A study of English Poor Law policy by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, published in 1910 as a work of social and administrative history. It traces how the laws and administrative orders governing relief of the poor took shape over time, rather than merely listing current regulations. Useful for anyone interested in how social policy and its history interrelate.
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Cover of the original edition (Project Gutenberg, public domain).
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
ENGLISH POOR LAW POLICY.
BY
SIDNEY
AND
BEATRICE
WEBB.
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.,
39 PATERNOSTER ROW,
LONDON,
NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND
CALCUTTA.
1910. (Second Impression, 1913)
PREFACE
Nothing of to-day, it may be suggested, can be really understood without its history. This, at any rate, is true of the complicated policy of the English Poor Law, which is now (1910) costing the public (for the United Kingdom) close upon twenty millions sterling every year; and which is producing, on the whole, results which led the Royal
Commissioners of 1905-1909, without distinction of political or economic party or creed, to their unanimous and emphatic condemnatory verdict. That policy is embodied in a bewildering chaos of Statutes and Orders, Circulars and Minutes, general reports and official letters, the specific provisions of which, so far as they are contemporaneously in force, and so far as they are publicly known, the legal text-books and elementary manuals seek to re-arrange in such a way that the Poor Law Guardian or Workhouse Master may learn, at any rate, what is legally prescribed. But though a precise statement of what is to-day prescribed, in alphabetical or other order,
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