Poor Laws: Welfare in 19th Century Britain
My thesis project is a data visualization website that presents Poor Law data through an interactive timeline and interactive maps in order to make these complex historical records more accessible to a modern audience. By placing focus on the impact of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, my website explores how these legislative measures shaped perceptions of class, poverty, and wealth distribution in the late modern period and how these ideas went on to influence contemporary attitudes toward social welfare and economic inequality.
The Poor Laws, was established as a British welfare system in the 16th century. This system underwent a significant change with the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. This reform introduced a rigid distinction between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor, forcing those in need into punitive workhouses. The stigma attached to seeking aid, along with localized data collection by individual boards, embedded biases into the records of the time. This data shows examples of cases from before the 1834 amendment.
This map includes data from the elderly poor populations of Surrey, Hampshire, and Yorkshire. The subjects of this data are all aged 60+ .
Data on poverty relief in 19th-century England analyzed in 1899 by Udny Yule using advanced statistical methods to study social policies. This research focused on Poor Law Unions (PLUs) from the years 1871, 1881, and 1891. Yules’ sources included government reports, census data, and a 1894 study on population density. This research aiming to examine poverty rates, indoor and outdoor relief, population density, and age distribution. This data depicts the state of poverty relief within PLUs several decades following the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act.