Rosalind Mitchison. The Old Poor Law in Scotland: The experience of poverty, 1574-1845. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000. 246 pp. $28.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7486-1344-1.

Reviewed by Scott Moir (Department of History, University of Guelph)
Published on H-Albion (May, 2001)

The product of over twenty years of research, Rosalind Mitchison's work on the Old Poor Law in Scotland is the kind of book that manages to assure you that you are in the company of someone who has mastered the subject, managed to retain enthusiasm for the material while doing so, and can distill and communicate all of that to readers. It includes a relatively straightforward history of the development and evolution of the Old Poor Law that will be more than adequate to equip the general reader on the development of the legislation and the important attempts to deal with poverty in early modern Scotland, Britain, and Europe. This is no small feat for a relatively short work that follows its topic over an extended period of time which saw fundamental changes to the Scottish social and cultural patterns. More than this, however, the book raises some thought-provoking questions on a larger scale about early modern Scotland, and, indeed, Britain.

The Old Poor Law itself, which was legislated in 1574, was a direct copy of statutes passed in the English Parliament two years earlier. Mitchison is at pains to stress that, while the legislation was the same in both countries, what actually developed "on the ground" were two very different responses to the perceived problem of the poor. While the Poor Law in England became one of the cornerstones of local government, administration of a system of poor relief along the English model was neither possible nor desirable for many in Scotland. The central thread of the book is not the legislation itself, but rather the interpretations of it by different groups of Scots in various regions over the next few centuries. By far the most important of these groups were the two groups of men who usually made decisions regarding the poor in the parishes: the kirk session, and the local landowners, primarily the lairds, who often held joint roles as both elders within the kirk and, as heritors, men of property who could be ^Ñtaxed' to provide for the poor under the 1574 legislation. The kirk wanted to provide some form of Christian charity for the poor, tied of course, to godly discipline and moral reform of their lives. Mitchison points out that this could lead the kirk into conflict with the landowners who were often reluctant to see the regular establishment of rates for the poor, since they believed that this would amount to a tax on property that would reduce its value. The strength and organization of the kirk meant that it could still compel payment in many cases, but the preferred solution through most of the seventeenth century appears to have been to rely on voluntary contributions which could be tied to moral discipline, and assess rates for the poor only during a crisis. In effect, the law was being evaded in favour of the local interests of the kirk and the heritors.

Although legislation on the Poor Law ceased with the Union of 1707, Mitchison traces the development of practices in poor relief between 1700 and 1770 through an examination of legal cases which concerned the control of funds earmarked for the poor. With the power of the kirk fragmented and weakened by dissent, the power to control poor relief passed to the heritors. The same period saw the development of county "schemes" organized by the sheriff or JPs to assess rates to provide for the deserving poor within their home parish and, more importantly, to enforce the laws against begging and vagrancy. Mitchison argues that a widespread perception that the "local" poor, or at least the deserving local poor, were entitled to some form of support helped to ensure that a combination of voluntary contributions and the sporadic enforcement of the sparse provisions of the Poor Law could combine to provide a baseline of support throughout most of lowland Scotland. Already during this period, however, changes were taking place which would see the end of this fragile balance.

The strongest and most interesting component of Mitchison's work are the chapters devoted to the changing climate of attitudes towards poor relief in the decades surrounding the turn of the nineteenth century. These changes, in turn, sparked a public debate, not just about the meaning of the Poor Law, but about the nature of poverty itself in Scotland. Changes in the nature of labor created a population that was more vulnerable to swings in the economy. At the same time, religious opinion, spurred on by the influence of Thomas Chalmers, began to lend support to attacks on the Poor Law, suggesting that provision for the poor encouraged idleness, and that poverty could be a spur to industry among the laboring population. The absorption of the ideas of Thomas Malthus contributed to the ideas that provision for the poor could prolong, but not avoid, the inevitable demographic disaster that was bound to occur. Interestingly, this new climate of hostility towards the Poor Laws saw contrasts between the Scottish and English systems, with many Scots believing in the advantages of their own systems on the basis that they were morally and fiscally superior to the softer English provisions for the poor. The end result of this more hostile climate was a drastic reduction in the number and type of persons who could qualify for relief, which culminated in the creation, by the late 1820s, of a historical myth and selective reading of the legislation that stated that the unemployed had never, under Scots Law, been entitled to relief.

The end of the Old Poor Law in Scotland came as a result of the economic depression that began in 1841, which underlined the total inadequacy of the existing provisions for the support of the poor. The Old Poor Law had been designed for a proto-modern rural economy with a very different religious outlook, not the heavily urban and industrial Scotland in which they were now attempting to function. The result of the commissions set up to study the problem of poverty in Scotland was the enactment of new legislation to provide for the poor in 1845. The main components of this legislation were the removal of decision-making powers from the local kirk and heritors in favor of the establishment of boards of supervision. Even so, the power of resistance to increases in provision for the poor can be seen in the limited nature of the new legislation. It made no explicit provisions for support of the unemployed, or for a general assessment. These were changes which the framers of the legislation believed, correctly as it turned out, would evolve and develop over time. As it stood, it was a compromise between some of the more drastic ideas of reform, such as the provision of statutory medical aid or a national assessment, and conservative forces which were resisting any change to the existing laissez-faire system. The final sentence of her work underlines Mitchison's belief in the inadequacy of this legislation for the scale and nature of poverty in Scotland during the era of industrialization.

In examining this topic, Mitchison has also made a contribution towards addressing one of the problems with Scottish, and perhaps British, history dealing with the early modern period, by integrating what could be broadly defined as social history with political and religious history. For instance, the legislation and legal developments of attempts to deal with poverty are placed alongside examinations of their impact on people in the localities. The localized impact of the legislation is examined not just in terms of relationships between local notables and an a general grouping of "the poor," but with reference to the broad spectrum of different types of "poor" who were the subjects of this legislation. The author is always mindful of the fact that the majority of the poor in Scotland were female, and that gender could be a factor in determining the impact of the legislation or local response to poverty. The Highlands were distinct from the Lowlands, and what was feasible for dealing with the poor of one region was not necessarily possible or desirable in the other. The rural economy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries made for a different type of poverty than the more urban and industrial economy of the nineteenth century. All of this may seem obvious, but Mitchison manages to skilfully track developments across this wide range of her subject, and relate changes in one area to developments in another. The end result is a good examination not just of how the legislation affected Scottish society, but how changing social climates, regional differences, economic and religious shifts, and a host of other factors affected and changed how the legislation was interpreted, enforced, and employed. Given this diversity within the subject and the chronological span of her work, the author has done a skilful job in synthesizing and presenting this material.

The shortcomings of this work are minor. To claim that the book examines "the experience of poverty" is somewhat misleading. The vast majority of the book deals instead with the intertwined social, religious, and political constructions of poverty, and the experiences and responses of those who were involved in this process of construction. The two chapters which specifically focus on the experiences of the poor are very brief, and leave the reader wanting more. Even these chapters are largely constituted by the perceptions and reports of those responding to poverty. Mitchison's research into local records evidently took her deep into the records of kirk sessions and local courts. Throughout her work, the author is comfortable with anecdotal evidence, and it would have been interesting, and no doubt rewarding, to hear a great deal more of what she could discern about the experiences of poverty that must have emerged in the words or stories of the various types of "poor" who appeared in front of these courts as a result of either the Poor Laws or local perceptions of the poor. For example, how did they perceive their situation and the responses or obligations of others towards them? Was applying for relief a last resort that carried a stigma for those who could drift in and out of poverty or was it seen as a resource that was there to be used in time of trouble? This may be the type of research that Mitchison refers to in the preface, where she notes that there is still a good deal of untapped source material on this topic "for others to work on." It can only be hoped that she takes up her own challenge and shares more of the results of her research and analysis.

The Old Poor Law In Scotland is a thought-provoking account of how a small nation on the periphery of Europe attempted to define and deal with the perceived problems of poverty, and how these attempts were modified and changed as the society itself evolved through the early modern period and into the nineteenth century. It will probably become a standard for students of Scottish history, but it has much more to offer. The author's approach and style make this an interesting and informative example of how social history can be integrated with a variety of other perspectives to produce a more complex and challenging examination of events during this period.

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Citation: Scott Moir. Review of Mitchison, Rosalind, The Old Poor Law in Scotland: The experience of poverty, 1574-1845. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews. May, 2001.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5151

Copyright © 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.