poor relief

poor relief. There was no organized system of poor relief in Ireland until the 19th century. The Elizabethan English poor law, which established parochial responsibility for the care of the aged and destitute and for the suppression of begging, never extended to Ireland. Parish vestries could raise money for local relief measures, such as the care of deserted children, and in the early 18th century a number of vestries experimented with a badging system designed to distinguish the local ‘deserving’ poor from ‘foreign’ beggars and vagabonds. Most parishes, however, were reluctant to incur any additional expenditure, some even going so far as to arrange for abandoned children to be removed to the foundling hospitals in Dublin and Cork. Another group for which special provision was made was the sick poor, who were catered for in voluntary hospitals supported by private charity, and from 1765 in county infirmaries maintained by local taxation. In Belfast accommodation for the sick and destitute was available from 1774 in a poor house opened by the Belfast Charitable Society. Houses of industry were established by act of parliament in Dublin (1703) and Cork (1735), but a more general act passed in 1772 was only patchily implemented. At the beginning of the 19th century mendicity institutes were established in a number of towns. There was now growing pressure on government to relieve poverty on grounds both of natural justice and of economic utility, though there was disagreement over the best methods of achieving this. The promotion of public works as a way of reducing poverty without encouraging dependency led to the creation of the Board of Works in 1831. From 1838 a statutory system of poor relief was provided by the poor law, replaced in the 20th century by new forms of social welfare.

Bibliography

Black, D. C. , Economic Thought and the Irish Question, 1817–70 (1960)
O'Connor, J. , The Workhouses of Ireland: The Fate of Ireland's Poor (1995)

Virginia Crossman