Ebook: In Their Own Write: Contesting the New Poor Law, 1834–1900

Rethinking the grim picture of the Victorian workhouse through the authentic words of the poor and their advocates.

Until now it has been impossible to know how the poor themselves negotiated the New Poor Law and its measures, and how their interactions with the state shifted and changed across the nineteenth century. Based on first-hand testimony – pauper letters and witness statements interwoven with letters to newspapers and correspondence from poor law officials and advocates – In Their Own Write exposes this hidden history.