LAW AND POVERTY

Professor Bill Quigley

Historical Development ofLaw and Poverty

English Poor Laws

Map of England

Feudalism

From Murraystate poor law show

Edward III 1327-1377

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

Categorization of poor on ability to work

• Able-bodied?

• Disabled?

1531 - 1536 Poor Relief Statutes

• positive obligations and negative sanctions

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

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

1563 Statute of Artificers

• compulsory work for poor

• could not leave community without written permission

• poor children as young as 1 were apprenticed

Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601

• Local Responsibility (parish)

• Primary Family Responsibility

• Settlement and Removal

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

Settlement and Removal

• only helped worthy residents who were settled in jurisdiction (parish)

• outsiders, even worthy, were removed

1822 English poor rate summons from www.workhouses.org.uk

1747 English poor rate settlement document from www.workhouses.org.uk

English poor rate removal notice 1836 from www.workhouses.org.uk

Colonial Poor Laws

Colonial Poor Laws

• came from English Poor Laws

• built on Puritan Ideology

• use Public-Private Partnership

Key Elements of Colonial Poor Laws

• Local Responsibility (parish)

• Inter-generational Family Responsibility

• Settlement Laws

• Forced Imprisonment for the Idle

Colonial Settlement

• Followed English Law

• Especially poor arrivals by ship

Ship from Sailing Ships and Their Stories by E. Keble Chatterton

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

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

7 year indenture of John Broad to George Washington,December 21, 1773

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)

Slave pen in Alexandria, VA 1862

Slave auction poster

Slave pen in Alexandria, VA

Native Americans homestead in Sandhills

Debtor’s prison in Accomoac, VA made from a picture postcard by Mayrose Co., Linden, NJ

Movement Towards Institutional Relief

• Outdoor relief: assistance in own homes

• Indoor relief: assistance in governmental setting

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

Institutional Poor Relief

• Houses of Correction

• Almshouses

• County Poor Houses

• Poor Farms

• Workhouses

• Asylums

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.

American Memory/Library of Congress-Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record Catalog No.: HABS.RI.4-PROV.131-1

American Memory/Library of Congress-Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record Catalog No.: HABS.RI.4-PROV.131-2

American Memory/Library of Congress-Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record Catalog No.: HABS.RI.4-PROV.131-3

State lunatic asylum, Buffalo, NY, built 1871Catalog No.: HABS No. NY 0 5606

Southern Ohio lunatic asylum, Dayton, Ohio. Erected 1855Catalog No.: HABS No. OH-2222-3

New Orleans female orphan asylum and Margaret Monument, pictaken 1890

Orphan asylum, Charleston, SC

Rendering of St. Elizaeth’s Orphanage, 1314 Napoleon Ave.

Cook Co. Poor Farm, Oak Forest, IL, east viewLibrary of Congress Call No: Illinois, no. 21Collection: Panoramic photographs

Door to poorhouse

Old poorhouse, Germantown, c 1807brynmawr.edu

Workhouserules, 1831Aylesburg,England

Poorhouse by Charles Hoffman, c 1865, National Gallery of Art

Men in workhouse

Mealtime at St. Pancras from www.workhouses.org.uk

Lewis Hine, photographer

Lewis Hine, photographer

Child workers, factory, Baltimore 6/7/09, Lewis Hine, photographer

W. A. Rogers cartoon(look for British flag andsmall boat coming out from NYC dynamite)from virginia.edu/~eas5e/sadlier

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

Migrant family in auto camp in California, 1936The Library of Congress/American MemoryArchival TIFF versuib

Dispossessed Arkansas farmers in Bakersfield, CA 1935

Squatter’s Camp, 1936

1937, Mississippi sharecroppers in Cleveland, MS

Www.nara.gov: depression; social security poster; children getting working papers, 1908, Lewis Hine ,photographer; 9:00 p.m. in glass factory, Indianapolic, 1908, 1 Hine photo; slave dealer, Alexandria,VA, c 1860

Breadline on Times Square, December 8, 1930from AP photo file

Soup kitchen sponsored by Al Capone, ssa.gov

Responses of New Deal

• Federal effort to address some poverty

• Social security for aged

• Child labor laws

• Unemployment compensation

• Aid to Families Dependent children

Bismarck

Franklin Roosevelt

Unemployed workers signing up for unemployment comp

Iowa family, federal relief 1936

War on Poverty

• Medicare

• Medicaid

• Food Stamps

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

Retrenchment

• Cutbacks in mothers and children in welfare

• Cutbacks on immigrants

THE END

GeorgeWashington

LyndonJohnson