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Paupers and Pensioners: Past and Present

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2008

E. H. Hunt
E. H. Hunt
Affiliation:
Department of Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton St, London WC2A 2AE, England.
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Abstract

This article compares treatment of the elderly today and in the mid-nineteenth century. The starting point is David Thomson's recent claim (Ageing and Society, 4, 1984) that welfare-state pension benefits are not as valuable, relative to the incomes of non-pensioners, as were the poor-law pensions of Dickensian England. Thomson's calculations of incomes and of the value and availability of pensions in the mid-nineteenth century are critically reassessed. It is argued that welfare-state pensions are superior to poor-law pensions not only in absolute terms but also as a proportion of average working-class incomes. The paper concludes with some comments on long-term trends in pensioners' living standards and the implications for pension policy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , December 1989 , pp. 407 - 430
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

NOTES

1 Ageing and Society, 4 (1984), 451–482. Much of the evidence on the nineteenth century appeared first in Thomson's, David 1980 Cambridge Ph. D. thesis, ‘Provision for the Elderly in England, 1830–1908’.Google Scholar I am grateful to David Thomson for permission to refer to his thesis. Several of his themes are elaborated in, ‘Welfare and the historians’, chapter 13 in Bonfield, L., Smith, R. M. and Wrightson, K. (eds), The World we have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure. Blackwell, Oxford, 1986Google Scholar; in, ‘I am not my father's keeper: families and the elderly in nineteenth century England’, Law and History Review, 2 (1984), 265–286; in ‘Workhouse to nursing home: residential care of elderly people in England since 1840’, Ageing and Society, 3 (1983), 43–67; and in ‘The overpaid elderly’, New Society, 75 (7 March 1986), 408–409. I am grateful to Drs Paul Johnson and Pat Thane and to Professor Leslie Hannah who kindly commented on an earlier version of this article.

2 Thomson, , ‘Decline of social welfare’ op. cit. pp. 453, 468Google Scholar; Thomson, , ‘Welfare and the historians’, op. cit. pp. 361, 370.Google Scholar

3 Thomson, , ‘Welfare and the historians’, op. cit. pp. 370–1.Google Scholar

4 Thomson, , ‘Decline of social welfare’, op. cit. p. 461Google Scholar; Thomson, , ‘Families and the elderly’, op. cit. p. 268.Google Scholar

5 Thane, P. cited in Ageing and Society, 4 (1984), 420.Google Scholar

6 Anderson, M., Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971, p. 138Google Scholar and in Shanas, E. and Sussman, M. B. (eds), Family, Bureaucracy and the Elderly. Duke University Press, Durham, N. C., 1977, p. 36Google Scholar; Digby, A., Pauper Palaces. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1978, p. 161Google Scholar; Henriques, U. R. Q., Before the Welfare State. Longman, London, 1979, p. 1Google Scholar; Rose, M. E., ‘The allowance system under the new poor law’, Economic History Review, XIX (1966), 618.Google Scholar

7 Thomson, , ‘Welfare and the historians’, op. cit. pp. 355–8.Google Scholar

8 Thomson, , ‘Decline of social welfare’, op. cit. pp. 472, 476.Google Scholar

9 Ibid. pp. 451, 472, 476; Thomson, , ‘Workhouse to nursing home’, op. cit. p. 67.Google Scholar

10 Snell, K. D. M. and Millar, J., Lone-parent families and the welfare state: past and present, Continuity and Change, 11 (1987), 387–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Thomson, , ‘Decline of social welfare’, op. cit. p. 477.Google Scholar

12 Webb, S. & , B., English Poor Law History: Part II. The Last Hundred Years. Longmans, London, 1, 1929, 350.Google Scholar

13 Slater, G., Poverty and the State. Constable, London, 1930, pp. 219–20.Google Scholar

14 Snell, K. D. M., Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660–1900. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985, pp. 131–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 These and the following citations are from the Report into the Administration and Operation of the Poor Laws, Appendix A, Parliamentary Papers (hereafter PP) 1834, XXVIII, i, p. 338; 1834 XXVIII, ii, pp. 430, 755, 770, 779, 798, 822, 838, 843; 1834 XXIX, pp. 104, 175; Second Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, PP 1836 XXIX, i, p. 299.

16 Thomson, , ‘Provision for the Elderly’, op. cit. pp. 45, 77, 197.Google Scholar See also Thomson, , ‘Workhouse to nursing home’, op. cit. p. 64Google Scholar, where women's pensions are said to have been 2s. 3d. to 3s. a week.

17 Thomson, , ‘Provision for the Elderly’, op. cit. p. 50.Google Scholar

18 Thomson, , ‘Decline of social welfare’, op. cit., p. 468Google Scholar; Thomson, , ‘Workhouse to nursing home’, op. cit. p. 64.Google Scholar

19 Thomson, , ‘Welfare and the historians’, op. cit. pp. 365, 367.Google Scholar

20 Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners for England and Wales, PP 1836, XXIX, i, p. 299.

21 Ibid. pp. 268, 287.

22 Thomson, , ‘Families and the elderly’, op. cit. p. 274Google Scholar and see, for example, Corrigan, J. V., ‘The administration of the Poor Law in the Tynemouth Union, 1830–1939’, unpublished M. Phil, thesis, University of London, 1985, p. 147.Google Scholar

23 Thomson, , ‘Welfare and the historians’, op. cit. p. 369.Google Scholar

24 At Warminster, for example, cottage-owning claimants were routinely told to raise income by selling their property or by borrowing on its security. Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, PP 1836, XXIX, i, pp. 150, 300; see also First Annual Report, PP 1835, xxxv, p. 178.

25 Thomson, , ‘Welfare and the historians’, op. cit. pp. 361, 368.Google Scholar

26 Hunt, E. H., British Labour History, 1815–1914. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1981, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

27 Hannah, L., Inventing Retirement: The Development of Occupational Pensions in Britain. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, P., Saving and Spending: The Working-Class Economy in Britain, 1870–1939. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1985, p. 82.Google Scholar

28 In his article (‘Decline of social welfare’, p. 468) Thomson gives the proportion as 50–55 per cent, in his 1983 article (‘Workhouse to nursing home’, p. 64) it is stated as between 25 and 50 per cent, in his 1986 article (‘Welfare and the historians’, p. 370) as ‘slightly less than one half’ and his 1980 thesis (‘Provision for the Elderly’, p. 41) suggests that around one-third of men over 70 were paupers.

29 Between nil and 33 per cent according to the references in the preceding note.

30 Thomson, , ‘Provision for the Elderly’, op. cit. pp. 38–41.Google Scholar

31 Ibid. p. 20.

32 Ibid. p. 39.

33 Ibid. p. 224.

34 Thomson, , ‘Workhouse to nursing home’, op. cit. p. 64.Google Scholar

35 This and the following life expectancy statistics are from Preston, S. H., Keyfitz, N. and Schoer, R., Causes of Death: Lifetables for National Populations. Seminar Press, New York and London, 1972, pp. 224–6, 268–70.Google Scholar

36 Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, PP 1836, XXIX, i, p. 299.

37 Ibid. p. 8.

38 Thomson, , ‘Provision for the Elderly’, op. cit. pp. 25–6.Google Scholar

39 Ibid. p. 42.

40 Ibid. pp. 95–6.

41 Thomson, , ‘Decline of social welfare’, op. cit. p. 468.Google Scholar

42 Report into the State of the Poor Laws, Appendix, PP 1834, XXVIII, ii, p. 811. Michael Rose cites a typical example of a 70-year-old man at Thorne (Yorks. W. R.) given IS. a week to supplement the IS. 6d. he earned by selling yeast. Rose, , 1966, op. cit. p. 618.Google Scholar

43 Davies, A. E., ‘Some aspects of the operation of the old poor law in Cardiganshire, 1750–1834’, Ceredigion, VI (1968–1971), pp. 19–20.Google Scholar

44 Snell, , Annals of the Labouring Poor, op. cit. p. 120.Google Scholar

45 Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, PP 1836, XXIX, i, p. 299.

46 Davies, A. C., ‘The old poor law in an industrialising parish: Aberdare, 1818–36, Welsh History Review, 8 (1976–1977), p. 294Google Scholar; Searby, P., ‘The relief of the poor in Coventry, 1830–63, Historical Journal, xx (1977), 350.Google Scholar

47 Thomson, , ‘Decline of social welfare’, op. cit. pp. 451–2, 454.Google Scholar

48 ‘The indiscriminate allowances … which in many districts have been habitually granted, almost as a matter of course, to widows and to persons advanced in life, have led many Boards of Guardians to scrutinize the lists of paupers of this description and to put to the proof the actual destitution of many long-established pensioners.’ Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, PP 1836, XXIX, i, p. 8.

49 Corrigan, , 1985, op. cit. p. 78Google Scholar; Proctor, W., Poor law administration in the Preston Union, 1834–48, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, cxvii (1965), 155.Google Scholar

50 Thomson, , ‘Welfare and the historians’, op. cit. p. 372.Google Scholar

51 Thomson, , ‘Decline of social welfare’, op. cit. pp. 455–6, 470.Google Scholar

52 Thomson, , ‘Welfare and the historians’, op. cit. p. 372.Google Scholar

53 Clapham, J. H., An Economic History of Modern Britain, I. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1939, p. 67.Google Scholar

54 See, for example, Corrigan, 1985, op. cit. p. 147.Google Scholar

55 Thomson, , ‘Provision for the Elderly’, op. cit. p. 224.Google Scholar

56 Ibid. pp. 38–9.

57 Cage, R. A., The Scottish Poor Law, 1745–1845. Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh, 1981, pp. 33–4.Google Scholar

58 Ibid. p. 28.

59 Treble, J. H., Urban Poverty in Britain, 1830–1914. Batsford, London, 1979, p 108.Google Scholar

60 Ibid.

61 Lindsay, J., The Scottish Poor Law: Its Operation in the Northeast from 1745 to 1845. Stockwell, Ilfracombe, 1975, p. 31Google Scholar; Treble, , 1979, op. cit. p. 108.Google Scholar

62 Thomson, , ‘Decline of social welfare’, op. cit. p. 477.Google Scholar Each child was treated as 0. 45 of an adult.

63 Ibid. pp. 477–8.

64 Bowley, A. L., Wages in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1900, end table.Google Scholar

65 Sixth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, PP 1864, XXVIII, pp. 298–323; Hunt, E. H., Regional Wage Variations in Britain, 1850–1914. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1973, pp. 62–3.Google Scholar

66 Evidence from Morning Chronicle survey of ‘Labour and the poor’ cited in Hunt, , 1973, op. cit.Google Scholar Chap, 1 and Hunt, , 1981, op. cit. pp. 82–3.Google Scholar

67 Hobsbawm, E. J. and Rudé, G., Captain Swing. Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1969, p. 183Google Scholar; Bowley, A. L., Wages in the building trades, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, LXIV (1901), 104.Google Scholar A recent article on the new poor law in Bedfordshire emphasises high levels of pauperism, extensive rural under employment, and wages near to subsistence levels. Apfel, W. and Dunkley, P., English rural society and the new poor law: Bedfordshire, 1834–47, Social History 10 (1985), pp. 40, 59, 62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This paper is concerned with comparisons between mid-nineteenth-century pensions and welfare-state pensions. However, in the context of examining the representativeness of farm wages it is interesting to note that Thomson's only post-1863 evidence based upon rural incomes (for Ridgmont, Beds. 1903) produces a relative pension well above those indicated for other dates between 1863 and 1912. (Thomson, , ‘Decline of social welfare’, op. cit. pp. 453, 477.Google Scholar) Had Thomson not switched the basis of his calculations from rural to urban incomes after 1863 he probably would have discovered that the discontinuity in poor-law treatment of the elderly in the 1870s was less marked than he supposes it to have been.

68 Hunt, , 1973, op. cit. Chap. 3.Google Scholar

69 Bowley, , 1900, op. cit. p. 70.Google Scholar

70 Bellerby, J. R., Distribution of farm incomes in the United Kingdom, Proc. Agricultural Economics Society, x (1953), 135Google Scholar; Wages of the Manual Labour Classes, PP, 1893–1894, LXXXIII ii, pp. xxx–xxxiii.

71 Sixth Report of the Medical Officer to the Privy Council, PP 1864, XXVIII, pp. 298–302. Most of these families depended upon ill-paid and declining hand trades.

72 See, among many examples, Thomson, , ‘Decline of social welfare’, op. cit. pp. 452–3Google Scholar, where quite dissimilar ratios are presented together on one graph which claims to represent the ‘standard old age pension as a percentage of gross income of a working-class adult’ between 1837 and 1981. The comparison is claimed, quite incorrectly, to be based upon the average incomes of the poorest half to three-quarters of British society and to demonstrate that ‘an aged pensioner of mid-nineteenth-century Britain was more favoured under the “harsh” New Poor Law than has been any twentieth-century pensioner of the state’. Similarly in his 1983 article (‘Workhouse to nursing home’, op. cit. p. 64) Thomson wrote ‘A pension of 2s. 6d. or 3s. a week in mid-nineteenth-century England assured the elderly beneficiary of anything from 60 to 100 per cent or more of the average weekly income available to non-aged working-class adults.’

73 Snell, and Millar, , 1987, op. cit. p. 387.Google Scholar For another example see Laslett's, Peter citation of Thomson's findings in Ageing and Society, 4 (1984), p. 385.Google Scholar

74 See, for example, Morning Chronicle survey ‘Labour and the poor’, 10 Nov. 1849.

75 Thomson's preferred method of calculation also colours his portrayal of recent trends in the value of relative pensions. He shows relative pensions in 1981 scarcely above their level in the early 1950s (Thomson, , ‘Decline of social welfare’, op. cit. p. 478Google Scholar) whereas, measured against average manual earnings, the basic pension for a single man increased from 20 per cent in 1951 to 33 per cent in 1981–2 (Fiegehen, G. C., ‘Income after retirement’, Social Trends, 16 H.M.S.O., 1986, p. 14).Google Scholar The difference arises because wives have been reallocating their time from raising families to raising family incomes. Falling fertility and a rising female activity rate have caused average incomes per head to increase much faster than average incomes per male worker. For details of alternative measures of ‘relative pensions’ see Johnson, P. and Falkingham, J., ‘Intergenerational transfers and public expenditure on the elderly in modern Britain’, Ageing and Society, 8 (1988), 129–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76 In 1983 three-quarters of employed males over 55 were members of an occupational pension scheme and increasing numbers of females are joining such schemes as occupational differences between the sexes diminish. Centre for Economic Policy Research Bulletin, Feb. 1987, p. 13.

77 Thomson, , ‘Decline of social welfare’, op. cit. p. 451.Google Scholar In fact, Thomson himself appears to be having second thoughts. One of his later publications (‘Welfare and the historians’, op. cit. p. 375) includes some reluctant support for means-tested assistance and in a book (Johnson, P., Conrad, C., and Thomson, D. (eds) Workers versus Pensioners: Intergenerational Justice in an Ageing World. Manchester U. p., Manchester, 1989, Chap. 3Google Scholar) published after this article was written he argues that, relative to other generations, the generation now entering retirement has been cosseted from birth. Tentative as it is, and based mainly on New Zealand evidence, this thesis nevertheless sits uneasily alongside his earlier emphasis on the relative impoverishment of today's elderly and the need for more state support. There is no evidence, however, that David Thomson is also revising his understanding of how the elderly were treated in the nineteenth century.