Episode 2 of 3
Workhouse Test Implementation
- When
- 1834
- Where
- England and Wales
The Act discouraged outdoor relief for the able-bodied, offering them the workhouse, aiming to protect urban ratepayers.
The New Poor Law attempted to reverse economic trends by discouraging relief to anyone who refused to enter a workhouse. Under the Act, all cases were to be offered the house and nothing else. The policy aimed to transfer unemployed rural workers to urban areas where there was work and protect urban ratepayers from paying too much.
Sources
- Workhouse Wikipedia
- Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 Wikipedia
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.