With its focus on poverty and welfare in England between the seventeenth and later nineteenth centuries, this book addresses a range of questions that are often

A concise synthesis of past work on a unique and important system of social welfare.

This book examines the political motivation, regional variations and the economic and demographic impact of the Poor Law in the rural south of England.

That ‘poor law was law’ is a fact that has slipped from the consciousness of historians of welfare in England and Wales, and in North America. Welfare's For