LAW AND POVERTY

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LAW AND POVERTY

• Professor Bill Quigley

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Historical Development ofLaw and Poverty
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English Poor Laws
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Map of England
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Feudalism
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From Murraystate poor law show
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Edward III 1327-1377
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1349-1350 Statutes of LaborersEdward III

• prohibition of begging
• prohibition of almsgiving
• compulsory work for all under 60
• maximum wages
• people restricted to own town

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Categorization of poor on ability to work

• Able-bodied?
• Disabled?

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1531 - 1536 Poor Relief Statutes

• positive obligations and negative sanctions

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1531 - 1536 Negative Sanctions

• punishment of beggars and vagabonds
• worries about the wandering poor
• only licensed poor were allowed to bet only
  aged and disabled were given licenses
• begging without a license was a crime
• crime to give to non-licensed beggars
• poor begging children (5 to 14) could be taken
  from families as apprentices

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1531 - 1536 Positive Obligations

• local responsibility for disabled or aged poor
• local financing and administration
• punishment for those who refused to work
• assistance limited to three year residents

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1563 Statute of Artificers

• compulsory work for poor
• could not leave community without written
  permission
• poor children as young as 1 were apprenticed

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Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601

• Local Responsibility (parish)
• Primary Family Responsibility
• Settlement and Removal

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Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601divided poor people
into four groups

• needy neighbors who could not work
• needy neighbors who could work
• needy strangers who could not work
• needy strangers who could work

Only help was for first group
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Settlement and Removal

• only helped worthy residents who were settled
  in jurisdiction (parish)
• outsiders, even worthy, were removed

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1822 English poor rate summons from
www.workhouses.org.uk
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1747 English poor rate settlement document from
www.workhouses.org.uk
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English poor rate removal notice 1836 from
www.workhouses.org.uk
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Colonial Poor Laws
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Colonial Poor Laws

• came from English Poor Laws
• built on Puritan Ideology
• use Public-Private Partnership

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Key Elements of Colonial Poor Laws

• Local Responsibility (parish)
• Inter-generational Family Responsibility
• Settlement Laws
• Forced Imprisonment for the Idle

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Colonial Settlement

• Followed English Law
• Especially poor arrivals by ship

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Ship from Sailing Ships and Their Stories by E.
Keble Chatterton
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Who Were the Poor in Colonies?

• Apprenticed children (Including those working
  off parents debt)
• Indentured servants
• Slaves
• Widows, orphans, abandoned women and children
• Mentally and physically disabled

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United States of American until Civil War

• followed mostly colonial poor laws
• local responsibility (county or town)
• settlement and removal
• family responsibility
• anti-immigrant poor

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7 year indenture of John Broad to George
Washington, December 21, 1773
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April 19, 1809 contract between Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison for sale of remainder of the
terms of service for indentured servant, John
Freeman, likely a indentured free black man, for
term of 76 1/2 monts for 400. (Carter Woodson
collection)
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Slave pen in Alexandria, VA 1862
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Slave auction poster
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Slave pen in Alexandria, VA
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Native Americans homestead in Sandhills
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Debtors prison in Accomoac, VA made from a
picture postcard by Mayrose Co., Linden, NJ
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Movement Towards Institutional Relief

• Outdoor relief assistance in own homes
• Indoor relief assistance in governmental
  setting

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1834 Poor Law Reforms in England(and others in
USA)

• helping poor people was hurting them
• poor people were lazy and immoral
• was going to drink and wild lives So
• Less Eligibility (make lowest paid worker
  better off than best poor person)
• Stigmatize poor relief
• Consolidate and centralize poor relief

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Institutional Poor Relief

• Houses of Correction
• Almshouses
• County Poor Houses
• Poor Farms
• Workhouses
• Asylums

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Civil War to New Deal

• Who were the poor?
• Victims of war, widows, orphans
• Disabled
• Freed Slaves
• What were the changes?
• More institutions
• Increase in private philanthropy
• States starting to accept responsibility
• State laws on minimum wage, preventing child
  labor, etc.

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American Memory/Library of Congress-Historic
American Buildings Survey/Historic American
Engineering Record Catalog No.
HABS.RI.4-PROV.131-1
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American Memory/Library of Congress-Historic
American Buildings Survey/Historic American
Engineering Record Catalog No.
HABS.RI.4-PROV.131-2
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American Memory/Library of Congress-Historic
American Buildings Survey/Historic American
Engineering Record Catalog No.
HABS.RI.4-PROV.131-3
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State lunatic asylum, Buffalo, NY, built
1871 Catalog No. HABS No. NY 0 5606
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Southern Ohio lunatic asylum, Dayton, Ohio.
Erected 1855 Catalog No. HABS No. OH-2222-3
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New Orleans female orphan asylum and Margaret
Monument, pic taken 1890
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Orphan asylum, Charleston, SC
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Rendering of St. Elizaeths Orphanage, 1314
Napoleon Ave.
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Cook Co. Poor Farm, Oak Forest, IL, east
view Library of Congress Call No Illinois, no.
21 Collection Panoramic photographs
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Door to poorhouse
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Old poorhouse, Germantown, c 1807 brynmawr.edu
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Workhouse rules, 1831 Aylesburg, England
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Poorhouse by Charles Hoffman, c 1865, National
Gallery of Art
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Men in workhouse
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Mealtime at St. Pancras from www.workhouses.org.uk
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Lewis Hine, photographer
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Lewis Hine, photographer
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Child workers, factory, Baltimore 6/7/09, Lewis
Hine, photographer
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W. A. Rogers cartoon (look for British flag
and small boat coming out from NYC
dynamite) from virginia.edu/eas5e/sadlier
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Causes of New Deal

• 25 of workforce unemployed
• Many displaced, urban and rural
• State and locals unable to shoulder burden of
  poor
• People could see the poor

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Migrant family in auto camp in California,
1936 The Library of Congress/American
Memory Archival TIFF versuib
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Dispossessed Arkansas farmers in Bakersfield, CA
1935
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Squatters Camp, 1936
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1937, Mississippi sharecroppers in Cleveland, MS
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Www.nara.gov depression social security poster
children getting working papers, 1908, Lewis Hine
, photographer 900 p.m. in glass factory,
Indianapolic, 1908, 1 Hine photo slave dealer,
Alexandria, VA, c 1860
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Breadline on Times Square, December 8, 1930 from
AP photo file
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Soup kitchen sponsored by Al Capone, ssa.gov
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Responses of New Deal

• Federal effort to address some poverty
• Social security for aged
• Child labor laws
• Unemployment compensation
• Aid to Families Dependent children

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Bismarck
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Franklin Roosevelt
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(No Transcript)
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Unemployed workers signing up for unemployment
comp
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(No Transcript)
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Iowa family, federal relief 1936
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War on Poverty

• Medicare
• Medicaid
• Food Stamps

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First medicare card, 9/1/65 - ssa.gov
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Retrenchment

• Cutbacks in mothers and children in welfare
• Cutbacks on immigrants

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THE END
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George Washington
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Lyndon Johnson