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Poor Relief, Informal Assistance, and Short Time During the Lancashire Cotton Famine

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Show full item recordAuthor
Boyer, George R.
Abstract
[Excerpt] This paper presents new evidence concerning the importance of poor relief as a source of income assistance for unemployed operatives during the Lancashire cotton famine. My comparison of weekly data on the number of relief recipients in 23 distressed poor law unions with estimates of weekly cotton consumption for the period November 1861 to December 1862 suggests that the average length of time between becoming unemployed and receiving poor relief was less than 2 months. This result is shown to be consistent with available evidence on working class saving. Given the meager amount of informal assistance available to them, most operatives were forced to turn to the poor law for income assistance within 4 to 8 weeks of becoming unemployed.
Date Issued
1997-01-01Subject
poor relief; Britain; unemployment; cotton famine; income assistance
Related DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1006/exeh.1996.0663Rights
Required Publisher Statement: © Elsevier. Final version published as: Boyer, G. R. (1997). Poor relief, informal assistance, and short time during the Lancashire cotton famine. Explorations in Economic History 34(1), 56-76. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Type
unassigned