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The Old Poor law of 1785-1834 was a law that was governed by the local parishes and this meant that the old poor law was a lot more humane, discreet and often the parishes formed a personal relationship with the recipient and meant that the poor relief was greater and more well-meant. However, the problem was that the rate payers paid the money for poor relief so they had the power to change the rules and with population growing and a concern about the amount of idle able bodied paupers claiming poor relief thorough what could only be described as tough times, they introduced a bill for the New Poor Law of 1835 and with it came the less eligibility principle.
The less eligibility principle is a combination of a number of conditions. Firstly though and arguably the most important condition is those who are paupers and seeking poor relief should be less off than that of the lowest paid labourer. This is explained in the 1834 Poor Law Report by Edwin Chadwick that, “his position on the whole shall not be made really or apparently so eligible as the situation of the independent labourer of the lower class. ... However, for someone to qualify for entrance to a workhouse or claim poor relief they had to be destitute, and this often meant that people entering the workhouse had to live in conditions worse than those outside of the workhouse.
The workhouses before the less eligibility principle were described as refuges or hospitals for the sick, helpless and homeless, a school for children, an asylum or an old people’s home, basically a last resort for the unemployed. However, the less eligibility principle set about to change this so as not to make them so attractive to the more eligible class of paupers
The workhouse was a place of work, and the work inside the workhouse has been described as irksome and repetitive.
Approximate Word count = 1453
Approximate Pages = 5.8
(250 words per page double spaced)
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