That ‘poor law was law’ is a fact that has slipped from the consciousness of historians of welfare in England and Wales, and in North America. Welfare's Forgotten Past remedies this situation by tracing the history of the legal right of the settled poor to relief when destitute. Poor law was not simply local custom, but consisted of legal rights, duties and obligations that went beyond social altruism. This legal ‘truth’ is, however, still ignored or rejected by some historians, and thus ‘lost’ to social welfare policy-makers. This forgetting or minimising of a legal, enforceable right to relief has not only led to a misunderstanding of welfare’s past; it has also contributed to the stigmatisation of poverty, and the emergence and persistence of the idea that its relief is a 'gift' from the state. Documenting the history and the effects of this forgetting, whilst also providing a ‘legal’ history of welfare, Lorie Charlesworth argues that it is timely for social policy-makers and reformists – in Britain, the United States and elsewhere – to reconsider an alternative welfare model, based on the more positive, legal aspects of welfare’s 400-year legal history.

This collection of essays is arranged around the central issue raised by a raft of new empirical research - the relationship between social identity, or the 'vision of the self', and the ways in which this can explain historical agency. If identities in early modern society were multiple, complex, and dependent on context, rather than homogenous, consistent, or easily determined, then it is difficult to make simple causal links to behaviour. This collection aims to make innovative new research on the structures of English society available to the wider scholarly audience. The essays use a number of detailed contextual case studies to explore the twin themes of the nature of identities in early modern society, and their role in influencing historical agency. They examine the variety of identities available to individuals in early modern England, and the ways in which these were invoked and employed.

Including chapters on British public debt in the 19th century, French financial controversies in the mid-1800s, and a thoughtful reflection on the USA's New Deal, this volume is a global exploration of public finance history. For researchers interested in the history of economics, this is an essential read containing the most up-to-date research.

The Decline of Life is an ambitious and absorbing study of old age in eighteenth-century England. Drawing on a wealth of sources - literature, correspondence, poor house and workhouse documents and diaries - Susannah Ottaway considers a wide range of experiences and expectations of age in the period, and demonstrates that the central concern of ageing individuals was to continue to live as independently as possible into their last days. Ageing men and women stayed closely connected to their families and communities, in relationships characterized by mutual support and reciprocal obligations. Despite these aspects of continuity, however, older individuals' ability to maintain their autonomy, and the nature of the support available to them once they did fall into necessity declined significantly in the last decades of the century. As a result, old age was increasingly marginalized. Historical demographers, historical gerontologists, sociologists, social historians and women's historians will find this book essential reading.

With its focus on poverty and welfare in England between the seventeenth and later nineteenth centuries, this book addresses a range of questions that are often thought of as essentially “modern”: How should the state support those in work but who do not earn enough to get by? How should communities deal with in-migrants and immigrants who might have made only the lightest contribution to the economic and social lives of those communities? What basket of welfare rights ought to be attached to the status of citizen? How might people prove, maintain and pass on a sense of “belonging” to a place? How should and could the poor navigate a welfare system which was essentially discretionary? What agency could the poor have and how did ordinary officials understand their respective duties to the poor and to taxpayers? And how far was the state successful in introducing, monitoring and maintaining a uniform welfare system which matched the intent and letter of the law? This volume takes these core questions as a starting point. Synthesising a rich body of sources ranging from pauper letters through to legal cases in the highest courts in the land, this book offers a re-evaluation of the Old and New Poor Laws. Challenging traditional chronological dichotomies, it evaluates and puts to use new sources, and questions a range of long-standing assumptions about the experience of being poor. In doing so, the compelling voices of the poor move to centre stage and provide a human dimension to debates about rights, obligations and duties under the Old and New Poor Laws.