'Poverty and Welfare in Comparative Urban Contexts’ Workshop
22 February 2013
Queen’s University Belfast.
10a.m. - 4.30 p.m.
Auditorium, McClay Library.
‘La Misère à Dublin’, Le Miroir, 23 November, 1913 (NLI)
This workshop is funded by the
Arts and Humanities Research Council
Programme
10.00 - 10.10: Introductory remarks: Peter Gray (QUB)
10.10 -11.30: Contemporary social policy perspectives
Grace Kelly (QUB) Family life in conditions of low income in Northern Ireland
Mike Tomlinson (QUB) Poverty and social exclusion in the U.K.
11.30 - 11.40: Coffee
11.40- 1.00: British urban poverty and welfare
David Green (KCL) ‘It is here that we find the English poor law system in its most complete form’: London and the poor law in the nineteenth century
Janet Greenlees (GCU) The Church of Scotland and the poor: politics and paradoxes, c 1880-1950
1.00 - 1.40: Lunch
1.40-3.40: Irish urban poverty and welfare
L.M. Geary (UCC) ‘The best relief the poor can receive is from themselves’: The Society for Promoting the Comforts of the Poor
Jacinta Prunty (NUIM) Poverty and welfare in comparative urban contexts: introduction of the French Eudist model of magdalen refuge to the city of Dublin in 1853
Virginia Crossman (OBU) Some reflections on the urban / rural poverty divide in Ireland 1850-1914
3.40 - 4.30: Roundtable discussion
Georgina Laragy, Sean Lucey, Olwen Purdue (QUB)A.H.R.C. Project: Poverty and public health in Belfast and Northern Ireland, 1800-1973
Abstracts
Some reflections on the urban / rural poverty divide in Ireland 1850-1914
Virginia Crossman (Oxford Brookes University)
There has long been an awareness that experience of poverty and welfare differed in rural and urban areas. Writing in the 1980s, Michael Rose, noted that the New English Poor Law ‘operated under a different set of rules’ in many urban parishes as compared to their rural counterparts. Recent research on the Irish poor law has revealed a similar divide. Patterns of relief and the profile of those relieved in major city poor law unions, such as North and South Dublin and Belfast, were very different from those in rural unions. This paper will explain the main areas of divergence and reflect on their origins and significance. It will look first at the causes and character of poverty in urban and rural areas, and then at the administration of poor relief. It will outline the role of the workhouse as a site of relief and increasingly of medical care, assess the provision of outdoor relief, and evaluate the relationship between public and private relief. There is a tendency to assume that the poor law system operated separately and in isolation from philanthropic organisations established to assist the poor. It is clear from a study of urban poor law unions in particular, however, that this is not the case. People moved between the workhouse, night shelters, hospitals and asylums. Furthermore, as outdoor relief became more important in the later decades of the nineteenth century, a mixed economy of welfare developed whereby people sought assistance from a number of different sources, often in different forms, depending on their particular circumstances and the time of the year. The paper will conclude with some reflections on the significance of the urban / rural divide in the evolution of welfare provision in Ireland.
‘The Best Relief the Poor Can Receive Is from Themselves’: The Society for Promoting the Comforts of the Poor
Laurence M. Geary (University College Cork)
The Society for Promoting the Comforts of the Poor was founded in Ireland in 1799, against a background of political upheaval, deteriorating economic and social conditions for the poor, and the absence of a statutory poor relief system. The Society was established initially in Cork, Dublin and Carrick-on-Suir, and, subsequently, in a number of other Irish centres. These bodies were independent of one another but, collectively, they drew their inspiration, language of discourse and, possibly, their ideals from the English Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor, which originated in London in late 1796 and which in turn may have been influenced by earlier initiatives in Munich and, particularly, Hamburg. The Society’s membership was essentially male, middle-class and Protestant, ideologically drawn together by a combination of moral, religious and social sentiment. The Society, which promoted a range of activities and initiatives designed to improve the physical and moral welfare of the poor, put the emphasis firmly on independence, frugality and sobriety, compliance with the law and convention, and the preservation of social order.
This paper explores the establishment, ethos and philanthropic initiatives of the Society for Promoting the Comforts of the Poor, and uses the Cork Society as a case study, not because of any sense of parochialism on my part but on account of it being the first such society that was founded in Ireland, and the one for which most information appears to be extant.
'It is here that we find the English poor law system in its most complete form': London and the poor law in the nineteenth century
David Green (Kings College London)
This quote, taken from Paul Aschrott's book, The English Poor Law System, published in 1888, hints at the growing importance of London in understanding the pressures and policies relating to poor relief in England. The capital's significance was evident in several ways - in the amount of expenditure, numbers of paupers, scale of relief and in the complexity of the way that the system evolved into a series of specialist institutions that catered for different categories of pauper within separate kinds of institutions. However, London's significance in the earlier historiography of the poor law is less well known. This paper explores some of the main dimensions of the city's role within the national poor law system, taking into account patterns of expenditure, numbers of paupers, and key policy changes that emerged during the course of the nineteenth century. Beginning with the importance of metropolitan evidence to the 1832-34 Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, it continues by exploring the city's uneasy relationship with the central authorities in the transition from the old to the new poor law. The growing difficulties facing the poor law as a result of rural to urban migration, and large scale Irish emigration, in the 1840s were compounded by changes in the laws of settlement that threw a significant additional burden of relief on major cities, notably London, whilst similarly removing costs from the countryside. From the mid-century onwards, London's problems in dealing with the changes increasingly became the focus of national attention. Parliamentary investigations in the 1860s focussed very largely on London, and reforms of the system in the late 1860s and 1870s reflected specific metropolitan problems. In particular, the renewed emphasis on indoor relief and the construction of workhouses in the later decades of the century meant that London was extremely well supplied with institutional space for paupers. These spaces, however, were problematic, particularly as other measures to relieve poverty operating outside the poor law, such as unemployment insurance and old age pensions began to take effect.
The Church of Scotland and the poor: politics and paradoxes, c 1880-1950
Janet Greenlees (Glasgow Caledonian University)
During the nineteenth century, Scotland’s rapidly changing economic and social fabric meant that the Presbyterian Churches had to rethink their relationship with the new industrial society which was growing ever more critical of the increasing economic and social inequalities. What developed was a form of Christian socialism, or social conscience about the impact of free-market capitalism on issues such as poor quality housing, poverty and unemployment, the health of children and women’s low-paid employment. The social question incorporated health, but also religion. The Church had to act or it would lose its working class membership. This paper examines the Presbyterian Church’s response to these associated health and welfare issues. Concentrating on the established Church of Scotland, it draws on records of individual parishes, Church Committees and publications to reveal some of the paradoxes in the Churches provision. This paper examines the actual health and welfare services provided to argue that the public face of Christian socialism differed from the parish reality and that the Church followed an institutional approach to welfare. Whereas evangelical motives marked early initiatives, these were gradually replaced by services for members – to the neglect of the poor.
Roundtable discussion: ‘Welfare and public health in Belfast and the North of Ireland, 1800-1973’
Georgina Laragy, Sean Lucey, Olwen Purdue
This roundtable discussion will focus on the key aspects of this A.H.R.C. funded project. The keystone element of the project combines all project researchers, with institutional and external collaborators, in producing shared research and impact-related outputs on the history of poverty, welfare and public health in Belfast and its hinterland over the period between the Act of Union and the restructuring of public health administration in 1973, following the termination of majoritarian devolved government in Northern Ireland.
‘Poverty and welfare in comparative urban contexts: introduction of the French Eudist model of magdalen refuge to the city of Dublin in 1853.’
Jacinta Prunty (National University of Ireland, Maynooth)
Abstract pending
Family life in conditions of low income in Northern Ireland
Grace Kelly (Queen’s University Belfast)
In April 2010 we began work on the Northern Ireland component of the UK’s largest ever research project into poverty and social exclusion (PSE). The main aims of the PSE are to:
- Improve the measurement of poverty, deprivation, social exclusion and standard of living.
- Measure the change in the nature and extent of poverty and social exclusion over the past ten years.
- Produce policy-relevant results about the causes and outcomes of poverty and social exclusion and how best to address these problems.
The PSE project activities include a mixture of both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection – focus groups, attitude surveys, main population survey, in-depth qualitative interviews and engagement with local communities.
The Northern Ireland Qualitative Study
In the latter months of 2011 and early 2012, a qualitative study was carried out with 51 low income families in Northern Ireland. The study has two main sets of interests: the experience of living in poverty and low income and family as a factor in poverty. While there is considerable work on people’s experience of living in poverty there is less known about how and if poverty or low income is mediated by family considerations, practices and relations.
The overall objectives are:
- To explore how people conceive of family and organise their family relations in a context of poverty and low income. To examine how family life is affected by low income and the degree to which the family’s straightened circumstances determines the relations and practices engaged in. To make visible some of the internal processes and decision making about how resources (material and immaterial) are distributed within families.
- To identify the kind of support networks that people have, where family figures in this and how people engage with familial and other networks in a context of need. Research has found that while family support is important across all social classes, it is more acutely so for those living in precarious situations. The study is interested in ascertaining the extent to which familial ties are realised in support when people need it and how this is received, interpreted and reciprocated.
- To look at how people view their situation and the psychological and social connotations of being on low income and explore how people feel society regards them. Throughout, agency – how respondents approach their situation and how they seek to take charge of it – is a central interest.
The study was carried out during a time of substantial spending cuts in social security benefits and public services. It has been established that the series of changes to the tax and benefit system being implemented across the UK will impact more severely in Northern Ireland than other regions. This reflects particular characteristics of the region such as higher rates of disability and a higher proportion of households with children including a higher proportion of larger families (with three or more children). Particularly during such a time of austerity, it is important to understand whether and how families are being called on to subsidise individual members to help ameliorate the consequences of state cut-backs and reform and to look at the extent and limits of family solidarity.
Poverty and social exclusion in the U.K.
Mike Tomlinson (Queen’s University Belfast)
The ESRC has funded a major research project into Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK. This project is a collaboration between the University of Bristol, University of Glasgow, Heriot Watt University, Open University, Queen’s University (Belfast), University of York, National Centre for Social Research and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. The project commences in April 2010 and will run for three-and-a-half years.
The primary purpose is to advance the 'state of the art' of the theory and practice of poverty and social exclusion measurement. In order to improve current measurement methodologies, the research will develop and repeat the 1999 Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey. This research will produce information of immediate and direct interest to policy makers, academics and the general public. It will provide a rigorous and detailed independent assessment on progress towards the UK Government's target of eradicating child poverty.
Objectives
This research has three main objectives;
- To improve the measurement of poverty, deprivation, social exclusion and standard of living
- To assess changes in poverty and social exclusion in the UK
- To conduct policy-relevant analyses of poverty and social exclusion