Care and neglect
Care and neglect: Cases of neglect in the Victorian workhouse in England and Wales
The provision and administration of state welfare in the United Kingdom changed following the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, and it is possible to trace the history of neglect scandals from this date onwards using records held at The National Archives. The Law required parishes to group together to administer the provision of (most) welfare through a union workhouse - buildings that became iconic symbols of Victorian discipline and austerity. While every union was locally administered by an elected Board of Guardians, the system was overseen by Britain's first centralised welfare authority, the Poor Law Commission (1834-47), and later the Poor Law Board (1847-71). Although the Commission and Board were directly accountable to Parliament for the administration of the New Poor Law, neglect and abuse of the poor were widespread. The most well-known scandal of this era was the so-called Andover Scandal (1845) in which it emerged that the men confined in one Hampshire workhouse were driven by their hunger to gnaw on the animal bones they had been tasked to crush in order to make fertiliser.
Such welfare scandals were, however, just the tip of the iceberg: cases of neglect and abuse proliferated within the Victorian welfare system, though the majority were probably never reported to the authorities. Those allegations that did reach the Commission and the Board have left archival traces in the MH12 series. These records contain letters between Boards of Guardians throughout England and Wales and the Poor Law authorities based in London. They also contain reports and witness statements relating to particular issues of concern, including allegations of maltreatment. The National Archives is currently running a project called 'Living the Poor Life' which aims to digitise and catalogue in detail the contents of 105 MH12 volumes relating to 22 different unions. There are, however, a total of 16,741 volumes in MH12: Dr Carter, the project director, estimates that this series alone contains about 21,763,300 pages.
Cases of neglect and abuse are currently buried within the MH12 series, and Samantha's internship project was designed to simultaneously raise awareness of the rich contents of MH12 and to explore new routes into the series. Using a sample of MH15 volumes - an index first created at Somerset House (see below) - almost 1,000 potential cases of abuse and neglect within the MH12 series have been identified. This research reveals the very large number of cases of neglect and abuse within the workhouse system, but also their variety (from deaths caused by lack of medical attendance to severe punishments carried out by workhouse staff). MH12 also provides an insight into the immediate procedural responses of the central authorities on receiving news of such allegations: Assistant Poor Law Commissions (later called 'Inspectors') were initially sent to take evidence from witnesses and subsequently advised Boards of Guardians on whether to dismiss members of staff or not.
Samantha's research has underlined how crucial the MH12 and MH15 records are for an understanding of the experiences of the poor under the New Poor Law and demonstrates how the Commission and Board sought to learn from cases of neglect in order to prevent future failures.
Samantha Shave is a doctoral student in the Division of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Southampton. Her research focuses on the development of social policies and welfare recipients' experiences of statutory welfare provision from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries in the south of England.
