Abstract/Summary

How far the provision of poor relief under the Old Poor Law was a product of local conditions, and the power balance between pauper, vestry and magistrate, is a live and much-debated area in the field of poor law studies. A relatively thinly-studied environment is that of corporation towns, predominantly located in the midlands and the south of England. The bulk of existing research focusses on rural parishes or London and the larger cities. An even more neglected focus is poor relief provision as part of the function of local politics and administration within a corporation environment. Focussing on the corporation town of Reading, with its rich record survival in the eighteenth century, set against contextual studies of other corporation towns, this thesis explores the relationships, powers, compromises and mutual agreements which allowed parishes and corporations to cooperate to ensure that poverty, and its attendant problems, were managed in the interests of the town. This study explores who met with whom, where the power lay, what networks existed and what motivations there were for various parties to want to control poor relief provision. It measures the impact of these systems on both the pauper and the town. It demonstrates how the particular circumstances of a smaller urban environment generated a specific ecology of relief not replicated in rural areas, nor larger cities. In doing so it casts light on some of the current concerns about the impact of the relief system, and the pauper’s role within it.