A Century of Struggle: Pauperism and the New Poor Law in Wales, 1834-1930

Although much has been written on the poor laws over the last twenty years, our project will for the first time provide a detailed and overarching ‘big picture’ of the totality of the New Poor Law, 1834-1930, in Wales. The New Poor Law legislation encompassed England and Wales. However, the understanding of Wales and how the New Poor Law was received, experienced, and often challenged there, is overwhelmingly missing from the published literature. Indeed, the Welsh experience is often casually elided with and folded into the narratives of English welfare history. This is the central focus of the research challenge for our application. Delivering the project will both provide new insight into the complexities of the imposition, operation, and impact of the New Poor Law in Wales and question the assumption that Wales was just like England in the way that the country applied, adapted, and experienced the shared legislative umbrella across the period. Drawing perspective from our joint pilot work already undertaken by Carter, King, and Thompson, 'The Voices of the Welsh Poor', we will approach our research through three sets of questions: Those that apply to both England and Wales, including for instance the scale and scope of welfare and the nature of pauper agency. Those that relate to the particularities of Welsh welfare attitudes, experiences, and outcomes, including the importance of the Welsh language in New Poor Law matters. Those that relate to the place of Wales in an increasingly complex European debate about welfare regimes. In so doing we will speak to important contemporary debates about welfare autonomy and policy convergence/divergence within the United Kingdom and beyond. We have devised a large-scale detailed research programme predicated upon unused and little used archives located at The National Archives (TNA), The National Library of Wales and multiple regional and county archive services across Wales. Through this programme, we will come to understand and locate Wales within a ‘four nations’ approach to welfare history and to place Wales more precisely in emergent models of wider European welfare regimes. Our project will transform the understanding of welfare practice, ensuring for the first time the Welsh and English experiences of welfare administration and the New Poor Law are considered on one canvas, as the original laws and philosophies intended. Alongside a full suite of academic outputs, we will also project our research outputs and archival transcription work into substantial non-academic engagement and impact. This includes work with project partners, their networks, and Wales-based teachers to create freely accessible and interactive educational resources to ensure teachers, school students, and leisure historians (and others) have access to teaching materials and to large numbers of archival transcriptions. Additionally, we will provide a suite of online talks and seminars to both academic and general audiences. Collectively these activities will ensure large scale significant non-academic engagement impacts both during the period of this project and, as a significant legacy, beyond.