Poor Law Institutions through Working-Class Eyes: Autobiography, Emotion, and Family Context, 1834–1914

Abstract

AbstractHistories of the English workhouse and its satellite institutions have concentrated on legal change, institutional administration, and moments of shock or scandal, generally without considering the place of these institutions, established through the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, in the emotional life course of poor inmates. This article uses working-class autobiographies to examine the register of emotional responses to workhouses and associated Poor Law institutions, and the range of narrative voices open to authors who recalled institutional residence. It also gives close attention to two lengthy narratives of workhouse district schools and highlights their significance in comparison to the authors’ family backgrounds and the representation of each writer in the wider historical record. It suggests that a new affective chronology of the workhouse is needed to accommodate room for disparity between the aspiration of systematic poor relief and the reality of individual experience within local interpretations of the law.