Unheard, ignored and misrepresented: The Victorian pauper ‘in their own write’

Dr Paul Carter will look at welfare in the Victorian period. Most accounts from the time were written from the standpoint of the legislators. Yet thousands of pauper letters survive in “the poor law archive” and many of these dispute official accounts of how the poor were treated at a local level. This lecture will seek to examine how those who controlled the official administrative processes also controlled the ‘official’ versions of events regarding pauper treatment.