Jones and Carter on England's New Poor Law

Peter D. Jones and Natalie Carter (both of the University of Leicester) have published "Writing for redress: redrawing the epistolary relationship under the New Poor Law" in Continuity and Change 34:3 (Dec.2019), 375-99. Here's the abstract:

This article investigates how the new welfare bureaucracy impacted on the epistolary relationship between paupers and those who administered it locally and nationally. In particular, it traces the changes in those relationships between the earliest years of the new regime and its maturity in the 1870s. It explores the ways that paupers responded to the New Poor Law, and how they negotiated the structural and sentimental shifts that took place over that period. In particular, it looks in detail at the new uses to which the epistolary relationship was put by outdoor paupers, their advocates and workhouse inmates.

Further information is available here. 

--Mitra Sharafi