Enacted three main principles: the principle of local responsibility; the principle of settlement and removal; and the principle of primary family responsibility.
Economic conditions deteriorated throughout the 1590s due to food shortages and high inflation led to significant social unrest and widespread famine. Under this context, the government was forced to act, acknowledging the forces that prevented so many English from being able to work. At the time, society was dominated by mercantilism, paternalism and a belief that state’s could and should order the livelihoods of citizens. This framework helped shaped the Poor Law of 1601 which saw to put the poor to work to stabilize society and prevent social disorder.1
Considered to be the foundation for poor law over the next 250 years in both England and America, the Elizabethan poor laws, starting with this Act implemented three main principles:2
- the principle of local responsibility
- local parishes were responsible for relief by raising funds directly provide resources to those in need
- set up mechanisms which allowed a local overseer of the poor collect taxes from the local parish to help pay to take care of the poor
- local authorities were empowered to building housing for the poor of their particular parish
- the principle of settlement and removal
- The 1662 Act of Settlement gave justices of the peace to remove any person from its jurisdiction if someone has complained that they arrived in the last 40 days and were determined to either need or might need relief.
- arose from three concerns: desire to reduce local responsibility for poor relief; growing sense for the need to have a punitive dimension to poor relief; determination to keep the laboring poor close to home and away from cities.
- the principle of primary family responsibility
- Families from grandparents to grandchildren were responsible for the relief of impoverished family members
- If it was determined parents were unable to take care of a child, then they could take the child away to be an apprentice without pay (the idea of keeping families together to aid them was not part of the law)
There is scarce a poor man in England of forty years of age . . . who has not in some part of his life felt himself most cruelly oppressed by this ill-contrived law of settlements. –Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776
Endnotes
- From Poor Laws to Welfare State, Fifth Edition. Walter I. Trattner. Chapter 1.
- Five Hundred Years of English Poor Laws,1349-1834: Regulating the Working and Nonworking Poor. William P. Quigley. 2015. pages 11-14.