A policy for the vulnerable? Experiences of and negotiations for relief in gilbert's unions, 1782-c.1845

Shave, S. (2008) A policy for the vulnerable? Experiences of and negotiations for relief in gilbert's unions, 1782-c.1845. Seventh European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC 2008), Lisbon, Portugal. 26 Feb - 01 Mar 2008. 31 pp .

Abstract

Historians have long been fascinated with the institution and institutionalisation of workhouses established after of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. Since the initial work of the Webbs, research has addressed conditions inside these institutions (e.g. Crowther, 1981) and has also been inspired by Foucault’s approach in Discipline and Punish (e.g. Driver, 1993). Whilst recent research has attempted to examine the experiences of the vulnerable in the post-1834 workhouse (Shave 2006), nothing has hitherto been published about the welfare setting of the Gilbert’s Union established under Gilbert’s Act of 1782 (22 Geo.3. c.83). This Act empowered parishes to group together and provide accommodation for most vulnerable members in the community, the non-able-bodied, including children and the elderly. According to Marshall, the intention of the policy was to offer the defenceless poor separate accommodation away from the ‘dens of horror’ - the parish workhouses (1926:159-160). Yet regardless of the renewed attention into the experience of the poor in the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries (e.g. King, 2000; Hindle, 2004), the Gilbert’s Union has been overlooked. In part this is because welfare historians have correctly labelled Gilbert’s Act as ‘enabling’ (i.e. ‘non-compulsory’) and have thus claimed that as few parishes decided adopt the provisions of the act it was relatively insignificant. However, at least 102 Gilbert’s Unions were formed – with significant concentrations in the east Midlands, East Anglia and the south-east. This Act, therefore, dramatically transformed the welfare experiences of a great number of people.* This paper explores the impact of Gilbert’s Unions on individuals’ experiences of welfare both upon formation and subsequently throughout their life-courses. Through the focus of unions established in the counties of Hampshire, West Sussex and Wiltshire, it explores changing policies from both formal policy documents (e.g. vestry and union minute books, workhouse and overseers accounts) as well as paupers’ negotiations detailed in the minutes of evidence of the 1844-5 Parliamentary Select Committee investigation into the poor laws. Such an approach not only provides an understanding of how poor law policies were lived-out and experienced but will help us better comprehend how policy discourses of care and well-being were translated into practice in ways which ran counter to the initial impulse. Put simply, did Gilbert’s Unions care for the vulnerable – as was Thomas Gilbert’s intention – or did they further harm their vulnerable charges? References M. A. Crowther, The Workhouse System 1834-1929 (Georgia, 1981). F. Driver, Power and Pauperism: The Workhouse System 1834-1884 (Cambridge, 1993). S. Hindle, On the Parish? The micro-politics of poor relief in rural England c.1550-1750 (Oxford, 2004). S. King, Poverty and welfare in England 1700-1850: A regional perspective (Manchester, 2000). D. Marshall, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century; a study in social and administrative history (London, 1926). S. Shave, “Rascally handled’: New Poor Law scandals and the working out of social policy’, (Unpublished MSc dissertation, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, 2006). *Driver states there were over half a million people in Gilbert’s Unions, based on the estimate that there were only 68 Gilbert’s Unions (1993, p.44).

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