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Q: Discuss the assertion that the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was an attempt to deal with pauperism rather than poverty.
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Poverty has always been in existence in Britain, but because of social and economic changes in society during the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, the number of poor people rose dramatically. Poverty means having too little for a comfortable life, which was the situation for many people. Pauperism however meant being destitute, meaning so poor that you could not survive without help and that you were too poor to feed yourself or your family. The Poor Law system was set up in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. It was legislated to help the poor people not to end up as paupers. Poverty had been largely due to an undeveloped economy in which famine and pestilence became recurring phenomena. A system of relief was needed in order to assist the poor. The parish became the primary unit in providing relief. The poor individuals residing within the parish boundaries could only receive this relief. This put tremendous pressure on parishes to give paupers the adequate amount of relief. As a result many parishes became overrun with too many poor people, and not enough assistance was administrated. For these reasons the problem of aiding the poor became regarded as the first English poor law. The old poor law had shown that poor relief confined to town parishes put too heavy a burden on them and as a result distribution of aid rather than alleviation of aid had been allotted in relieving the poor. By 1795 the Poor Law system was already facing problems, as the population increased so did the need for funding, housing and educating the poor. Changes bought about from farming and industry changes; poor harvest and unemployment increased the amount of people claiming poor relief. Many new schemes were introduced to cope with this problem. A system was set up in a town called Speenhamland where the poor received an allowance. The amount of relief a pauper received depended upon the size of his family and the cost of bread. Bread was the staple diet of the poor and as food prices began rising at a rate more than the average wage, the numbers of paupers claiming increased. This Speenhamland system was adopted throughout most agricultural areas of Southern England and the Midlands.
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