Status details for Poor Law Parish

Full Description:

During the Tudor period the relief of the poor became one of the Local Government duties. The Poor Law Act (1598) made provision for assistance of poor parishes by grants-in-aid from richer neighbouring parishes. The Poor Relief Act (1601(45 Eliz., C.C)) set a further requirement, for overseers and local Justices to raise poor-relief funds and to set these poor persons to work. This placed a profit-making industrial programme into motion, although the Act did not permit either the building or purchase of workhouses. Further, as Lipman (1949, p.37) states, this Act was not a 'deterent test of 'less eligibility' as in the nineteenth century', the majority of workhouses were run by unpaid staff or officers. Until the late seventeenth century each parish and city was able to manage its poor, yet urbanization and flucuation in employment increased the number of applicants for poor relief, leading to the incorporation of parishes and the erection of workhouses.