ORIGINS OF THE BRITISH WELFARE STATE

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ORIGINS OF THE BRITISH WELFARE STATE
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Attitudes Towards the Poor

• Victorian Orthodoxy
• Poverty a Moral Failing
• New Poor Law (1834) Less Eligibility

Mealtime at a Victorian Workhouse
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London Poverty, 1900
House to Let
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London Poverty, 1900
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Searching the Garbage
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Charity Feeding the Poor
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Charity Feeding School Children
Queuing at the Salvation Army
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Whitechapel Workhouse
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Sleeping in a Workhouse
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Social Investigators I

• Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People in
  London
• Massive 17 volume study (1891-1903)
• Proportion of Inhabitants Who Were Poor

Charles Booth
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Booths Map of Poverty
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Poverty Dorset Street, London
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Playing in the Slums
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Social Investigators II

• 2. B. Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty A Study of Town
  Life (1901)
• Study of York, Northern England
• Extent of Poverty
• confirmation of Booths Findings

Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree
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Rowntrees Statistics
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New Attitudes to Poverty

1. Piecemeal Approach to Treating Poverty Inadequate
2. Source of Poverty Capitalist
   System, Not the Individual
3. Consequences for the Empire

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Rowntrees Poverty Cycle

• Poverty was not a Static Condition
• Poverty Depended on the Life Cycle
• Best Years Early Marriage Working Children
• Worst Years Young Children and Old Age

Women in a Workhouse Picking Oakum
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Causes of Poverty

1. Poverty Cycle
2. Low Wages
3. Unemployment
4. Underemployment
5. Sickness
6. Disability

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Fighting of the Boer War, 1899-1902

• Recruits for the War
• York
• Leeds
• Sheffield
• Manchester
• 2. Rules for Disqualification

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Impact of the Boer War

• Broader Consequences for the Empire
• Portended Physical Deterioration
• Economic Competition
• Intensifying with the US, Germany and France
• Relative Economic Decline
• 4. Emergence of National Efficiency Movement

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Governmental Investigation

• Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on
  Physical Deterioration (1904)
• Confirmed Large Numbers of Men Rejected as
  Physically Unfit for Service
• School Children Suffered from Defects
• Poverty Harmful to Society

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Recommendations

• State Should Defray Cost of Feeding School
  Children
• State Should Institute Program of School Medical
  Inspection