Poor Relief and Charity 1869-1945

This volume challenges many widely held beliefs about the efficacy of the London Charity Organization Society. Politicians, social administrators, sociologists, economists, biographers and historians have been swayed by the strength of their propaganda. The Charity Organization Society continues to be used as an institutional model to illustrate the alleged advantages of voluntarism over state benefits. Poor Relief and Charity 1869-1945 exposes the misleading nature of many of its claims. It explains why they were shunned by other charities, treated with suspicion by parish clergy, disregarded by poor law guardians and seen as little different from the stigmatized poor law by those in need.

Autorentext
ROBERT HUMPHREYS is a Lecturer in Economic History at the London School of Economics. He is author of Sin, Organized Charity and the Poor Law in Victorian England and No Fixed Abode: A History of Responses to the Roofless and the Rootless in Britain.

Inhalt
List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements Abbreviations Beginnings of the London Charity Organization Society The First Five Years Developments by the Turn of the Century 1900 Onwards: A Half Century of Change and General Charity Organization Society Decline Charity Organization Outside London Reasons for Charity Organization Society Decline Notes Bibliography Index