The Early History of English Poor Relief

by of Girton College E. M. Leonard

The methods of distributing charity employed in the monasteries were little better. It is true that the services rendered by the monks and nuns to education were considerable, and that a number of old people and children were maintained in some of the religious houses. Lodging also was given to wayfarers, and thus a very useful function was fulfilled in countries where there were few inns and no casual wards. But much of the relief given to the poor by the monks seems to have been distributed in a similar manner to that of the Countess of Shrewsbury. Alms were given to the poor at the gates: many testators had left money to be distributed in small doles at certain stated periods. Moreover the relief given at different monasteries was not coordinated in any way. The members of each institution gave their alms in their own way without any reference to the gifts of their neighbours. Besides, monks were not primarily intended to be relieving officers, and were not placed where they would be most useful for that purpose; there might be many in one neighbourhood and few or none in another. The charity distributed by the monks therefore was to a great extent unorganised and indiscriminate and did nearly as much to increase beggars as to relieve them[39].

(3) Hospitals.

But besides the monasteries there were hospitals. The term hospital was by no means confined to institutions for relieving the sick, but almshouses, orphanages and training homes were often called by this name. St Thomas's Hospital may be taken as a typical institution of the kind[40]. The date of its foundation is uncertain, but, early in the thirteenth century, it was destroyed by fire, and in 1228 was rebuilt on much the same site as that occupied by the St Thomas's Hospital of our own time. In 1323 the brethren were ordered to follow the rule of St Augustine, that is they were to take the vows of obedience and chastity, and to renounce individual property. The hospital consisted of Master, brethren, and sisters, and in the poet Gower's time there were also nurses, for he left bequests to the Master, brethren, sisters, and nurses, and asked from each their prayers. But, although the rule of St Augustine and the prayers for the benefactors belonged to the old order of things, the relief given to the poor was essentially the same from the time of Henry III. to that of Queen Victoria. It was founded for the relief and cure of poor people, and in 1535 there were forty beds for the poor, and food and firing were provided for them. Three years later it was surrendered into the hands of Henry VIII., and under his successor was reconstituted mainly on the old lines, but on a very much larger scale.

There were however several drawbacks to the hospitals as institutions for the relief of the poor. There was little security that the funds were well administered or that the appointments were impartially made. The king himself seems to have tried to exercise undue influence even in the case of St Thomas's Hospital: in 1528 he pressed Wolsey to give the Mastership to his chaplain, who, he said, was not learned enough for the king. There were however worse abuses than this, and even as early as the time of Henry V. it was necessary to pass a statute to prevent the maladministration of hospital funds[41]. Moreover at best the hospitals were only isolated centres of charity; they were not numerous enough to deal with poverty as a whole, and they were not connected with each other. The officials of each hospital acted on their own responsibility and afforded much or little relief to the poor of their immediate neighbourhood, but were almost as powerless as a private individual to check the general evil.

4. Attempts at Reorganisation.

The charitable endowments of the Continent were as inefficient as those of England, and both in England and abroad we find that attempts were made to organise a public system of poor relief in order that the honest poor might be relieved, and the bands of vagrants justly punished and repressed. Prof. Ashley has sketched the early history of poor relief on the Continent. He shows that, as early as 1522, the German towns of Augsburg and Nuremburg endeavoured to regulate the administration of charity in order to repress beggars, and that in 1525 the townsmen of Ypres reorganised their charitable institutions on a general plan and subjected the whole to public management with the approval of the ecclesiastical authorities. This organisation of Ypres was submitted to the judgment of the Sorbonne and, with some limitations, the principles involved were approved[42]. It is thus clear that the necessity of reforming the administration of charity was felt even in districts which were hostile to the Reformation, and in countries where the Reformers were in power the old charitable endowments were often seized by the public authorities, who by so doing placed themselves under greater obligations to provide for the poor.

In England we find that the course of events is similar. The citizens of London, before 1518, began to draw up orders with the object of repressing vagrants and controlling charity, but after the dissolution of the monasteries they found it necessary to refound and reorganise the greater part of the existing system of relief. From that time until the reign of Charles I. constant efforts were made to create and to administer an efficient system of poor relief under public management. In the reign of Charles I., and not until then, were the efforts successful, and the English organisation is then seen to be almost[43] the only successful survivor of the many schemes of the same kind which had been tried in Western Europe.

5. (a) Three factors in the making of English poor relief.