Lancashire Cotton Famine - Public Works Manufacturing Districts Act 1864

Public Works Manufacturing Districts Act 1864

In March 1863, there were some sixty or seventy thousand women attending sewing school, and twenty thousand men and boys attending classes. They were thus defined as doing useful work so could legally receive aid under the Poor Law legislation. There remained a further twenty five thousand men receiving aid but not doing any work. To Victorian thinking this was a difficult problem, and some means was needed to provide paid work. Local authorities did have work that needed to be done- but no legal way to borrow to pay for it.

The Public Works Manufacturing Districts Act 1864 became law 2 July 1863. This allowed public authorities to borrow money for public works. Cotton operatives could now be employed on useful projects. Blackburn, for example laid paving flags and built new sewers.

Read more about this topic:  Lancashire Cotton Famine

Famous quotes containing the words public, works, districts and/or act:

    Wags try to invent new stories to tell about the legislature, and end by telling the old one about the senator who explained his unaccustomed possession of a large roll of bills by saying that someone pushed it over the transom while he slept. The expression “It came over the transom,” to explain any unusual good fortune, is part of local folklore.
    —For the State of Montana, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    I know no subject more elevating, more amazing, more ready to the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment than the works of nature. Where can we meet such variety, such beauty, such magnificence?
    James Thomson (1700–1748)

    Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.... for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.
    Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)

    Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.
    Václav Havel (b. 1936)