'The sick poor and the quest for medical relief in Oxfordshire ca. 1750-1834'
type: CreativeWork
description: Whilst the issue of pauper access to medical relief under the English New Poor Law of 1834 has attracted both scholarly attention and systematic study from historians of welfare and medicine, the nature of relief under the Old Poor Law has remained comparatively under-researched. The parochial nature of its administration, combined with a paucity of systematic local or regional studies has meant that although many excellent general surveys of welfare provision have been published, the issue of the plight of sick poor is either relegated to a mere adjunct of wider relief policy, or absent from the secondary literature altogether. Through the employment of a systematic study of the under-researched county of Oxfordshire, this thesis will aim to exploit the research agenda that has increasingly sought to re-engage with the lives of the sick poor themselves, as they navigated the contested terrain of the Old Poor Law. In order to undertake such a study, it is important to first determine the scale and scope of medical relief delivered by the parish to the poor during the period, and so a systematic quantitative analysis of a sample of Oxfordshire parishes forms a necessary starting point of the research. The key aim of this quantification is to establish the centrality of medical relief within the general architecture of the locally administered Poor Law. The thesis will then move into more qualitative territory, employing material that will help unlock our understanding of the medical landscapes which abounded throughout Oxfordshire during the tenure of the Old Poor Law, and how they impacted upon and shaped the relief of the sick poor. Through an evaluation of the supply of medical relief, this thesis will gauge the extent to which the sick poor of Oxfordshire were tied into wider relief paradigms such as the medical marketplace and general narratives of modernity. The real originality of the thesis however lies in its engagement with the actors who shaped medical rel…
abstract: Whilst the issue of pauper access to medical relief under the English New Poor Law of 1834 has attracted both scholarly attention and systematic study from historians of welfare and medicine, the nature of relief under the Old Poor Law has remained comparatively under-researched. The parochial nature of its administration, combined with a paucity of systematic local or regional studies has meant that although many excellent general surveys of welfare provision have been published, the issue of the plight of sick poor is either relegated to a mere adjunct of wider relief policy, or absent from the secondary literature altogether. Through the employment of a systematic study of the under-researched county of Oxfordshire, this thesis will aim to exploit the research agenda that has increasingly sought to re-engage with the lives of the sick poor themselves, as they navigated the contested terrain of the Old Poor Law. In order to undertake such a study, it is important to first determine the scale and scope of medical relief delivered by the parish to the poor during the period, and so a systematic quantitative analysis of a sample of Oxfordshire parishes forms a necessary starting point of the research. The key aim of this quantification is to establish the centrality of medical relief within the general architecture of the locally administered Poor Law. The thesis will then move into more qualitative territory, employing material that will help unlock our understanding of the medical landscapes which abounded throughout Oxfordshire during the tenure of the Old Poor Law, and how they impacted upon and shaped the relief of the sick poor. Through an evaluation of the supply of medical relief, this thesis will gauge the extent to which the sick poor of Oxfordshire were tied into wider relief paradigms such as the medical marketplace and general narratives of modernity. The real originality of the thesis however lies in its engagement with the actors who shaped medical rel…
author: Philipson, T
language: en
date published: 2009
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:44:42Z
provider: Oxford Brookes University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Oxford Brookes University