Key Dates 1808-1897

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1808 County Asylums Act for “the better Care and Maintenance of Lunatics being Paupers or Criminals” enabled counties to construct asylums for the insane
.1815 Corn Law prohibited the importation of corn into Britain until the home price reached 80 shillings per quarter. The cost of a four pound loaf of bread in London averaged over one shilling between 1816 and 1818. See 1846.
1815 Poor Law Act extended the power to give outdoor relief.
1819Poor Relief Act, Sturges Bourne Act, attempted to ensure that property owners had an influential say in the conduct of poor relief; gave parishes optional power to hire paid officers (assistant overseers), and to establish a formal procedure whereby they might elect committees to supervise the work.
1824 Vagrants Act amended the definitions of idle and disorderly persons, rogues and vagabonds; set out powers of searching persons and premises; and prescribed maximum penalties and terms of imprisonment.
1834 Poor Law Amendment Act followed the publication of the Report of the Royal Commission on Poor Law. The Act limited outdoor relief to the aged and infirm who were “wholly unable to work”; encouraged the building of workhouses, and introduced a spartan regime and the “Workhouse Test”; and considered any relief given to be a loan. The Act required wards to be set aside for the impoverished sick and empowered justices of the peace to give an order for medical relief to any poor person with “sudden and dangerous illness”.
The Act set up the Poor Law Commission to consist of three commissioners to supervise the implementation of the act, the first secretary of the Commission was Edwin Chadwick (1800-90). Boards of Guardians were encouraged to combine into Unions to build the workhouses. Disraeli proclaimed that the new law was “announcing to the world that in England poverty was a crime”
.1838 Report by Dr Neil Arnott (1788-1874) and Dr James Kay and another by Dr Southwood Smith exposed the extent of preventable disease and the dreadful living conditions under which people existed in Manchester and London respectively.
1840 Vaccination Act made free vaccination available as a charge on the poor rates. Vaccination was, thereby, the first free health service provided through legislation on a national scale and available to all.
1841 Vaccination Act declared that vaccination should not be considered as “parochial relief” and that no person shall by reason of vaccination be deprived of any right or privilege or be subject to any disqualification whatsoever.
Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane formed. In 1865 the name was changed to the Medico-Psychological Association (in 1925 became Royal) and in 1971 it became the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
1842 Lunatic Asylums Act gave power to the Metropolitan Commissioners (see 1828) to inspect, twice yearly, all asylums and madhouses in the country whatever their legal status
.1844 Poor Law Amendment Act introduced changes in the election of guardians and empowered mothers of illegitimate children to apply to justices in petty sessions
for a maintenance order against the father.
Reports of the Select Committee on Poor Law Medical Relief (chairman, Lord Ashley)
outlined a comprehensive picture of current practice; opposed the requirement for a relieving officer to determine need and eligibility for medical attention; and favoured direct access to a medical officer. No change followed the report
.1845 Lunatics (Care and Treatment) Act and Regulation of Asylums Act
improved the procedure for certification; and set up a Board of Commissioners (chairman, Lord Ashley) to inspect and supervise asylums and other places
where mentally ill people were cared for.
Poor Law Scotland (Amendment) Act retained the parish as the unit of administration with parochial boards consisting of elected representatives and, ex officio, the chief magistrate as the manager. Each board had to appoint an inspector of the poor who had direct control of relief and could only be dismissed by the central Board of Supervision, also setup by the act. Relief was limited to the aged and infirm poor. Parochial boards were permitted to subscribe to any public infirmary, lying-in-hospital, asylum or dispensary and were required “to provide for medicines, medical attendance, nutritious diet, cordials, and clothing for such Poor, in such manner and to such extent as may seem equitable and expedient; and it shall be lawful for the parochial board to make provision for the education of poor children who are themselves or whose parents are objects of parochial relief”.
Potato blight in Ireland caused widespread famine; recurred until
1849 resulting in high mortality and emigration. Scotland was also affected with similar results.


1846 A Select Committee of Parliament was set up to inquire into the over-harsh and
inhumane treatment of paupers in the Andover Workhouse.
Convention of Poor Law Medical Officers founded.
1847 Poor Law Administration Act revised and consolidated previous legislation setting out rules and principles for the administration of the poor laws. The intention was to ensure more humane practice than that of many boards of guardians, but the new
powers were used sparingly and the enforcement of the principles gradually fell into desuetude.
1847 Corn Laws, which imposed duties on imported corn, repealed
1853Vaccination Act introduced compulsory vaccination for all infants within four months of birth, but contained no powers of enforcement. Responsibility was with
the poor law guardians.
Charitable Trusts Act appointed Charity Commissioners and introduced regulations to supervise private philanthropy.
1855 Poor Law Medical Reform Association formed with Richard Griffin (1806-1 869,an outstanding leader in the campaign to reform the Poor Law medical services) as the first chairman.
1858 Workhouse Visiting Society formed with William Cowper (1811-88, later Lord Mount-Temple) as president and Louisa Twining as secretary
.1860 Pressure mounted to reform Poor Law Medical Relief and a Medical Relief Bill was presented to Parliament, but rejected. The Poor Law Board issued "Consolidated Orders Respecting Medical Relief".
Select Committee on Lunatics received substantial evidence of wrongful detention and abuse of patients, but its recommendations were not acted on.
1861 Publication for the Workhouse Visiting Society of "A Plea for the Destitute Incurable" by Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904). The plea was that the chronic sick should be separated from other inmates of the workhouses and be given extra comforts. There were about 80,000 people in the category of "destitute incurable" in the institutions. A petition to the House of Commons included signatures from leading physicians and surgeons of London hospitals who agreed that such people should not be kept for more than a brief period in any hospital established for the cure of the sick.
Nurses were appointed for the first time to the staff of a Poor Law hospital (Liverpool) and Agnes Jones (1832-68) was appointed the first superintendent.
1864 Metropolitan Houseless Poor Act authorised casual wards at workhouses to be used for vagrants in the London area.
A Select Committee reported that there were not sufficient grounds for materially interfering with the existing system of medical relief for the poor, despite the evidence presented to it of abuse and deprivation
.1865 Union Chargeability Act substituted a twelve months residence qualification for help from the local rates, in place of the rule that any pauper, no matter how long his or her residence in the parish, must be sent back to his or her parish of birth. The act permitted Guardians to examine the books and papers of the overseers and transferred the raising of the poor rate from the parish to the union
.1866 Labouring Classes Dwelling Act enabled the Public Works Loan Commission to make loans towards the erection of dwellings for the labouring classes.
Simon’s Annual Report for 1865 to the Privy Council contained the results of a survey, by HJ Hunter (1823-1908), of dwellings of the labouring classes in towns. A survey of rural dwellings had been reported the year before. The general conclusion was that existing powers were completely inadequate to control overcrowding or prevent the continued use of dwellings unfit for human habitation
.1867 Poor Law Amendment Act made the Poor Law Board permanent; amended administrative details of previous acts; and applied the principles of the Metropolitan Poor Act to the rest of the country, thus enabling boards of guardians to establish infirmaries for the treatment of the sick poor separate from the workhouses.
1869 The Charity Organisation Society founded as a "general family casework agency". The Society distinguished between "charity" for the deserving poor, which it took as its own sphere of activity, and "relief" for the rest, which it left to the poor law guardians. The Society was opposed to indiscriminate alms giving.
1870 The Poor Law Board raised in its annual report the possibility of establishing a system of free medical advice for all wage-earners; in the words of the report, to consider "how far it may be advisable, in a sanitary or social point of view, to extend gratuitous medical relief beyond the actual pauper classes generally".
1871 Local Government Board Act set up, following the recommendation of the Royal Commission, the Local Government Board with a minister as president. Public health, poor law administration and the supervision of local government were brought together. Simon was appointed chief medical officer to the Board, retired in 1876. The Board continued until it was replaced by the Ministry of Health in 1919
.1889 Prevention of Cruelty to, and Protection of, Children Act made ill-treatment, neglect of or causing suffering to children punishable; and prohibited begging by boys under 14 and girls under 16 years of age.
Poor Law Act permitted the admission of non-paupers to the hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board and the instruction of medical students in the Board’s fever hospitals
.1895 The Royal Commission on the Aged Poor, (chairman, Lord Aberdare) did not recommend any major changes; and suggested that outdoor relief should be adequate, but that conditions in workhouses should be improved. The Commissioners considered that “pauperism is becoming a constantly diminishing evil, ultimately to disappear before the continuous progress of thrift and social well-being”.
1897 In this year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, an editorial in “Public Health” stated “of all the achievements of the Victorian Era ... history will find none worthier of record than the efforts made to ameliorate the lives of the poor, to curb the ravages of disease, and to secure for all pure air, food, and water, all of which are connotated by the term ‘sanitation’”. (Public Health, IX, 10, January, 1897, page 286).