmins, The last shift: the decline of handloom weaving in nineteenth century Lancashire (1993).

5 M. Anderson, Family structure in nineteenth century Lancashire (1971), pp.136-137.

6 Parliamentary Papers (P.P.) 1852-53 (1625) Fifth Annual Report of the Poor Law Board, pp.17-23; Driver, Power and pauperism, pp.32-57; E. T. Hurren, Protesting about pauperism: politics and poor relief in late Victorian England, 1870-1900, (2007), pp.18-20.

7 Driver, Power and pauperism, p.32-35; also M. E. Rose, 'The allowance system under the New Poor Law', Economic History Review, 19 (1966), pp.61-62.

but barely examined in any detail what became a regionally organised opposition campaign during the winter of 1852-53.⁸ Moreover, its long term implications on the provision of relief at local and regional level have received only scant attention. This chapter seeks to address these lacunae.

Further, and more broadly, analysis of the 1852 Order provides an opportunity to examine attitudes towards the New Poor Law in Lancashire more than a decade after the organised anti-Poor Law movement had effectively ended.

At the heart of local opposition to the 1852 Order in Lancashire was the issue of ‘testing’ poverty.

The question of whether able-bodied males should be tested, and how, also caused considerable discord within Preston union as we have seen in relation to the workhouse test. We begin this chapter by looking at how the dispute developed and played out at local level during the 1840s, when the Guardians were able to form relief policy without direct central interference and the workhouse question dominated local debate. It will be argued that the partial resolution of this question – the introduction of an outdoor labour test by the Guardians in 1848 - was a politically motivated act designed to undermine attempts to introduce a workhouse test. The chapter then moves on to assess the response to and implications of the 1852 Order as discussed above, and ends with a case study of the 1857-58 depression, which marked the first time the Preston Board of Guardians was forced to apply the Order during a period of mass unemployment.

5 (i) The nature and politics of ‘testing’ poverty in Preston union

The idea of 'testing' poverty as a means of determining whether able-bodied relief applicants were really in need of support formed a crucial strand of official policy after 1834. Initially, the PLC made the union workhouse the place of testing, but strong protestations meant the workhouse test was never enforced nationally. Indeed, as Driver has shown, from the early 1840s, when the PLC began permitting the use of an outdoor labour test, the long term trend was for the number of unions operating under the Prohibitory Order to decline.⁹ Nonetheless, the central authority remained committed to its workhouse based policy, and of course the 1870s saw its rigorous application in some Lancashire unions like Preston as we have seen.¹⁰ However, it was argued in chapter 2 that the workhouse test was not stringently employed in either Preston union specifically, or Lancashire

8 Boyson, Poor Law administration, pp.156-162; M. J. Brennan, Civil and municipal leadership: a study of three northern towns between 1832 and 1867 (2013), PhD thesis, pp.178-179; Driver, Power and pauperism, pp.51- 52; N. C. Edsall, The anti-Poor Law movement, 1834-44 (1971), pp.256-259; E. Evans, The shaping of modern Britain: identity, industry and Empire, 1780-1914 (2011), p.289; M. Ramsbottom, Christopher Waddington’s peers: a study of the workings of the Poor Law in townships of the Fylde of Lancashire, 1803 to 1865 (2011), PhD thesis, pp.249-250.

9 Driver, Power and pauperism, p.137.

10 See Chapter 2 and Williams, From pauperism to poverty, pp.91-135.

more broadly, in our period, and this interpretation supports Poor Law historiography. In reaching this conclusion, historians typically argue that the greater costs associated with indoor pauperism, and the impracticability of applying a workhouse test during periods of temporary mass unemployment, meant local officials preferred to give outdoor relief.¹¹ Both are convincing, but there is another important reason. As Chapter 3 demonstrated, the vast majority of able-bodied males in receipt of outdoor relief in Lancashire - around 80 per cent - were married, and the overwhelming majority had children. Thus, what we are discussing here, and what the Guardians were discussing at the time, is not simply relief to able-bodied men but relief to families. The distinction is an important one. The Preston Guardians were generally unwilling to offer the workhouse to nuclear families, where the husband, his wife and their children would have had to be separated according to the 1841 classification order. This was quite evident in our analysis of the CEBs in Chapter 4. The workhouse was therefore considered to be inapplicable to most able- bodied paupers, and those who did not conform to this view could find themselves condemned for their inhumanity, or 'humane inhumanity', as the Rev. John Owen Parr memorably described Thomas Batty Addison's approach to relief administration in 1848 (Chapter 1).

However, opposition to the workhouse test did not mean the Preston Board of Guardians rejected testing able-bodied men en toto. They were quite happy to put single able-bodied males and females in the workhouse as we saw in the previous chapter, and many certainly felt that unemployed men should be tested with some form of outdoor labour to deter the idle and encourage thrift and independence. This was nothing new. The idea of testing able-bodied males did not belong to the framers of the New Poor Law, and many townships in Lancashire had used outdoor labour tests (usually stone breaking or field labour) prior to 1837 as responses to the Poor Law Report's 'Town Queries' indicate.¹² One major inducement to outdoor testing was that it allowed local administrators to test able-bodied males without separating them from their families in workhouses. Joseph Livesey expressed this point in an off topic statement to a Select Committee in 1846, when he stated that the workhouse test was 'too severe' on 'persons with families', arguing that an outdoor test should consequently be 'the condition of relief’ to married able-bodied men.¹³ This was a common view, and research on the testing of poverty in Lancashire, though limited, suggests that outdoor rather than indoor tests were applied in at least some unions. In Chorlton

11 Ashforth, 'The urban Poor Law', pp.135-139; Midwinter, Social administration, p.49; Rose, 'The Allowance System', pp.612-613; Boyson, Poor Law administration, pp.249-258.

12 P.P. 1834 (44) Report from his Majesty’s commissioners for inquiring into the administration and practical operation of the Poor Laws, pp.5798-5809.

13 P.P. 1847 (409) Sixth report from the Select Committee on Settlement, and Poor Removal; together with minutes of evidence and appendix, p.188.

union near Manchester, for example, an outdoor field labour test was in operation on an expansive tract of land near the workhouse from the late 1830s, and several unions in north east Lancashire also tested the able-bodied through field labour or stone breaking at various times during the 1840s and 1850s.¹⁴ However, it is also apparent that outdoor testing was by no means universally applied across time or space in all of Lancashire's unions. A number of the north-east Lancashire unions studied by Boyson did not test the poor at all for most of our period, nor did the Guardians of Fylde union studied by Ramsbottom; only in the late 1850s did these unions begin testing able-bodied men with outdoor labour, and only after being compelled to do so by the PLB.¹⁵ Why some unions tested able-bodied men while other did not is unclear (presumably cost and/or inertia on the part of the latter), and Boyson and Ramsbottom offer no substantive answers, but the experience of Preston union where the Guardians did – eventually – implement an outdoor test can shed some light on the issue. It shall become clear that to understand the question fully we must consider not only the utility of testing the poor, but also the broader political and ideological context within which policy formation took place at local level.

The first mention of an outdoor labour test in Preston union appears in the Guardians’ minutes in 1839, when an ad hoc committee, which included Joseph Livesey, was formed to find employment for ‘the able-bodied paupers who may apply for outdoor relief.’¹⁶ It was decided to hire the 'Brow field', a ten acre tract of land adjacent to the four acre ‘Bull Field’ already in the Guardians’

possession at the Preston workhouse. The land was to grow oats, potatoes and other vegetables for general sale, and was to be cultivated by the outdoor male paupers.¹⁷ How rigorously this labour test was applied is unclear, but it appears to have been a very small scale operation. An account placed before the Board of Guardians at the end of June 1840 showed that between 26^th March and 20^th June £13.15s had been paid to ‘pauper labourers’.¹⁸ Pauper labourers were paid a standard sum of 1s per day, and assuming that additional payments to men with families were not included in the accounts this amounted to 275 days work in total, the equivalent of just over 3 people working on the land each day. In any case, the Guardians' enthusiasm for the test appears to have quickly waned. The first labour master, 58 year old Henry Jackson, left the post in 1842 to take the presumably less labour intensive role of workhouse porter, and the two subsequent labour masters were both dismissed for general negligence and intoxication while on duty. Upon the second being

14 Boyson, Poor Law administration, pp.201-202; Midwinter, Social administration, p.49.

15 Boyson, Poor Law administration, pp.201-202; Ramsbottom, Christopher Waddington's peers, pp.249-250.

16 Lancashire Archives (L.A.) PUT/1/4, 29^th October, 1839.

17 L.A. PUT/1/4, 26^th November, 1839.

18 L.A. PUT/1/5, 26^th June, 1840.

23 P.C. 22^nd July, 1848.

discharged in 1845, the Guardians decided to give up the labour test altogether.¹⁹ When asked by the PLC why they had not appointed a new labour master, the Guardians simply told them they 'do not think it necessary...as there are no labourers to superintend on the land.'²⁰

This did not, however, mark the last word on the outdoor labour test in Preston union, largely because it became tied inextricably to the workhouse question. The issue was revived in 1848 when Addison's reputedly harsh workhouse based response to industrial depression led to a successful campaign, headed by Joseph Livesey in his Preston Guardian newspaper, to remove him from the chair as we saw in Chapter 1. His replacement, strongly backed by the Guardian, was Thomas Birchall, the mayor of Preston, who had agreed to initiate an outdoor labour test if successfully elected to the post. Birchall was a shrewd choice, for his position of mayor meant he was peculiarly well placed to lease land owned by Preston Corporation on terms favourable to the union. The new Board immediately set about this task. A 'Labour committee' was formed before the end of April which included Joseph Livesey's son John and John Noble, who had stood against Addison for the chair on an anti-New Poor Law platform in 1838, and by the end of July a comprehensive report was presented to the Board.²¹ The report proposed a system of farming much like the earlier test but on a larger scale, and the food grown was chiefly to be used in the workhouses with only the surplus sold. The plan was to take a large tract of land in the town of Preston for able-bodied male outdoor paupers, and a field at each of the Ribchester and Woodplumpton workhouses (the two able-bodied male workhouses at this time) for the indoor paupers. The scheme, stated the report, was to serve a dual purpose. It would simultaneously provide paupers with 'Active, useful and instructive employment', and would also deter,

the idle and unworthy...from applying to the parish unless they were really destitute;

and thus the rate payers would have the satisfaction of knowing that the heavy and oppressive rates which they are called upon to pay for the relief of the poor, are not expended in supporting the dissolute and unworthy in a state of idleness, but in the wholesome and judicious maintenance of those unfortunate beings who, by the state of trade, by sickness, infirmity, old age, or other unavoidable sources of distress, are rendered unable to maintain themselves.²²

The Board accepted the report with only Addison and one or two other ex-officio Guardians expressing any opposition.²³ Addison had long derided an outdoor test based on farming, believing

19 L.A. PUT/1/10, 12^th November, 1844; PUT/1/10, 15^th July, 1845.

20 L.A. PUT/1/10, 12^th August, 1845.

21 L.A. PUT/1/13, 25^th April, 1848.

22 Preston Chronicle (P.C.), 22^nd July, 1848.

it would not act as a sufficient deterrent, and argued that if outdoor labour must be provided at all it should be the 'hard labour' of stone breaking.²⁴ Ultimately, though, the Guardians agreed to lease 32 acres of land at Preston workhouse (Figure 1) and 48 acres in total at an annual cost of over

£100.

The introduction of a long term, and by no means inexpensive, outdoor labour test in 1848 marked an important point in the development of the workhouse question in Preston union. It undermined hopes that opinion might shift in favour of the workhouse system which Addison and other ex- officio Guardians, and of course the central authority, were still encouraging the Guardians to adopt. Moreover, the involvement of the Liveseys, and other opponents of the workhouse test such as John Noble, strongly indicates that this was the chief intention. Interestingly, such a move was not without precedent elsewhere. Ashforth makes reference to a similar aim in Bradford union in 1842, when an influential member of the Board of Guardians told his fellow members that the PLC 'would soon want either the labour test or a workhouse test' and 'that it be the workhouse test, God forbid.'²⁵ The labour test, in this context, could be and was used as a political tool through which to oppose its indoor counterpart and, by extension, to blunt what were perceived by men like Livesey to be the harsher aspects of the New Poor Law. Fortunately for Livesey and his anti- Poor Law colleagues, they could always pull much harder than their opponents in the tug-of-war over local policy in our period.

It would, however, be misleading to suggest that this was purely a political act for a couple of

It would, however, be misleading to suggest that this was purely a political act for a couple of