A contemporary history of social work

The purpose of the Poor Law

Anxiety about the cost of social welfare is not a new phenomenon, nor is the
stigmatisation of those claiming welfare.
In early Tudor times, the Church played a central role in the distribution of help
to the poor.With the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536–40 followed by the
dissolution of religious guilds, fraternities, almshouses and hospitals in 1545–49,
a key source of charitable support to the poor was removed.
Placing the responsibility for assistance to the poor at a local level was the
necessary consequence in order to address the threat of potential social disorder.
The parish was the only effective source of administration and had been the basic
unit of local government since the 14th century. There were 15,000 parishes in
England alone so there were wide variations in administration. The postcode
lottery is not a new concept.
The 1563 Poor Law was the first to place the poor in different categories:

• the deserving poor – the old, the sick and young children – were given outdoor
relief of assistance with clothing, food or money;
• the deserving unemployed, who were willing to work but unable to find a
job, were given indoor relief in workhouses or orphanages;
• the undeserving poor, who had become beggars or become involved in crime,
received harsh treatment and no material assistance.

The Poor Law has cast a long shadow. The categorisation of deserving and
undeserving remains with us, although no longer expressed in exactly those
terms. Punitive sanctions against those claimants who are unable or unwilling
to comply with the requirements of the Department for Work and Pensions are
the contemporary equivalent.
Each parish was required to levy a rate to support the deserving poor. A
succession of laws followed before being consolidated in the 1601 Poor Law,
which provided a national system of poor rates in every parish with the provision
of working materials and support for the deserving poor.
The provision of support was motivated in part by a sense of obligation to
the poor. More powerful, however, was the fear of social unrest. Social pressures
had built during the second half of the reign of Elizabeth I. Between 1595 and
1598 there were four poor harvests. Coupled with the rise in enclosures reducing
the demand for agricultural labourers, this accentuated the migration from the
countryside into the towns. The 1601 Act led to the appointment of overseers
of the poor to be responsible for setting and levying the rate and for supervision
of the parish poorhouse. While the first to derive income from supervising a
rudimentary system of social welfare, they were far removed from anything
recognisable as social work. The punishment of those classed as undeserving was
brutal, with either whipping or boring through the ear as the usual punishment
for a first offence and for a second offence they could be hung. This exemplary

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A brave new world

punishment was intended to deter beggars and encourage them to return to

their place of birth.
The parish officers’ handbook (Handbook, 1601) stated that overseers were
responsible for ‘employing by worke, releeving by money, and ordering by
discretion the defects of the poor’.The system worked well as a ‘system of income
maintenance for well defined groups of people, especially the young, the recently
married and the elderly’ (Hindle, 2004, p 297). Alongside the system of parish relief,
there was a growth of endowments from bequests for the provision of specific
forms of relief – sometimes workhouses and sometime cash sums available to the
parish for specific purposes like the apprenticeship of pauper children.

Containing costs
One consistent theme as relevant now as then was the importance of restraining
expenditure on social welfare.The 1662 Act of Settlement set limits on expenditure
by limiting eligibility to those ordinarily resident (a term in use four centuries on
to determine eligibility for assistance) in the parish and authorising justices of the
peace to remove newcomers to the parish who were likely to be chargeable to
the parish: ‘Migrants had to give notice of their arrival, parishes to keep bundles
of settlement certificates, and justices to respond to requests for removal orders
for a century or more’ (Hindle, 2004, p 195).
The Workhouse Test Act of 1723 empowered parishes to refuse relief to all
those who refused to enter a workhouse. The austere and disciplinarian regime
of workhouses was not designed to make a profit from the labour of the poor but
to reduce the numbers on outdoor relief by acting as a deterrent.Their success is
questionable. The provision of employment often added to parish costs and the
scale of expenditure on relief continued to grow.
Boyer (1990) describes the various ways in which relief for the able-bodied
was provided. The most important of these were: allowances-in-aid of wages
(the so-called Speenhamland system), child allowances for labourers with large
families, and payments to seasonally unemployed agricultural labourers (Boyer,
1990, pp 10-23).
The Speenhamland system offered a guaranteed weekly income to the head of
the household determined by the price of bread and the size of the family. The
payment was made to the household head whether employed or unemployed.
Cost control and the perverse incentives within the system of supplementing
low wages led to attacks on the Poor Law, with allegations of corruption and abuse.
Driver (1993) noted that in particular the Speenhamland system was regarded
as undermining both the self-discipline of labourers and a free labour market.
This critique of the Poor Laws contained a strong moral element in the belief
that the availability of wage supplementation was promoting pauperism by its
erosion of self-reliance. It is important to see this moral judgement in the social
and political context of the time.

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A contemporary history of social work

Adam Smith wrote of the ‘invisible hand’ that led the individual seeking to
better himself to promote the public good. Ricardo saw the operation of laws
of supply and demand as inexorable and any attempt by the state to influence
them as doomed to failure. Bentham’s utilitarian pursuit of the greatest happiness
of the greatest number was interpreted as support for the laissez-faire principles
driving the rapid expansion of the industrial north in the wake of the Industrial
Revolution. It was wholly consistent with this philosophical position therefore
to argue for self-reliance and self-improvement as the goals of public policy.
Conversely, interference by the state with the operation of the free market was
justified only by utilitarian principles.

Dealing with abuse of the system

The Royal Commission was appointed in 1832 to examine the operation of the
Poor Law. Its deliberations were influenced by Edwin Chadwick’s utilitarian beliefs.
Chadwick, who was to become the first secretary of the Poor Law Commission,
had a view that all outdoor relief should be abolished as it discouraged self-reliance.
The remedy proposed by the Royal Commission in its report was based on the
principle of ‘less eligibility’, ensuring that nobody in receipt of relief should
receive more than ‘the independent labourer of the lowest class’ (Her Majesty’s
Commissioners, 1834). The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 adopted the
majority of the Commission’s recommendations. Parishes were grouped into
Poor Law unions with the aim of abolishing outdoor relief to the able-bodied
and their families. A centralised Poor Law Commission was established to ensure
consistency of administration, with assistant commissioners responsible for a region
and independent of local interests charged with delivering that consistency.
Young (1936, p 40) provides a vivid picture of the time:

The Poor Law filled the whole horizon in 1834. And here there
and everywhere were Chadwick’s young crusaders, the assistant
commissioners, scouring the country in stage-coaches or post-chaises,
or beating up against the storm on the Weald, returning to London,
their wallets stuffed with the tabular data so dear to Philosophical
Radicals, to draft their sovereign’s decrees declaring the union and
stating his austere principles of administration, and then back to see
they were carried out.

There was a sharp decrease in spending of 43% in the decade following the
legislation. The numbers of paupers on relief fell from an estimated 8.8% of the
population in 1834 to 5.7% in 1850 (Rose, 1972, Appendix A, p 53). Although
not all unions, particularly those in the north of England, ceased the provision
of outdoor relief, in most areas the workhouse became the main instrument for
helping the poor. Wages were paid to the able-bodied but at a lower level than
any wages in paid work. Families were separated, with husbands and wives in

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A brave new world

separate sections of the workhouse. With inmates forced to dress in workhouse

uniform and with a restricted diet, conditions in the workhouse were designed
to increase the stigma of pauperism.
The original report recommended different types of workhouses for different
categories: able-bodied males over 15, able-bodied females over 15, aged and
infirm males, aged and infirm females, boys between 7 and 15, girls between 7
and 15, and young children (Her Majesty’s Commissioners, 1834, Appendix A3).
This more enlightened approach proved too expensive for most boards and it
was less costly to provide one large workhouse albeit with different sections.This
categorisation was intended to reinforce the deterrent to pauperism, to prevent
contagion between the groups and to allow separate regimes to be developed.The
design of the workhouse was large and forbidding, with a deliberate similarity
to prisons.
The harshness of the regime in the workhouse was criticised not least by
Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist (1839) and A Christmas Carol (1843).Workhouse
scandals in the late 1840s attracted national attention.Those placed in the Andover
workhouse were so hungry that they were eating the marrow from the bones
that they were required to crush. The ensuing coverage in press and Parliament
led to the establishment of a Select Committee on the scandal, which established
that the inmates were served less food than the inadequate diet prescribed. The
authoritarian rule of the workhouse master meant that it was difficult to challenge
his authority.The report in 1846 (Select Committee of the House of Commons,
1846) eventually led to the replacement of the Poor Law Commission by a new
Poor Law Board.
This was not a move to a more liberal regime.The board tightened restrictions
on outdoor relief by making the work as unpleasant as possible, largely consisting
of stone breaking, but there remained wide local variations. Despite the pressure
from the National Poor Law Board, local boards often found it more economical
to provide outdoor relief at a low level than to meet the cost of accommodating
the family in the workhouse. There were, however, two arguments deployed by
opponents of outdoor relief: the destructive impact on individuals of dependency
on welfare provision, sapping their will to provide for themselves, and the laxness
of those administering the system as shown by the variations in provision.

The role of charity and philanthropy

There were paid staff supervising workhouses and administering outdoor relief,
but this was not a welfare role. A very different approach to the relief of poverty
was developed in Scotland by Thomas Chalmers, a Glasgow churchman. He
visited and recorded information on every family in his parish and found that
a large proportion were living hand to mouth on poor relief. With the approval
of the town council, he devised a scheme to divide his parish into 25 units, each
having around 400 people and supervised by a deacon. The deacons had to
investigate the circumstances of each individual seeking help. They were expected

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A contemporary history of social work

to encourage applicants into employment, to look at their patterns of spending

to see if economies could be made, to encourage family support and only as a
last resort to use the resources of the parish fund.
Chalmers stressed what he called the Four Fountains – self-help, help from
relatives, help of the poor for each other, and help from the rich as an option
only if all else had been explored. His approach had characteristics that were
subsequently consolidated by the Charity Organisation Society – individualised
assessment, hostility to sentimental giving, understanding the needs of applicants,
recourse to financial help as a last resort, and guidance and advice to those carrying
out the home visits.
Visiting societies, usually linked to churches, adopted the principles of Chalmers’
work.This involved fortnightly visits and a discussion of both moral improvement
– whether the family had a Bible or went to a place of worship – and material
circumstances. The Metropolitan Visiting and Relief Association established in
1843 drew together their work.

Keeping records of cases seems to have been a prominent part of the

scheme, each visitor being expected to keep two documents. One was
his own journal, where he noted the facts of a family’s situation, his
impressions, and the general help given, and the other was a report to
the local committee. It was clear, said Pringle (the Rev J.C. Pringle
was later to be Secretary of the Charity Organisation Society), that
this was family case work. (Young and Ashton, 1956, p 90)

The Jewish Metropolitan Board of Guardians was established in 1859. Its

approach differed significantly from the attitudes adopted both by boards of
guardians overseeing the Poor Law and the charities working with the poor.The
Metropolitan Board believed in what today we would call early intervention,
giving help to prevent the decline into pauperism. It investigated every case and
kept a full record. Refusals of assistance were as low as 5% in marked contrast to
other organisations.
The mid-Victorian years saw a profusion of charities – denominationally
based charities and visiting societies, charity schools, dispensaries for the sick,
asylums, orphanages, reformatories and penitential homes for fallen women.
Derek Fraser suggests that charity was a response to ‘four types of motivation: a
fear of social revolution, a humanitarian concern for suffering, a satisfaction of
some psychological or social need and a desire to improve the moral tone of the
recipients’ (Fraser, 1973, p 117).
The last of these – the moral purpose of charity – led to a belief in what was
to become a founding principle of social work – self-help. Pauperism was seen
as disastrous because it eroded self-reliance. Despite the extraordinary level of
involvement in charitable activity of various kinds, there was no systematic
organisation with a resultant overlap and duplication. The president of the Poor
Law Board, George Goschen, issued a minute in 1869 calling for a clear separation

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A brave new world

between charitable work and those administering the statutory system. ‘It would
seem to follow that charitable organisations, whose alms could in no case be
claimed as a right, would find their most appropriate sphere in assisting those
who have some, but insufficient, means … leaving to the operation of the general
laws the provision for the totally destitute’ (Goschen, cited in Rose,1971, p 225).

The Charity Organisation Society

Two important pamphlets preceded the establishment of the Charity Organisation
Society: Henry Solly’s paper, A few suggestions on how to deal with the unemployed
poor of London, and with its ‘rough’ and criminal classes (Solly, 1868) and Henry
Hawksley’s Charities of London and some errors in their administration (Hawksley,
1869). They reflected a wish to apply a more rigorous and systematic approach
to tackling the problems of the poor. As a result of the interest stimulated and the
variety of schemes proposed, a conference of charities was called in February 1869,
which led to the establishment of the Society for Organising Charitable Relief
and Repressing Mendacity. The full title illustrates part of the declared purpose,
but the Charity Organisation Society (COS) swiftly became the working title.
Two important strands can be identified from these early days. First, COS had a
profoundly moral approach, with its emphasis on self-help and self-improvement
with support to families struggling to keep themselves from destitution. Second,
it believed that begging should be repressed and indiscriminate alms giving
discouraged. Help of a deeper kind involving social or physical rehabilitation or
spiritual care was necessary if effective intervention was to take place.
The initial plan of COS was explicit: ‘Confirmed beggars and vagrants will
be sent to the Poor Law guardians or prosecuted before the magistrates as
circumstances demand’ and ‘the Public are therefore earnestly requested not,
under any circumstances, to give direct relief to applicants in the streets, but to
offer them the tickets provided by the District Committees’ (Rooff, 1972, p 30).
The tickets would be the basis for registering the poor and establishing a pattern
of home visits. Within a year there were 17 district committees in London and
by 1872 there were 36, each supported by volunteers.
The strength of COS lay in its systematic approach to the distribution of charity,
its administrative systems and record keeping, its organisation and training of
volunteers, and its success in sharing effective techniques of intervention. It had
weaknesses too. In its determined pursuit of self-reliance, it was actively hostile to
collective solutions to the problems of poverty. Its first annual report dismissed the
concept of state pensions for the elderly, preferring charitable pensions ‘for such
of the poor as can show that they have practised some degree of providence, and
are receiving all the help they can from friends and relations’ (COS, 1879, p16).
It was also, as its full title implies, concerned with the prevention of begging and
the detection of impostors. Its zeal in this direction meant that early reports from
districts gave more attention to ‘detailed and lively stories of attempted fraud and
imposture’ than to ‘the more prosaic case histories of the widow provided with a

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A contemporary history of social work

mangle, or the workman enabled to get his tools out of pawn, or the costermonger
helped to restock his barrow’ (Rooff, 1972, p 56). One reason for the hostility
engendered by COS was its inappropriate enthusiasm for investigating other
charities for unsound methods and lax investigations. Both Barnardo’s and the
Salvation Army came under the critical gaze of COS (Rooff, 1972, p 90).
Its stance on pensions and later on other social reforms made COS a controversial
charity, admired and criticised in equal measure. Overall, the gains clearly outweigh
the liabilities. Social casework started with the records of visits made by those
working for COS. Its records were meticulous. Its support for the principle of
inquiry preceding assessment remains fundamental to social work practice today.
The 1895 annual report summed up its approach:

Investigation has four-fold value. It enables us to decide whether a case

is one for help or not. It helps us to decide the form that assistance
should take to give the most permanent results. It enables us to find
means of assistance apart from cash, and it helps us to give the best
advice for the future welfare of the client. (COS, 1895)

COS’s approach to visiting too differed from that taken by Chalmers and the
visiting societies. Visiting was not to be house to house but for a specific purpose
and by 1908 with the agreement of the client (COS, 1908).The visits were then
the source material for the case paper containing details of the family, income
and expenditure, and the nature of the help requested.
COS was also a pioneer in the use of paid staff. Its first general secretary, Charles
Bosanquet, was paid. By 1883, five paid officers were attached to the districts
to advise and to help to train volunteers. This was not without controversy, as
some active members feared that it would weaken the spirit of voluntarism and
discourage volunteers (a tension that has been experienced by many voluntary
organisations in the ensuing years).
The development of training was an important function of the paid district staff.
The subject assumed increasing importance in the annual reports of COS, with
animated debates about the most effective form of training. Octavia Hill, who had
been active in the early days of COS and remained a supporter, was an advocate
of apprenticeship training and worked closely with the settlement movement.
Jointly with Margaret Sewell, warden of the Women’s University Settlement, she
established a combined course of theory and practice for both volunteers and paid
workers. A pioneering paper in 1895 by Mrs Dunn Gardner was published as a
COS Occasional Paper (COS, 1895b) and continues to be relevant. It asserted the
importance of seeing individuals in relation to their family and neighbourhood,
matching resources to need, and stressed the importance of supervision.
COS swiftly became a key source of information on social problems and an
effective campaigning voice. It was active in promoting the interest of minority
groups. Blind people were supported by a central commission of charities for the
blind and successful passage of legislation; those with learning disabilities by the

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A brave new world

pressure for a central committee to promote the education and welfare of this
group; and the Invalid Children’s Aid Association, established a year before COS,
was a ready partner in developing children’s welfare.

The welfare of children

The deterrent principles of the Poor Law meant that ‘children, lunatics,
incorrigible, innocent, old and disabled were all mixed together’ (Webb, 1910) in
the workhouse.The poor conditions led to a range of experiments with different
approaches. District schools specifically for pauper children were developed by
some boards of guardians. Dr Thomas Barnardo opened his first orphanage in
1866, applying the principle ‘no destitute child refused admittance’. He also
boarded out some children with private families and pioneered cottage homes
for young girls. In 1869, George Stephenson opened his first home in what was
to become National Children’s Home, a Methodist foundation. Cottage homes
with a mother and father in each developed as a means of providing substitute
family care.
Florence Hill led a campaign to establish fostering as a means of providing
care for children. She argued that this was a far more natural life for a child
compared with district schools and workhouses where ‘the vices of the slave, lack
of self-control, indifference to the value of property, and absolute dependence
on others, are painfully apparent’ (Hill, 1894, p 15). By 1870, a Boarding Out
Order empowered all boards to place children and over time regulations were
developed to govern the boarding-out process. The 1889 guide to boards of
guardians prescribed that the foster parents must not be related to the child and
should not be receiving relief themselves, that the father should not be employed
on night work and that there should be no more than two children placed per
family. There were also specific rules about sleeping accommodation.
The responsibility for supervision of boarding out rested with the relieving
officer. Inspectors from the Local Government Board were able to inspect homes
outside the parish. In the reports of Miss Mason, who inspected female children
boarded out, we see again a contemporary echo in her emphasis on children being
seen for a physical examination: ‘Bruising is generally on the upper parts of the
arms … where this is the case I undress the child as much further as is necessary.
I have thus now and then found a child covered with bruises’ (Local Government
Board, 1895). Scotland went further and faster in promoting boarding out. By
1894, 84% of orphans and deserted children in Scotland were boarded out. The
Superintendent viewed this ‘as the means by which thousands of children have
been raised from the pauper class into the higher grade of self-supporting and
independent workers’ (Board of Supervision, 1893).
A society for the prevention of cruelty to children was established in Liverpool
in 1883 and swiftly followed by London and other towns.The national body was
established in 1889 and granted a Royal Charter in 1895. From the outset, the
NSPCC had twin objectives: securing legislation to improve the protection of

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A contemporary history of social work

children and the deployment of staff to take action against cruelty. The Prevention
of Cruelty to and Protection of Children Act came in the year of the society’s
foundation and was popularly known as the children’s charter. It made criminal
offences of ill treatment, abandonment and neglect, and gave the court powers
to remove children to a place of safety. The investigation of reported cruelty or
neglect was carried out usually with admonitions and warnings – a rather more
traditional approach to wrongdoing than that promoted by COS. Its approach
to record keeping was inconsistent and the rich body of knowledge captured
through visits went largely unrecorded.
The outlines of the system of child welfare in force throughout the 20th century
can thus be seen as being established in the last quarter of the 19th century. The
development of family casework driven by COS, the provision of residential
care for children in need, the development of fostering and a strong legislative
framework to address abuse and neglect constituted an enduring legacy.

Probation
Just as we can recognise the foundations of childcare in the latter half of the 19th
century, so too were the foundations being laid of the work of the probation
service.
The reforming efforts of Elizabeth Fry in prisons helped to focus attention on
the needs of discharged prisoners.A number of Discharged Prisoners Aid Societies
were established to try to find lodgings and employment for those released from
prison. A payment of up to £2 per prisoner could be made to help with a return
to employment and stability. In practice, expenditure was much lower than this
and the quality of work done extremely variable. Some societies worked only
with first-time prisoners, some visited in prison prior to discharge while others
relied on information from prison officers, and some would work with short-
sentence prisoners while others favoured the prisoner with a long-term sentence.
A major problem then as now was that of alcohol. Temperance societies were
particularly active in work with prisoners. A member of the Church of England
Temperance Society, Frederick Rainer, donated a postal order of five shillings
to promote rescue work in the courts. This led the society to appoint a special
agent to work in courts. Within 20 years there were a hundred court missioners,
all employed by charitable agencies and predominantly by temperance societies.
The 1886 Probation of First Time Offenders Act authorised the nationwide
extension of court missions.

Medical social work and the beginning of a profession

As early as 1870, concern was expressed about the pressures on outpatient
departments in hospitals and the potential for abuse of free treatment as a result of
the proliferation of medical charities. In a paper to the British Medical Association
titled ‘The medical aspects of pauperism’ (Moberly Bell, 1961), Fairlie Clarke, a

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A brave new world

surgeon at Charing Cross Hospital, criticised the demoralising effect on patients

of receiving free treatment when they might have been able to pay. Similar to
COS’s philosophy, he argued that the ready availability of free services did not
promote the self-supporting and self-respecting citizens needed to drive social
progress. The COS established a sub-committee to look at the medical charities
and Fairlie Clarke became the secretary. District committees continued to
report on the problems of overwhelmed outpatients departments in London.
COS pressure was instrumental in the establishment of a House of Lords Select
Committee in 1890 to examine the treatment of the sick poor in hospitals and
whether the system was being abused.
In its evidence COS expressed concern about the poor conditions in outpatient
departments of hospitals and their use by people who were not entitled to
charitable relief. The recommendations of the Select Committee for a London
Board to supervise the hospitals and establish a common system of accounts were
not implemented immediately, but the spotlight shone by the Select Committee
on the problems in outpatient departments helped to create a momentum for
change. COS seconded one of its able district secretaries, Mary Stewart, to the
Royal Free Hospital in 1895. Her role as defined by the hospital board was to
interview ‘patients who could afford to pay for treatment elsewhere or who
dressed down in order to appear to be more destitute and thus receive free
treatment’ (Cullen, 2013, p 552). COS funded the initial appointment and went
on to recruit and train almoners appointed in other London hospitals and major
hospitals outside London.
Stewart’s initial role was consistent with the philosophy of COS being concerned
with the means testing of patients to ensure that only those deemed appropriate
received free hospital treatment and to ensure that those able to contribute
towards their care did so. This involved visiting and classifying patients. In her
four years at the Royal Free, Mary Stewart maintained the detailed records to
be expected of one trained in the COS approach. In 1895/96, 13% outpatients
were interviewed and classified but within three years this had risen to 39%. Of
these, over 95% were either referred to Provident dispensaries or given charitable
assistance. Only 3% were referred to the Poor Law authorities. The fears and
fantasies about widespread abuse are not borne out by these statistics. The great
majority of those seen as outpatients were in genuine need and unable to afford
hospital treatment.

The settlement movement

Samuel Barnett was an early supporter of COS, but felt that its approach was too
limited. He established the first university settlement at Toynbee Hall in 1885 with
a view to enabling Oxford and Cambridge University students to live among the
working poor and to understand the problems of poverty. Settlements provided
a range of educational and social services to impoverished neighbourhoods. The
students were male, thus immediately distinguishing them from previous charity

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