Cogitating the Poor-Law Bill

Philip Westcott 1815 - 1878

Summary

Three-quarter length frontal figure of a middle-aged man seated in a tall backed chair turned slightly to the right. He sits with a copy of the Poor Law resting on his lap, staring off in thought. The Art Union of March 1844, p44, described the painting as follows: 'A single figure (much like a poor shoemaker who has been some time out of work) - is inwardly debating some grave subject culled in from the columns of a newspaper, which he holds in his left hand. The account of hard living and the prospect of hard dying are forcibly given...'

Display Label

Cogitating the Poor-Law Bill exhibited 1844 Philip Westcott 1815-78 Oil on canvas Perhaps this working man’s newspaper contains one of the many shocking reports of inhuman treatment following the New Poor Law of 1834. The law did away with piecemeal welfare support in England and Wales. A centralised system was designed which organised small parishes into Unions with workhouses. These institutions housed the destitute, reducing their options to a ‘choice’: enter the brutal system or starve. They were a deliberately hostile environment. A particularly controversial part of the Poor Law was the ‘Bastardy Clause’. It made unmarried mothers solely responsible for their children: if they could not feed them, all were sent to the workhouse. Mother and child were then strictly separated. After much protest, this clause was overturned in 1844, the year this picture was exhibited. Transferred from the Horsfall Collection in 1918. The Horsfall Museum, in Ancoats, Manchester, was an educational museum for working people. 1918.417