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“We Might be Trusted”: Female Poor Law Guardians and the Development of the New Poor Law: The Case of Bolton, England, 1880–1906

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2004

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Abstract

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This article uses the only surviving working diary of an English female Poor Law guardian in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to explore two interrelated bodies of historiography. First, it engages with an historiography of the New Poor Law which has by and large seen the late nineteenth century as a period of atrophication. Second, it engages with a literature on female Poor Law guardians which has on balance questioned their achievements and seen such women as subject to all sorts of conflict and discrimination. The article argues that both perspectives may be questioned where we focus on local Poor Law policies and local women. Using the example of Bolton, in England, it is argued that the boards of Poor Law unions were riven by fracture lines more important than gender. Within this context, women of relatively high social status were able to manipulate the Poor Law agenda to make substantial changes to the policy and fabric of the late Victorian Poor Law. Rather than conflict, we often see a warm appreciation of the pioneering work of female Poor Law guardians.

Type
ARTICLE
Copyright
© 2004 Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis

Footnotes

The research for this article was completed with the aid of grants from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust. I am grateful to both bodies for their support. John Stewart and Elizabeth Hurren offered valuable commentary on drafts and Cate Morse transcribed some of the most awful handwriting I have ever seen. I am very grateful to all three.