Endorsements

Sickness, medical welfare and the English poor explores the welfare experiences of the sick poor from the 1750s through to the 1830s, covering the so-called 'crisis of the Old Poor Law'. Drawing together a considerable amount of data - from accounts, vestry minutes and bills, to letters written by, for or about the poor - this study provides a comprehensive and colourful overview of the nature, scale and negotiation of medical welfare. At its core stand the words and lives of the poor themselves, reconstructed in painstaking detail to show how medical welfare became a totemic issue for parochial authorities by the 1830s. The Old Poor Law confronted a rising tide of sickness by the early nineteenth century. Whilst there were certainly instances of parsimony and neglect in response to rising need, this was not the norm, with parish officers more often feeling a strong sense of moral obligation to the sick. This can be attributed to a sense of Christian paternalism, but we also see other factors at play. There was a growing sense that illness amongst the poor was remediable and that there was scope for negotiation of the relief package between paupers, advocates and officials. The result was a canvas of medical welfare with extraordinary colour and depth. By the 1820s, more of the ill-health of ordinary people was captured by the Poor Law and being doctored or sojourning in an institution became part of pauper and parochial expectation. These trends are brought to vivid life in the words of the poor and their advocates, with the study offering a re-interpretation of the Old Poor Law in its later phases.