The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, sometimes abbreviated to PLAA, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed by the Whig government of Earl Grey that reformed the country's poverty relief system (with the exception of Scotland, which reformed their poor law in 1845). It was an Amendment Act that completely replaced earlier legislation based on the Poor Law of 1601. With reference to this earlier Act the 1834 Act is also known as the New Poor Law.
The Amendment Act was called for after an investigation by the 1832 Royal Commission into the Operation of the Poor Laws which included Edwin Chadwick, George Nicholls, John Bird Sumner and Nassau William Senior. The Act has been described as "the classic example of the fundamental Whig-Benthamite reforming legislation of the period", based on three main doctrines: Malthus's principle that population increased faster rather than resources unless checked, Ricardo's "iron law of wages" and Bentham's doctrine that people did what was pleasant, and would tend to claim relief rather than working.
The Amendment Act came two years after the 1832 Reform Act had extended the franchise to the middle-classes. Some historians have argued that this was a major factor in the PLAA being passed.
The importance of the Poor Law declined with the rise of the welfare state in the 20th century. The National Assistance Act of 1948 officially repealed all existing Poor Law legislation, and replaced the Poor Law with the National Assistance Board to act as a residual relief agency.
Read more about Poor Law Amendment Act 1834: 1832 Royal Commission's Findings, Terms of The Poor Law Amendment Act, Implementation, Problems With The Poor Law Amendment Act, Opposition To The Poor Law
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“A poor widow, by the name of Baird, has a son in the Army that for some offence has been sentenced to serve a long time without pay, or at most, with very little pay. I do not like this punishment of withholding pay—it falls so very hard upon poor families.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I ... [urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enacting that all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner’s jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
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—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)