The consequences of extreme poverty were a grim reality for all too many people in Victorian England. The various poor laws implemented to try to deal with it c

Few measures, if any, could claim to have had a greater impact on British society than the poor law. As a comprehensive system of relieving those in need, the p

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

A new perspective on the place of the workhouse in the history and geography of nineteenth-century society and social policy.