Poverty and Social Welfare in Great Britain from 1598
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1775
STATE OF THE POOR HOUSES OF INDUSTRY
056. POTTER, Robert. Observations on the Poor Laws, on the Present State of the Poor, and on Houses of Industry. London: J. Wilkie. 1775. Half title, 72p. Recent marbled wrappers. A good copy.

HIGGS 6452. GOLDSMITH 11356. KRESS 7155.

Robert Potter (1721-1804) poet and politician. Amongst the proposals here put forward Potter advocates the building of composite poorhouses for several parishes. His views were answered in the same year by Thomas Menham of Norfolk and by Charles Butler in an anonymous "Essay on Houses of Industry".

Potter quotes at length from Burn on the Overseers of the Poor. "In practice, the office of the Overseers of the poor seems to be understood to be this: To maintain their Poor as cheap as they possibly can...to hang over them in terrorem if they shall complain to the justices for want of maintenance...to pull down cottages; To drive out as many inhabitants, and admit as few as they possibly can...to depopulate the parish in order to lessen the Poor Rate. "

In the early eighteenth century both prisons and the management of the poor had been turned over to private contactors. This practice was known as "Farming the Poor". The dire effects of leaving prisons in the hands of private contractors was seen in George Oglethorpe's report of 1729 into the atrocious abuses and cruelty practised in the Fleet Prison in London. The practice of farming the poor was scarcely more beneficial. Competition between private individuals for the contract of managing the poor meant that costs had to be cut to a minimum. What premium was there on kindness, proper provision of food and shelter, medical assistance of the sick when each additional shilling spent was a shilling lost out of profits? On the contrary starvation, overcrowding, intimidation, actual cruelty were the results as experienced by the poor. Dr. Burn had pointed out the deplorable state of many workhouses. Others, like Potter in the present pamphlet, joined forces with Burn to bring these abuses to the attention of the public.