Poor-Law Commissioners — Letters Addressed by the Poor-Law Commissioners to the Secretary of State, Respecting the Transaction of the Business of the Commission — 1847

Corporate Author: Great Britain. Poor-Law Commissioners
Title: Letters Addressed by the Poor-Law Commissioners to the Secretary of State, Respecting the Transaction of the Business of the Commission, &c. &c. &c.
Publisher: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office
Printer: W. Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street, London
Date: 1847
Edition: First edition
Format: Octavo
Pagination: viii, 67 pp.
Binding: Later dark green cloth, gilt-lettered spine
Stock Code: 004199
Location: Bookroom

First edition of this important 1847 official defence of the Poor-Law Commissioners, issued at the very moment when the original Poor Law Commission created under the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act was collapsing under sustained political criticism and was about to be replaced by the Poor Law Board.

The volume consists of letters addressed by the Commissioners to the Secretary of State, explaining and defending the conduct of the Commission in relation to the administration of the New Poor Law. The text includes correspondence by George Nicholls, George Cornewall Lewis and Edmund W. Head, the three Poor-Law Commissioners then responsible for the central administration of poor relief in England and Wales.

The immediate political context was exceptionally contentious. The Commission had come under fierce attack following the Andover workhouse scandal, which exposed serious abuses in the administration of the workhouse and raised wider questions about the competence, accountability and internal procedures of the central Poor Law authority. Parliamentary debate in May 1847 explicitly identified this publication as the Commissioners’ defence against charges arising from the Andover Union inquiry. Hansard records that the letters had been laid before Parliament and then separately printed and circulated by the Commissioners in a more accessible form than the Parliamentary “blue book”.

The volume therefore has unusual documentary significance. It is not simply a routine Poor Law report but a public institutional defence issued during the final crisis of the Poor Law Commission itself. The controversy was sufficiently intense that MPs criticised the Commissioners for circulating the work under the Royal Arms without prior government sanction, while the Government defended the expense on the grounds that publication of the Commissioners’ reports and correspondence in readable form had long been established practice.

The publication was also issued in the year in which Parliament fundamentally reorganised central Poor Law administration. The Poor Law Board Act 1847 abolished the old Poor Law Commission and transferred its functions to a newly constituted body with direct ministerial involvement, including the Lord President, Lord Privy Seal, Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer as ex-officio Commissioners. The present volume consequently belongs to the closing months of the original Commission established in 1834.

The correspondence itself provides detailed insight into the workings of the Commission and the allegations levelled against it. Among the matters discussed are the conduct and removal of Assistant Commissioners, administrative responsibility, management of Poor Law unions, failures in accounting and oversight, and the handling of complaints arising from unions such as Andover, West Firle and Wycombe. The printed marginal notes make the volume particularly useful as a contemporary administrative source.

Modern scholarship continues to cite the work as a primary source for the operation of the Victorian administrative state. One recent study of pauper correspondence cites it specifically as British Parliamentary Papers, 1847, in examining how the central Poor Law administration dealt with representations and complaints from paupers and local officials.

The title is also bibliographically identifiable as House of Commons Paper No. 148 of 1847, and later histories of English Poor Law policy cite the Commissioners’ letters directly when discussing the development of policy under the 1834 system

Condition

Bound in later dark green cloth, with gilt lettering to the spine. Binding firm and attractive. The pages are generally very nice and clean, with only occasional light age-related spotting and marking. The text and marginal notes remain clear throughout.

Now housed in an easily removable clear acetate cover.

Very good indeed.

A significant primary document from the final year of the original Poor Law Commission, recording its defence of its own administration at the height of the political controversy that led directly to the institutional reforms of 1847.

Stock code: 004199. Location: Bookroom.

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