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One interpretation of the welfare reform of the early 20th century states that it represented the
displacement of a coercive, moralistic and discretionary poor relief system with a programme
͚universal in coverage, morally neutral in application, democratic in administration and based on
legally-enforceable social rights.͛1 Moreover, it was the culmination of a gradual but comprehensive
rejection of traditionally individualistic attitudes towards poverty (closely associated with Bentham)
where the pauper in question was lazy, morally suspect and possibly deserving of paternalistic
charity, at least partly for the preservation of order. The outdated view was replaced by a more
communitarian conception of society that sought to understand objectively the underlying reasons
behind poverty and tackle them with scientific precision. This position also included recognition of
the importance of improving the national stock for both military and economic purposes. This
change rested on the idea that some poverty was contingent on factors outside the control of the
individual, such as worldwide economic fluctuations and, more widely, a rejection of pure  
 capitalism as the best vehicle for improving the general condition of all Britons.

Such an interpretation is grossly simplistic. Firstly, it exaggerates the degree to which the ideology
behind the poor laws (or at least, some aspects of that ideology) truly changed and it assumes a
degree of homogeneity in the practical manifestation of that ideology in the various local unions and
boards of guardians tasked with upholding the poor law. While it would be hard to paint a positive
picture of indoor relief offered by the workhouses, it is hard to argue, formally at least, that they
were moralistic and discretionary since the 1832-4 Royal Commission had specifically designed the
͚workhouse test͛ to be objective and self-acting.2 The 1900s and 1910s welfare legislation may
 to be communitarian in its approach, but independence and self-reliance were still key
components and there were a plurality of complex reasons for its passage, many of which had
nothing to do with a reformed concept of the poor. Most notably, the apparent rejection of both the
Majority and Minority report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws suggests an agenda quite
different from that of poor law reform. What this calls for is a more nuanced approach to the (only
potentially) changing definition of poverty in the period. How were they divided? If there was a
constant concept of the difference between indigent and those who were simply poor, how were
these categories determined? Was there a change in the nature of the investigation of these
categories and does this reveal a growing concern with poverty as a social problem worthy of
attention? How did people͛s understanding of the  of poverty change? Finally, but perhaps
most importantly, how did this discourse on poverty translate into action, whether public (central or
local) or private?

It is worth establishing that poor relief was consistently upheld as a  throughout the period.
Though the qualifications as to whom that right applied to might have changed, and even if it was
frequently lamented that the poor͛s knowledge of their right gave them a safety net led them to act
irresponsibly, the basic premise that it was right that payment of local rates should go to support a
group of the poor remained. It is also worth noting how uncommon this was for a European country
since nowhere in Europe was local direct taxation levied on behalf of the poor across a whole
country in the first half of the 19th century in the manner of England ʹ in G. Nicholls͛   
 published in 1854 he boasted that ͚every shilling͛s worth of property in the country
shall be sacrificed before a poor person shall be permitted to starve.͛3 This was clearly an
exaggeration since some of 125 deaths in London in 1908 due to starvation, 80 of them had sought
no relief, demonstrating the power of the stigma of the poor law system to repel even those in

1
Europe p430
2
Rose p10
3
Europep418
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greatest need (and in the 20th century after alleged improvements to the system).4 But the fact
remains that in the 1834 report of the Royal Commission, the right to relief was never denied5 and
several high profile court cases throughout the 19th century made it clear that physical neglect
caused by a failure to give relief was a punishable offence. In 1900 the Merthyr Tydil case
established that though able-bodied male strikers were not entitled to relief during a strike (this
would apply strike or no) their families  as it was felt they were innocent victims of their bread-
winner͛s political convictions.6 Thus whatever the detailed views on the poor themselves, the
principle that it was right to relieve those in genuine need persisted.

But who were the deserving poor? Edmund Burke͛s distinction between those who were poor
because they were obliged to work and those who were genuinely poor because they were unable
to work and then Bentham͛s poverty (those who laboured to subsist) and indigence (unable to
labour for subsistence from disability, sickness or age) remained influential. Thus, the 1834 Poor Law
Amendment Act͛s introduction of the ͚workhouse test͛ and the principles of ͚deterrence͛ and ͚less
eligibility͛ was based on the idea that the ͚indigent͛ who really required relief would take it while
those without a true need would prefer the more ͚eligible͛ standards of living available if they took
regular employment.7 The differentiation between the ͚indigent͛ and the ͚poor͛ persisted
throughout the period, though it was challenged ʹ in the 1870s a programme of stringently
deterrent ͚test workhouses͛ were suggested for habitual ͚casuals͛ though only six such
establishments were built over the next few decades (there were 600 unions where they might have
been taken up).8 But the distinction appears in the work of those usually associated with a more
nuanced, even scientific analysis of poverty - Booth͛s division of the London poor in the late 1880s
into ͚classes͛, his ͚Class A͛ represented a semi-criminal underclass that was felt to be irredeemable
and thus undeserving of relief9 while some even argued Rowentree͛s ͚secondary poverty͛ was a tacit
admission that some were poor through mismanagement and were thus unworthy of relief.

However, there were serious intellectual and practical challenges to the simplistic distinction
between the indigent and the poor. For instance Rowentree did offer an alternative model of
poverty ʹ rather than define the worthy poor as those unable to work, he sought to demonstrate
that even those able to work often earned less than the sum necessary to obtain basic ͚physical
efficiency͛ and were in ͚primary poverty͛, a level that Rowentree felt was far below a reasonable
income ʹ indeed in his survey of York it was not primary poverty that was the mark of the poor, but
the observation of general squalor and destitution, a much more relative and human concept than
the objective 21s and 8d.10 Thus Rowentree͛s definition of the poor was anyone living in unsavoury
conditions, a concept that he linked to primary poverty to show how widespread such poverty was.
Indeed, Rowentree represented a wider concern with analysing poverty as a social phenomena to be
solved or even ͚cured͛ ʹ the application of new statistical methods to poverty was championed by
Bowley who demonstrated the benefits of using random sampling in terms of time and labour over
Rowentree͛s exhaustive investigations.11 Tackling poverty as a social scientific problem was not
confined to individuals ʹ the  of the Statistical Society was a ͚quantitative commentary on the
trends of social change and the social incidence and running costs of expansive industrialism͛12 and
in 1857 the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science was founded, a group whose
annual sessions frequently addressed the problem of poor relief. The   argued for improved

4
Crowther p222
5
Europe p418
6
Crowther p246
7
Rose p11
8
Europe p426
9
Digby p37
10
Veit p83
11
Hennock p220
12
Rose p25
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treatment for all and was particularly influential in its investigation of the sick wards in London
workhouses in 1865.13

Perhaps the greatest practical manifestation of the use of science in tackling poverty was in the
difference between the people who sat on the two Royal Commissions of 1832 and 1905-1909. For
instance the 1832 chair was the Tory Bishop of London Charles Blomfeld with Nassau Senior,
professor of Political Economy at Oxford and Chadwick, a Benthamite reformer, providing
intellectual clout.14 While the 20th century counterpart still had political economists and clergymen,
the intellectual focus had been shifted to those with practical experience of the relief of poverty ʹ
therefore six of the twenty appointed to work for the Commission, six were prominent members of
the Charity Organisation Society (COS), five were Guardians of the Poor and several were also
permanent heads of the Local Government Boards.15 The scale of their investigations also revealed
the shift to a more systematic approach to poverty ʹ 200 Unions and 400 institutions were visited,
taking 900 statements of written evidence and filling forty-seven volumes.16 Such systematisation
had already been seen in the work of the COS ʹ while they distinguished between the deserving and
the undeserving with a severity reminiscent of the 1834 Poor Law, their approach was to tackle
poverty by looking at the specifics of every case. This was formalised in 1896 when the COS started
training its social workers ʹ in the words of the COS secretary Loch charity ͚works through sympathy͛
but ͚depends on science͛.17 Thus the work of the 1900s Poor Law Commission, the
professionalization of the COS and the general desire to apply scientific methodology to poverty
relief, reveals a growing desire to systematically investigate and understand the nature of the poor
in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

There were also more overtly political intellectual challenges to the poor/indigent model ʹ the
moderate reformist socialism of the Fabian Society, founded in 1884 reflected a wider trend against
individualism in social policy while the construction of ͚New Liberalism͛ by Oxford tutor Thomas Hill
Green gave ideological justification for a more involved state.18 Instead of the mere ͚negative
freedom͛ of the Liberal orthodoxy, Green argued ͚positive freedom͛ was necessary for the good of a
society in which every individual could realise his full potential. It is difficult to ascertain the degree
to which these ideological convictions manifested themselves in practical political action but it is
worth noting that Green͛s ideas did inspire a new generation of young social reformers such as
Masterman, Hammond and Hobhouse, the very generation that successfully instigated the social
legislation of the 1900s and 1910s, especially for national insurance and old age pensions.

Even in the 1905-1909 Royal Commission, it was still found that workhouses were seen to be
objectionable not because of the institutions themselves but because they were still ͚general mixed͛
in which respectable workers who had fallen on hard times due to economic recession or sickness
would have to come into contact with beggars, prostitutes and the drunks.19 The social stigma came
from the forced association of the upstanding working classes with the ͚residuum͛.

The distinction than enabled the lampooning of some of the poor and the relief of others rested on
the idea that any able-bodied man who was not working had made some kind of rational choice to
be a pauper ʹ he was poor because he chose to be. Such a position rested on a combination of
middle class fatalism that poverty had always been a part of society and that it was even an

13
Rose p26
14
Harris p45
15
Woodruffe p141
16
Rose p42
17
Rose p27
18
Rose p31
19
Europe p431
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incentive for others to avoid such a state, and moralism that argued that the individuals concerned
were responsible for their own condition due to deficiencies of character.20

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Rose p10