Content I. Introduction: Charles Dickens was a great comic artist and a great entertainer. Chapter I

Chapter II
1.1.Perspectives on Dickens’ works
The Poor Law Act of 1834 was a system of laws which was introduced in England and the rest of Britain to provide public relief under a system which required that all those who required assistance such as the widows, the sick and the unemployed, had to be accommodated at the workhouses. According to the Poor Law Act itself, there is no section which stipulated that the poor were to be harshly treated, but the commissioners of the Poor Laws were the ones who created the policy of brutality. Roberts stated: “These commissioners, three in number and with extensive powers to form and supervise the newly created poor law unions, wished local guardians to give relief to able - bodied paupers only if they entered a workhouse” (98). This raises concern for the sick who were most likely forced into labour despite their physical condition. Workhouses were institutions in which the poor were housed and they worked in order to receive some relief, thus it was called “indoor relief” (Roberts 98). At the workhouses one could find men, women, children, the old and sick who were allocated the specific workhouses by the parishes in the districts to which they belonged. For example, a poor man or family living in Boston was expected to be admitted to a Boston workhouse as directed by a parish council or “beadle¹³.”
The rise of capitalism brought notable prosperity within the middle class, yet the Industrial Revolution was a period of immense poverty among the majority of the English citizens. Despite claims that industrialization created employment, one should also bear in mind that the transition from rural to urbanization could also economically affects a lot of people, as there is high competition to survive in a capitalist society. Some people managed to become members of the middle class or the bourgeoisie, while others became skilled artisans, tradesmen and professionals. However, every member of society did not belong to the middle class, there were people who belonged to the lower class who were mostly unemployed, and the Victorian middle class labelled them “paupers.” This was a class of people who were receiving the poor relief as stipulated by the poor law. These “paupers” were usually people who were not only unemployed or sick, but received insufficient wages.
Prior to the Poor Law Amendment Act, relief was distributed to the poor citizens of the English society whether they were employed or not. However, in 1834, the Act implemented a new dimension whereby anyone who needed relief was required to become a member of a workhouse and they had to work in order to receive assistance¹⁴. However, it is stated that outdoor relief still continued and the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws of 1832 - 1834 emphasized that outdoor relief to the able - bodied poor was a “master evil of the present system” (Royal Commission on the Poor Laws Report 279). From the orthodox poor law administrator’s perspective, aid in the form of wages was a serious crime because some of these people were employed; henceforth it upset the labour market (Rose 607). The Royal Commission stipulated that outdoor relief was to be stopped and assistance was to be given in “well regulated workhouses” (Royal Commission on the Poor Laws Report 262). The question still remains whether this was a plausible solution and besides, outdoor relief still continued, which shows the central authority for poor law administration’s failure to stop it. However, even though the allowance system continued, it was now “relief in aid of small and irregular earnings” (Rose 609).
The withdrawal of outdoor relief was further enforced by the government and the task was given to political Poor Law Commissioners who issued orders to Boards of Guardians, who were the custodians of poor relief. After a General Order was issued as the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory
Order in 1844, every able - bodied male or female was to receive relief only in the Union workhouse (Glen 208). Every person who received relief was not allowed to be employed anywhere else other than the workhouse. However, the question still remains whether the disabled and the old who were also required to work at the workhouses.
The Board of Guardians stated that it was more expensive to keep a “pauper” in a workhouse because they also became responsible of all the costs and need of the rest of the family, whereas outdoor relief consisted of lower wages which could be supplemented by other earnings from other private charities (Glen 209). Such a situation exposes the mistreatment and starvation to which the poor were subjected at the workhouses because there were not enough funds to cover clothing and food requirements for all the people in these shelters. Moreover, the allowance system demoralized the poor because “those who applied for reliefs were invariably given a meagre pittance which both they and the Guardians knew was insufficient to maintain them” (Rose 620). Thus, the poor law has also been described as a “harsh, repressive system shot through with notions of social control” (Webb and Webb 49). After receiving their dole, the poor had to find other means of surviving such as working long hours for low wages and unpleasant tasks, or worse, begging and stealing. Such circumstances raised concerns on the government’s duty to curb such abject poverty as the relief received by the poor was insufficient¹⁵. However, some guardians justified the stringent conditions at the workhouses by claiming that the resources of the ratepayers were insufficient (King 366).
T he most criticized aspect of the Poor Law Act was the administration of the workhouses. Roberts commented, “The principal cruelty of the New Poor Law was the workhouse” (98). Life in the workhouse was quite harsh as most of the Board of Guardians did not provide adequate care for the poor. The workhouse inmates were not given enough clothing and the clothes they received on arrival were the same ones they wore every day of their lives, whether working or sleeping. Below is a sketch showing children in a workhouse during meal time:

Picture 1: “Eye Witness Accounts”

From the above drawing, one can also notice that most of the children were shoeless and their clothes were ragged. This realistic depiction of barefooted children being fed on bread and gruel reveals the lack of care that was given to workhouse inmates, especially the vulnerable children. As noted from the picture, these assailable children were not provided with adequate clothing to protect them from the cold English winter, which left them susceptible to austere living conditions. Such a representation is also an appeal to society to recognize the government’s failure to improve the unpleasant living conditions of the workhouse inmates.
The following is a testimony by an inmate Sarah Carpenter who was interviewed by The Ashton Chronicle on 23 June in 1849:
“Our common food was oatcake. It was thick and coarse.
This oatcake was put into cans. Boiled milk and water was poured into it. This was our breakfast and supper. Our dinner
was potato pie with boiled bacon it, a bit here and a bit there, so thick with fat we could scarce eat it, though we were hungry enough to eat anything. Tea we never saw, nor butter. We had cheese and brown bread once a year. We were only allowed three meals a day though we got up at five in the morning and worked till nine at night.” (“Eye Witness Accounts”)
Other than being inadequately clothed, it is evident that the workhouse inmates were also malnourished, which further confirms the notion that the government was not providing enough funds to feed the poor, or they were misused by the Board of Guardians¹⁶. One of the popular newspapers in the nineteenth century, The Times, was well known for its criticism of the poor law administration and the treatment of the workhouse inmates, and one of the newspaper correspondents wrote: “Is it not Sir, horrible, that you cannot now take up a newspaper on any day without finding one or more accounts of starvation” (qtd. by Roberts 98). The newspaper also reported that at the Bridgewater workhouse “a meagre diet and congestion killed off 41 percent of the average number of inmates” (qtd. by Roberts 98). Moreover, it was also discovered that at the Westhampnett workhouse two children died of starvation and another was forced to eat a mouse as there was no food (98). Below is a testimony from one of the Poor Law Guardians, Emmeline Pankhurst who further substantiated the unpleasantness and harshness to which the inmates were subjected:
“When I came into office I found that the law was being very harshly administered. The old board had been made up of the kind of men who are known as rate savers. They were guardians, not of the poor but of the rates... For instance, the inmates were being
very poorly fed. I found the old folks in the workhouse sitting on backless forms, or benches. They had no privacy, no possessions, not even a locker. After I took office I gave the old people comfortable Windsor chairs to sit in, and in a number of ways we managed to make their existence more endurable.” (“My Own Story” qtd. in “1834 Poor Law”)
The inmates were treated inhumanely by the authorities and their survival could only be sustained by some of the Guardians who were sensitive and merciful like the renowned Emmeline Pankhurst. However the poor administration of the workhouses is also an indication of the lack of proper management by the board members who were the overseers of the workhouses. This also raises questions on the role of the English government in fending for the poor and its failure to administer the proper care for the poor¹⁷.
Young inmates were even more vulnerable to malnutrition and winter diseases as their workhouse uniforms were not designed to withstand harsh English winters. Emmeline Pankhurst’s autobiography further reinforces this point as she describes the condition of the young children and the uniforms they wore:

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