Preliminary Programme

What is poverty? Who is poor? The concept of poverty is an ambiguous one and the two questions can be addressed in many different ways. In historical research, the definition of poverty often relies on the judgements made by the Vestries, the Poor Law boards and the Parish councils in the past; the poor are defined as the individuals that received public poor relief. But this is just one perception of poverty. It can not be assumed that all people that had difficulties to support themselves claimed poor relief, neither that all claimants in need of support were approved by the decision makers. Another perception of poverty is tax-exemption, i.e. people that by the fiscal authorities were considered too poor to pay the compulsory taxes. The proportion of poor people relieved from taxes can be used to indicate the poverty level in a society, something that can help us to view the recipients of poor relief in a larger socio-economic context. This paper discusses these two perceptions of poverty, support by poor relief and tax-exemption, and how they related to each other in a local context; two small villages in a parish in northern Sweden 1830-1875. To what extent did people that were considered too poor to pay their taxes receive relief from the parish? What does the relation between tax-exemption and poor relief say about the perceptions of poverty that governed the decision-makers of 19th century, their priorities and their notions of how the Poor Law should be applied? These issues are approached by considering quantitative and qualitative sources, including parish registers and annual fiscal records together with poor relief records. (Show less)

This paper focuses on the idiom of anatomy in the late-Victorian era. It examines how English anatomists purchased pauper cadavers from poor law and asylum officials to train medical students. Following the passing of the Medical Act (1858) all medical students had to be trained at university for two years in anatomy. Yet, this meant that universities need more and more cadavers to supply their students with sufficient research material. At the same time central government wanted to cut welfare expenditure in England. Civil servants pressurised guardians of the poor, who administered poor relief on behalf of ratepayers, to recover the costs of care in the community by selling the bodies of the poor for anatomical training. The research priorities of anatomists and the economic interests of the poor law converged after 1870 to the detriment of the poor. Anatomy departments of major universities, like Oxford and Cambridge, fearful of losing profitable medical student fee-income, went on body-finding drives throughout England. They purchased pauper cadavers from as far afield as Hull, Liverpool and Brighton. High fees were paid for the bodies of children and young females. This study outlines the geography and demography of this traffic in pauper cadavers for the first time. No-one spoke publicly about this traffic in pauper cadavers because it was so offensive to the poor and anatomists feared class reprisals. Indeed in many regions the poor did react forcibly and challenged the right of anatomists to purchase the bodies of their loved ones under the Anatomy Act (1832). Nevertheless, the paper demonstrates that despite popular protest late-Victorian anatomists developed extensive trafficing networks in pauper cadavers. Given the recent scandals about organ donation, tissue sampling and pathology procedures in the National Health Service, this paper has considerable historical relevancy. Many of the current research methods in pathology, the refusal to consult the general public about research procedures, a lack of organ registering, exmplified by the Alder Hey controversy, and the sharing of tissue culture between medical disciplines, began with the late-Victorians. Similarly, anatomists were keen to purchse the bodies of children. Today, many aspects of their work and procedures remain unchanged. The issue of class and health is as salient today as it was for the late-Victorians. (Show less)

In their negotiations with the poor law authorities the poor in many areas of England and Wales made extensive use of the local magistrates courts in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. When deprived of what they considered to be their rightful relief they would take the parish overseer/s to the local petty sessions or to a sympathetic single magistrate, and would often receive a very positive response from the bench to their appeals. However, although the 1834 poor law reformers made extensive reference to the pernicious effects of such hearings, the impact of these appeals on poor relief policy and the strategies the poor adopted to get out-relief, medical relief, accommodation, clothing (and even in one case a new broom for the poorhouse ) has yet to be analysed in any detail by historians. This paper will begin the process of assessing the ways the poor used the law to reshape poor law policy by analysing a range of summary court records . It will also use a rare point in the history of the poor law when there were good overlapping petty sessions and parish records to develop a case study which will assess the impact that these appeals actually had on parish based relief. (Show less)