The Poor Law Commission and publicly-owned housing in the English countryside, 1834-47

This paper addresses aspects of the Poor Law Commission's policy of encouraging parishes to dispose of their often considerable stock of social housing, in some cases built up over many years, and a topic previously analysed in this Review by John Broad. Policy was in part conditioned by the cost of new workhouses required in many of the unions created under the 1834 New Poor Law. This fell on individual parishes' ratepayers; sales of their real estate would lighten, and sometimes remove, the financial pain. It also arose out of the Commission's commitment to engineering able-bodied workers' independence through the abolition of all non-medical aid funded from the poor rate, which had traditionally included the provision of domestic accommodation at no or nominal rents by overseers of the poor. But, while putting the Commission in charge of sales by parishes, parliamentarians insisted that the owners and occupiers of property in each parish, had to vote to sell or retain, some or all, of their housing stock. The stipulation of compulsory disposals, which Broad erroneously assumed, remained a political impossibility.