Imagining Poverty

An interdisciplinary study of public attitudes towards the poor in Britain between 1790 and 1835. Sandra Sherman reconsiders a question that has challenged social historians for years: what changes (political, economic and philosophical) lead to the New Poor Law of 1834? As new, scientific methods of regulating the poor were adopted - such as statistics, cost accounting, and cost-benefit analyses - old fashioned paternalism gave way to newer modalities in which the poor were not addressed as individuals but instead were managed en masse. The poor became poverty, a political/economic condition that could be managed from a distance by professionals who had no contact with individuals and made no accommodations to them.