The Solidarities of Strangers
The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700–1948

A study of English policies toward the poor from the 1600s to the present, showing how clients and officials negotiated welfare settlements.

Lynn Hollen Lees (Author)

9780521030663, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 January 2007

392 pages, 23 b/w illus. 2 maps 8 tables
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.586 kg

'Lynn Hollen Lee's book puts flesh on the dry bones of poor law administration by citing human experiences … derived from a largely untapped wealth of local records, autobiographies and other personal testimony … this is a particularly timely book … [and] is of great value in making sense of the wide range of poor law research in recent years and in focusing on the human experience of public relief.' The Times Literary Supplement

The Solidarities of Strangers is a study of English policies toward the poor from the seventeenth century to the present that combines individual stories with official actions. Lynn Lees shows how clients as well as officials negotiated welfare settlements. Cultural definitions of entitlement, rather than available resources, determined amounts and beneficiaries. Indeed, industrialization and growing wealth went along with restricted payments to the needy, while universal allowances and insurance systems expanded as the economy faltered and world wars crippled budgets and drained resources. Although the English poor laws were a 'residualist' system, aiding the destitute when neither family nor charities covered needs, they went through cycles of generosity and meanness that affected men and women unequally. The long-term history of welfare in England and Wales has not been a story of continued progress and improvement but one determined by continually changing attitudes toward poverty.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. Residualism Taken for Granted, 1700–1834: 1. The welfare process under the old poor laws
2. Weekly doles: communal support in the eighteenth century
3. Excluding paupers, 1780–1834
Part II. Residualism Refined and Restricted, 1834–60
4. Classifying and confining paupers, 1834–60
5. 'Though poor, I'm a gentleman still'
6. 'Pauperism' in practice, 1834–70
Part III. Residualism Re-evaluated and Rejected, 1860–1948
7. Re-evaluating the urban poor, 1860–90
8. The multicampaign war on pauperism, 1870–1906
9. Popular rejection of the poor laws
10. New principles for social action, 1906–48
Epilogue: residualism redux, 1948–95
Appendix: collection and analysis of settlement examinations
Bibliographic essay
Index.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1]