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Elizabeth T. Hurren. Protesting About Pauperism: Poverty, Politics and Poor Relief in Late-Victorian England, 1870-1900. Studies in History New Series. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell Press, 2007. ii + 296 pp. Ill. $85.00 (978-0-86193-292-4).
In November 1869, the president of the Poor Law Board, George Goschen, issued a famous "Minute" in which he claimed that there had been a sharp increase in the number of paupers receiving outdoor relief in London and that this increase was concentrated in areas where charities were also known to operate. Two years later, the newly formed Local Government Board issued a circular of its own prohibiting the distribution of outdoor relief to single able-bodied men and women, to wives whose husbands had deserted them within the previous twelve months, and to able-bodied widows with only a single dependent child. These two documents formed the basis of what became known as the "crusade against outdoor relief." The number of people in receipt of outdoor relief in England and Wales fell by...