Welsh Journals

THE OLD POOR LAW IN AN INDUSTRIALIZING PARISH: ABERDARE, 1818-36 OVER the last decade our knowledge of the machinery and effect of the Old Poor Law has been deepened by empirical local research and by important theoretical essays. A new view of the Old Poor Law has emerged. In the earlier view, the Old Poor Law was held, especially in agricultural areas, to have 'demoralized the working class, promoted population growth, lowered rents, destroyed yeomanry, and compounded the burden on ratepayers; the more the Old Poor Law relieved poverty, the more it encouraged the poverty which it relieved'.2 Insofar as there is a standard view of the mechanism and effect of the Old Poor Law in Wales, it is one shaped by conditions in rural areas and it reflects this severe picture.3 The new view emphasises the 'humanity and flexibility' of the Old system. 'Under the Old Poor Law', writes Dr. Marshall, 'varied problems were fairly sensibly recognised and dealt with, however shortsightedly'.4 The revisionist interpretation stresses that the economic effects of the Old system, which included wage subsidies from the poor rate, were benign. This thesis was expounded in Professor Blaug's seminal essays of 1963 and 1964,5 and it has been substantiated in some recent studies of agricultural areas.6 Gradually a picture has emerged which shows the Old system operat- ing as 'a welfare state in miniature', in which was combined 'elements of wage escalation, family allowances, unemployment compensation, and public works, all of which were administered and financed on a local level. Far from having an inhibitory effect, it probably contributed to economic expansion.'7 The present paper examines the way in which the Old Poor Law was administered in 1 J. D. Marshall, The Old Poor Law, 1795-1834 (1968), discusses and synthesises much recent research; G. W. Oxley, Poor Relief in England and Wales, 1601-1834 (1974), is the clearest introduction to the subject, and its extensive bibliography includes nearly a score of articles on Welsh parishes. 1 Mark Blaug, 'The Myth of the Old Poor Law and the Making of the New', Journal of Economic History, XXIII (1963), 151. 'David Williams, A History of Modern Wales (1950), pp. 200-5; idem, The Rebecca Riots: A Study in Agrarian Discontent (1955), pp. 136-37; idem, 'Rural Wales in the Nineteenth Century', in A. J. Roderick (ed.), Wales Through the Ages (2 vols., 1960), II, 148; A. H. Dodd, The Industrial Revolution in North Wales (3rd ed., 1971), pp. 294-95. Marshall op. cit., p. 36. Blaug, 'Myth of the Old Poor Law', pp. 151-84; and idem, 'The Poor Law Report Re-examined', Journal of Economic History, XXIV (1964), 229-45. •J. P. Huzel, 'Malthus, the Poor Law, and Population in Early Nineteenth-Century England', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd Ser., XXII (1969), 430-52; D. A. Baugh, 'The Cost of Poor Relief in South East England, 1790-1834', ibid., XXVIII (1975), 50-68. 7 Blaug, 'Poor Law Report Re-examined', p. 229.