Samantha A. Shave – författare

Following the passage of the 1834 New Poor Law, parishes in England and Wales were organized into unions, each of which had at least one workhouse, a public institution where impoverished individuals and families were housed, fed, and put to work. Beyond bricks and regulations, the workhouse was shaped and animated by those who ran it. Workhouse Lives reconstructs the careers and experiences of workhouse staff: masters and matrons, nurses, schoolmasters, porters, chaplains, taskmasters, relieving officers, and inspectors.In the workhouse, roles overlapped, lines of responsibility blurred, and power was constantly negotiated. As the functions of the welfare state expanded, staff were expected to manage dormitories and medical wards, teach children and offer spiritual guidance, resolve disputes, keep records, administer vaccinations, arrange foster placements, and conduct sanitary inspections. Violence was a regular feature of workhouse life, arising from clashes between staff and inmates, conflicts among inmates (including domestic violence), and staff disputes. Officers might abuse their authority, sometimes brutally, while others acted with care and compassion. What moulded the lives of everyone within the workhouse was less the administrative structure than the character of the person appointed to each role. This dynamic continues to resonate in modern welfare systems, which, however bureaucratized, are embodied by the people working on the front lines.Touching on histories of welfare, labour, poverty, literacy, material culture, and state formation, Workhouse Lives illuminates the personalities, motivations, and community connections of staff whose lives have long been hidden.

Pauper policies examines how policies under the old and New Poor Laws were conceived, adopted, implemented, developed or abandoned. This fresh perspective reveals significant aspects of poor law history which have been overlooked by scholars. Important new research is presented on the adoption and implementation of ‘enabling acts’ at the end of the old poor laws; the exchange of knowledge about how best to provide poor relief in the final decades of the old poor law and formative decades of the New; and the impact of national scandals on policy-making in the new Victorian system. Pointing towards a new direction in the study of poor law administration, it examines how people, both those in positions of power and the poor, could shape pauper policies. It is essential reading for anyone with an interest in welfare and poverty in eighteenth and nineteenth-century England.This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 1, No poverty.