The passage of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act created an immense archive of letters, reports and memos from the responsible bodies. The papers form part of the huge Ministry of Health archive held at the National Archives at Kew, where the lack of an effective index or list of contents hinders access to this key resource. Thus Paul Carter's transcription of the Bradford Poor Law Union correspondence is the first regional collection to have been fully transcribed, and from it can be seen the wealth of social and historical detail contained in the papers. The Bradford material contains the raw data for this highly detailed investigation into the changes from the 'old' to the 'new' poor law system in one of the fastest growing urban centres in England. Chapters cover local and national relief provision, and the full remit of poor law concerns from individual pauper cases and workhouse provision to alarm in relation to the growth of radical working class ideas and the anti-Poor Law riots in the town. Transcriptions of the surviving assizes court material are also included. Dr PAUL CARTER works at the National Archives. He previously lectured on modern British history at Birkbeck College London.
Reviews
On reading these papers and letters, one gets a truly vivid insight into the life and times of 1830s Bradford. This volume is an important addition to our resources; it is a quarry to be mined by historians in the coming years. THE BRADFORD ANTIQUARY
