Speenhamland system facts for kids

The Speenhamland system was a way to help poor people in the countryside of England and Wales. It was used in the late 1700s and early 1800s. This system was an update to an older law called the Elizabethan Poor Law. It came about partly because of Britain's wars with France, known as the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793–1815).

How the Speenhamland System Worked

The system got its name from a meeting in 1795 in a place called Speenhamland, Berkshire. Local leaders, called magistrates, came up with the idea there. They wanted to help people who were struggling because food, especially grain, was very expensive. People thought the high prices were caused by bad harvests or by people hoarding food.

The Speenhamland plan said: "When a large loaf of bread cost one shilling, every poor and hardworking man should get 3 shillings a week for himself. This money could come from his work or from a special fund for the poor. For his wife and each child, he should get 1 shilling and 6 pence. If the loaf cost 1 shilling and 4 pence, then the man should get 4 shillings a week for himself, and 1 shilling and 10 pence for each family member. The amount would change as the price of bread went up or down."

So, families received extra money to make sure their wages reached a certain level. This amount changed based on how many children they had and how much bread cost. For example, if a loaf of bread cost 14 pence, a family with two children would get their wages topped up to 102 pence.

The first rules were set when prices were very high. Even if bread prices went up a lot, the extra money didn't always increase as much. For instance, a 43% price rise might only lead to a 30% increase in the extra money.

Landowners in each area had to pay for this help. They then looked for other ways to deal with poverty, like sending people to workhouses. Eventually, the problem of poverty became so big that a new law, the Poor Law of 1834, was created.

The Speenhamland system was most popular during the Napoleonic Wars. It helped calm angry poor people who faced very high food prices. After the wars, it mostly faded away, except in a few places. William Pitt the Younger, a famous politician, tried to make it a national law, but he failed. The system was common in the southern parts of England, especially where the Swing Riots happened in the 1830s.

Why Some People Criticized It

In 1834, a special report called the Speenhamland System a "universal system of pauperism." This meant it made everyone poor. Critics said it allowed employers, like farmers, to pay very low wages. The local community would then pay the rest to keep workers alive. So, workers still had low incomes, and the people who paid into the poor fund were actually helping the farmers.

Thomas Malthus thought that helping the poor would make the population grow too fast. He believed that the Poor Laws encouraged people to marry early and have many children. He worried that there wouldn't be enough food for everyone. However, more recent studies show that Malthus was wrong.

Historian Rutger Bregman says that food production actually grew a lot between 1790 and 1830. But fewer people could get food because machines were doing more work. He argues that population growth happened because more people wanted child labour, not because of Speenhamland.

David Ricardo thought Speenhamland would create a "poverty trap." He believed poor people would work less, causing food production to drop, which could lead to a revolution. But Bregman argues that the poverty wasn't from a "poverty trap." He says workers could keep some of their extra money even if they earned more. Instead, he blames high prices caused by England returning to the gold standard, which Ricardo himself had suggested.

Some experts believe the system caused social unrest. Others think the unrest was due to the gold standard and new industries, which affected everyone, whether they had Speenhamland or not.

This system of helping the poor ended with the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. This new law stopped local groups from adding to the wages of full-time workers. However, this rule wasn't always followed. Sometimes, it was cheaper to give people extra money than to run bigger workhouses.

New information from the last 30 years shows that the bread scale from the 1795 Speenhamland meeting was not used everywhere. Also, the system of giving money to people outside workhouses, which started early in Speenhamland, wasn't completely widespread. These wage supplements were often temporary and worked differently in various areas. Historian Mark Blaug argued in 1960 that the people who wrote the 1834 report used the Speenhamland system to make the old poor law look bad. They wanted to create support for a new law. However, other historians like Eric Hobsbawm still believe the old poor law was harmful because it helped employers and made workers too dependent on local rich people.

Daniel A. Baugh says that the cost of helping the poor didn't go up much. After the Napoleonic Wars, jobs and living conditions in southeast England changed a lot. The Speenhamland System wasn't very different from the older ways of helping. What really mattered was how big the problem of poverty had become.

See also

• Roundsman
• Labour Rate
• Poor Law