Progress: social wage and welfare

1. Progress: social wage and welfare http://johncmullen.blogspot.com

2. In England, the situation of the poor deteriorated after the Dissolution of Monasteries (1536-1541): they had provided shelter and charity.

3. Circa 1537, The Dissolution of the Monasteries. King Henry VIII's men orchestrating the seizure of property from a monastery during the Reformation.

4. The 1601 Poor Law shifts the burden to the parishes. • Overseers appointed to raise and administer funds for the poor and find them work • Able-bodied pauper who claimed relief and refused to work sent to a ‘House of Correction’.

5. Workhouses from the mid-seventeenth century • -provided work where none was available. • Edward Knatchbull’s Workhouse Test Act of 1723 made it compulsory for the poor to enter a workhouse before being entitled to poor relief.

6. Thomas Gibson's plan for a workhouse as included in Henry Fielding, Proposal for Making Effectual Provision for the Poor, 1753.

7. The Speenhamland system (1795) allowed low wages to be topped up by poor relief • It encouraged employers to pay low wages. • Meanwhile the Corn Lawskept the price of corn high to protect landowners whilst taxing the import of foreign corn.

8. 1830Swing riots byagricultural labourers threatened by mechanisation and enclosures. A contemporary etching of a Swing riot

10. Poster advertises reward for information on Swing letters author

11. A farm worker (centre) explains to a clergyman how he has set fire to a hay-rick in protest at being evicted from both his farm and cottage, 1830. Protests, rioting and arson occurred across southern England in 1830 in response to unemployment and low wages among agricultural workers.

12. The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 set up thePoor Law Commission set up to administer the system through Poor Law Unions spread across the parishes.

13. Victorian workhouse in Ripon, now used by the local council as offices

14. Rather than paying relief, the emphasis shifted to the workhouse whose regime was stern and unwelcoming “to discourage idlers”. • Able-bodied paupers were set to hard and often useless work, sexes were segregated and families split up.

15. Able-bodied poor breaking stones for roads in Bethnal Green, Illustrated London News, 15 February 1868. (Perkins)

16. Workhouses

17. Punch criticized the New Poor Law's workhouses for splitting mothers and their infant children Anti-Poor Law poster 1837 depicting the horrors of the workhouse system.

18. Attack on the Stockport workhouse, 1837

19. After numerous scandals • The Poor Law Commission was replaced by the Poor Law Board in 1847. • From 1871, the Board was subsumed within local government.

20. Although conditions improved, workhouses remained an ever present threat for the poor and were not abolished until 1930.

21. Child labour • The first law passed to regulate child labour was the 1788 Chimney Sweepers Act which forbade using children under 8 as climbing boys.

22. Chimney sweep asking for shelter under a lady's umbrella

23. A little black thing among the snow,Crying "'weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe!"Where are thy father and mother? Say!"--"They are both gone up to the church to pray."Because I was happy upon the heath,And smiled among the winter's snow,They clothed me in the clothes of death,And taught me to sing the notes of woe."And because I am happy and dance and sing,They think they have done me no injury,And are gone to praise God and his priest and king,Who make up a heaven of our misery." William Blake’s poem from 1794: The chimney sweeper

24. With the rise of cotton mills, children often made up a third of the workforce in the mills. • They were often “pauper apprentices” bought in cheaply from the workhouse. Working in a Cotton Mill

26. One of the major mill owners of the day, Robert Peel, lobbied for greater protection for the children when he became an MP. • Health and Morals of Apprentices Act (1802): it only applied to pauper apprentices in cotton mills.

28. It limited the working day to 12 hours and made employers responsible for improving conditions, provide clothing and religious education. • However, the Act was not monitored and was frequently ignored.

29. Robert Owen, owner of large mills at New Lanark in Scotland, an early defender of cooperatives improved children’s and other workers conditions. • He was also the first to promote infant schools in his village. Social reformer Robert Owen

30. John Winning watercolour of the mills and village of New Lanark,

31. 1819 Cotton Mills and Factories Actprohibited work for children under 9 and limited to 12 hours/day the work of children between 9 and 16.

32. The Factory Act 1833, covered all textile factories: for the first time, inspectors were also appointed to monitor its implementation. Michael Thomas Sadler wrote a report on children’s working conditions

33. Lord Ashley was a Tory MP whoseChildren's Employment Commission (Mines) report of 1842 revealed the terrible working conditions of children in mines • Coal Mines Act (1842),which forbade women, and children under ten, from working underground.

34. Trammers pulling sledges of coal: prints of young persons included in Lord Ashley's report on children in mining from 1842.

35. The Factory Acts of 1847 and 1853, introduced the ten-hour day for women and children and restricted it to the hours between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.

36. Children’s education and protection • Before the rise of compulsory education many children were instructed by religious foundations or philanthropists. • In 1818,John Pounds, a shoemaker, started free lessons for children in his shop.

37. Ragged Schools developed from the work of John Pounds, a Portsmouth shoemaker who provided a free school for the poorest children.

38. A print showing a Ragged School for boys • The founder and president of the Ragged Schools Union (1844) was Lord Ashley.

39. Drawing of a “ragged school”

40. The Education Act of 1870 legislated for the education of children between 5 and 12 via new School Boards, though it was not made compulsory until 1880.

41. Thomas Barnardo, an Irish philanthropist, was so overcome by the scale of destitution in London that he set up his first home for destitute boys in Stepney in 1870. Thomas Barnardo

42. Thomas Barnardo opens his first London home for boys at 18-26 Stepney Causeway

43. The Waifs and Strays’ Society was founded in 1881 by Edward Rudolf, a Sunday school teacher and civil servant, and his brother Robert. • They gained the support of the Church of England and set up their first home in Dulwich. Robert and Edward Rudolf

44. Edward Rudolf's work at St Anne's Sunday School brought him into contact with impoverished children, and helped him formulate his ideas on child welfare. In December 1881 a house in Friern Road, East Dulwich in South London was rented with the intention of it becoming the first home

45. Like Barnardo’s they also ran small cottage homes and arranged for foster care: it continues today as the Children’s Society. • The Reverend Benjamin Waugh was a social reformer and campaigner who had worked for years in the slums of Greenwich.

46. In 1884, he founded the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children with Lord Shaftesbury as President. The Reverend Benjamin Waugh (1839 –1908) was a social reformer and campaigner

47. The Society flourished and became a National Society in 1889 with 32 branches throughout Britain: the objective of the NSPCC was to educate good parenthood and help support the family. • The government regarded children as their parents’ property and would not intervene in cases of cruelty.

48. It took several years of lobbying for the NSPCC working with the reformist MP Anthony Mundella to develop the Prevention of Cruelty to, and Protection of, Children Act (1889) despite strong opposition. Anthony John Mundella (1825 – 1897) was an English manufacturer, reformer and Liberal Party politician

49. The Act was reinforced in 1904 allowing NSPCC inspectors to remove children from their parents in case of danger. • In 1908, the Children and Young Person's Act formed part of the Children's Charter which imposed punishments for those neglecting children.

50. It became illegal to sell children tobacco, alcohol and fireworks or to send children begging. Police notice from 1909 warning people about the terms of the new Children Act