The following sections provide a brief description of the four data sets that are referred to throughout the book and form the basis for the case studies discussed in chapters 14 and 15. The original works should be consulted for further discussion of the historical aspects and for more detailed information about the sources. The data sets are not reproduced in this book but can be easily accessed without charge via a special page on the Cambridge University Press web site at www.cambridge.org/9780521806633.

Some of the series are entered in the regression models in the form of logarithms or as first differences, but all series are given in the data sets in their original form, and if any manipulation or transformation is required this must be done by users of the data set.

The iniquitous effects of the Old Poor Law

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there was a rapid increase in expenditure on poor relief in England. Fierce criticisms of the system led eventually to the establishment of a Royal Commission and to the introduction of a New Poor Law in 1834. Many contemporary critics of the Old Poor Law attributed the remorseless growth of expenditure to the widespread adoption of systems of outdoor relief whereby those in need could receive financial assistance at home without being forced into the demeaning conditions of life in a workhouse.

A number of historians have proposed other explanations for the rising level of relief payments.