Lynn Hollen Lees

The Solidarities of Strangers – An excellent academic review of the Poor Laws

The Solidarities of Strangers, an academic history of the Poor Laws between 1700 and 1948, shows the development of welfare for the poor and its changes. While written for an academic audience, anyone interested in how Britain dealt with its poor for over 200 years would find this book an excellent read.

What Lynn Hollen Lees has done is delve not only in to the primary sources but into the even larger secondary source material. For example, the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws 1834, might only be 200 pages long but the appendices of evidence provided is 7500 pages long. Lees has been thorough in her examination of the source material and disseminates it in a clear and unbiased way, which makes for an excellent read.

She makes explains the cultural and social changes in regards of the poor and pauperism and how 1834 broke away from the Elizabethan settlement. How statistical analyses was used to give the Commission its voice and how the Secretary and Chairman of the Commission had their own agenda for the poor which they pressed.

This is an excellent book for all students of British Social history, especially if you are interested in history from below. Lees takes you on the long journey of the Poor Laws to its eventual replacement with the social democratic settlement in 1948.… (plus d'informations)