Pre welfare state

timthumbni

The welfare state started in the uk anyway just after the 2nd World War I think.

How did those that did not work survive before this.?

suicide_circus

They didnt

Hitman3000

timthumbni wrote:

How did those that did not work survive before this.?

Children were looked upon as your 'pension '. Children's job ( in some cultures) to support ageing and infirm parents.

facehugger99

Charities and relatives mainly.

shaunr68

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse

My grandfather was born in the Liverpool workhouse in 1915.

Ajsoprano

They cultured diseases to give to the rich.

timthumbni

The reason I started the thread was that I was watching a tv show set in Victorian times and it struck me how did those that did not or could not get a job actually survived.

Contrasts greatly to those housed/fed/ entertained with a massive tv nowadays. All at public expense.

Avatar MIA

Prostitution, theft, death. Joining the army was a great source of income for a host of people, including the Irish within the BA.

Great times really.

Avatar MIA

timthumbni wrote: »

Contrasts greatly to those housed/fed/ entertained with a massive tv nowadays. All at public expense.

Get fired from your job and you too can enjoy this life.

facehugger99

timthumbni wrote: »

Contrasts greatly to those housed/fed/ entertained with a massive tv nowadays. All at public expense.

Yes, and it’s far better nowadays.

I’m more than willing to put up with some minor abuse of our current system than seeing people starving to death on our streets.

timthumbni

When did the welfare state begin in the republic? Which country/culture actually was the first to introduce welfare payments or something similar for those in need?

Avatar MIA

timthumbni wrote: »

When did the welfare state begin in the republic? Which country/culture actually was the first to introduce welfare payments or something similar for those in need?

Arguably the Romans did with their Bread and Circuses policy, for the same reason modern governments provide social welfare :pac:

timthumbni

facehugger99 wrote: »

timthumbni wrote: »

Contrasts greatly to those housed/fed/ entertained with a massive tv nowadays. All at public expense.

Yes, and it’s far better nowadays.

I’m more than willing to put up with some minor abuse of our current system than seeing people starving to death on our streets.

Of course you are correct. I just never thought before the welfare state of how anyone not in paid employment actually survived.

elperello

You need to read up on social history. Local library will be useful.
You might start with some accounts of life in your own locality about 100 years ago.
I doubt you will find anything to suit your agenda though.
We are not going back.

timthumbni

elperello wrote: »

You need to read up on social history. Local library will be useful.
You might start with some accounts of life in your own locality about 100 years ago.
I doubt you will find anything to suit your agenda though.
We are not going back.

I don’t have an agenda and I realise we are not “going back” as you put it. Calm down dear...

I simply was posing a question about past times.

I had to study this, religious organizations and after the dissolution of the monasteries it was outdoor relief mostly in the winter given in each parish and the person has to be from the parish then it was the workhouses. The pension was introduced in 1909 they had to be over 70.


[/url] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_John_Barnardo

Orphans or sometimes children were put by parents were apprenticed out at a very young age.

The British army the poverty draft.

people went hungry and suffered from malnutrition.

At the bottom level, people weaved in and out from employment to low-level crime and back again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Labour_and_the_London_Poor

elperello

timthumbni wrote: »

The reason I started the thread was that I was watching a tv show set in Victorian times and it struck me how did those that did not or could not get a job actually survived.

Contrasts greatly to those housed/fed/ entertained with a massive tv nowadays. All at public expense.

No agenda here at all.

In Ireland, they had community welfare officers and people were expected to sell their possession before they got help.

Ireland largely followed the Brittish system.

timthumbni

Avatar MIA wrote: »

timthumbni wrote: »

When did the welfare state begin in the republic? Which country/culture actually was the first to introduce welfare payments or something similar for those in need?

Arguably the Romans did with their Bread and Circuses policy, for the same reason modern governments provide social welfare :pac:

Interesting. When it comes down to it everything seems to come back to the Romans.

Brian?

junk_sales_man wrote: »

pre welfare state , travellers actually worked for a living , there were less of them too due to no incentives

How in the name of Jaysus did you manage to shoe horn in an anti traveller post already?

timthumbni

elperello wrote: »

timthumbni wrote: »

The reason I started the thread was that I was watching a tv show set in Victorian times and it struck me how did those that did not or could not get a job actually survived.

Contrasts greatly to those housed/fed/ entertained with a massive tv nowadays. All at public expense.

No agenda here at all.

Well as I said I don’t have one. This thread is about the past and how people survived. Feel free not to look if you are offended.

There was a large element of blaming people for their poverty, the deserving and undeserving poor and the ideas that some were living off the ratepayer, as ratepayer had to maintain the workhouses.

The religious laundry did not just take in 'fallen women' they often had women who were not wanted by their family or had no other options because of poverty.

Visconti

junk_sales_man wrote: »

pre welfare state , travellers actually worked for a living , there were less of them too due to no incentives

Plenty of travellers have their own businesses and pay tax. Tarmac , Doing gutters and facia / soffit, selling machinery etc nobody will give traveller a job so the good ones (and there are some good ones) have to set up their own businesses.
Plenty of settled people are bleeding the system, having children for financial reward, stealing and generally just being the low class gutter level scum that they are.

Hitman3000

timthumbni wrote:

When did the welfare state begin in the republic? Which country/culture actually was the first to introduce welfare payments or something similar for those in need?

1889 Bismarck introduced the pension for over 70's in Germany. For Ireland we just followed the British.

archer22

If you look at census returns from that time you will notice that a large percentage of husbands were much older than their wives...this appears to have been a way of ensuring that both did not grow old and infirm at the same time...the wife was still young enough to take care of the husband when he was old and the children only had the mother to look after when her time came.

ayux4rj6zql2ph

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elperello

mariaalice wrote: »

There was a large element of blaming people for their poverty, the deserving and undeserving poor and the ideas that some were living off the ratepayer, as ratepayer had to maintain the workhouses.

Plus ca change.

Visconti

Visconti wrote: »

Plenty of travellers have their own businesses and pay tax. Tarmac , Doing gutters and facia / soffit, selling machinery etc nobody will give traveller a job so the good ones (and there are some good ones) have to set up their own businesses.
Plenty of settled people are bleeding the system, having children for financial reward, stealing and generally just being the low class gutter level scum that they are.

Thats want they said about the poor in Victorian time despite there being no welfare, in the middle ages the peasants aroused the same sort of disgust in some, its nothing to do with 'what' they are getting it seems to be something about human nature to focus on others.

Prisoner 6753

Prisoner 6753 wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

We just inherited the system it was easier than reinventing it, P45 P60 etc.

Hitman3000

Prisoner 6753 wrote:

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Well sometimes you just look at something and say if it ain't broke don't fix it.

ayux4rj6zql2ph

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Basically, people lived one step above starvation a lot of the time.

Capt'n Midnight

Hitman3000 wrote: »

1889 Bismarck introduced the pension for over 70's in Germany. For Ireland we just followed the British.

It was a cynical move to kick that particular can down the road.

Life expectancy in Prussia back then was 45.

https://www.economist.com/node/13900145

In 1908, when Lloyd George bullied through a payment of five shillings a week for poor men who had reached 70, Britons, especially poor ones, were lucky to survive much past 50.

It only came into law in 1909 and was means tested.


https://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/irish-pension-records.html

The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society published in December 1910 suggested that the percentage of take up among those eligibile for the Old Age Pension 'could probably be accepted as approximately indicative of the relative poverty of the population'.

The level in England and Wales was 44.7%. In Scotland it was 53.8%.

In Ireland it was 98.6%, once again demonstrating the plight of the island and central government’s lack of investment in it.

Graces7

shaunr68 wrote: »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse

My grandfather was born in the Liverpool workhouse in 1915.

If you read any cemetery records in the UK when researching family, you will see the death rate among babies is horrendously high and many who died in the workhouse. You see entry after entry of "3 hours" and less. Little maternity care and no money for doctors

My maternal grandmother birthed 7 or maybe 8 babies( they used to give the name of a perinatal death to another child later so it is hard to tell) . She raised 3 of those.

TB was rampant. Three of her children survived to their teens then were stricken down .

That lessened dramatically after the NHS was founded. Before that they could not afford any medical care.

shaunr68

Graces7 wrote: »

If you read any cemetery records in the UK when researching family, you will see the death rate among babies is horrendously high and many who died in the workhouse. You see entry after entry of "3 hours" and less. Little maternity care and no money for doctors

My maternal grandmother birthed 7 or maybe 8 babies( they used to give the name of a perinatal death to another child later so it is hard to tell) . She raised 3 of those.

TB was rampant. Three of her children survived to their teens then were stricken down .

That lessened dramatically after the NHS was founded. Before that they could not afford any medical care.

Similar story with my working class Liverpool ancestors. 12 children on one side, 5 made it to adulthood.

Though it has become a byword for Dickensian poverty, to be fair I think the workhouse system was at least an improvement on what was available before. My great grandmother was admitted to the workhouse to give birth, it was the best option for poor people who could not afford a doctor.

In some ways the NHS and the welfare state are the pinnacle of hundreds of years of gradual improvements and progress in social reform and poor relief. All imho

kylith

junk_sales_man wrote: »

the reason the man didnt marry until old was he did not receive the farm from his parents until he was perhaps sixty , thus ensuring he hung around to take care of the parents

it was not unusual fifty years ago for a farmer to be forty years older than his wife

How does that work? His eldest son would be then 10-20 when he died.

I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s At Home recently and it seems that multiple marriages after the death of a spouse was totally normal, with some men marrying 3 times. My own grandfather did it: wife dies in childbirth, man takes on young woman to look after the children, he marries her, repeat.

Graces7

shaunr68 wrote: »

Similar story with my working class Liverpool ancestors. 12 children on one side, 5 made it to adulthood.

Though it has become a byword for Dickensian poverty, to be fair I think the workhouse system was at least an improvement on what was available before. My great grandmother was admitted to the workhouse to give birth, it was the best option for poor people who could not afford a doctor.

In some ways the NHS and the welfare state are the pinnacle of hundreds of years of gradual improvements and progress in social reform and poor relief. All imho

So much wrong with the workhouse but yet? They separated families but the kids did get some education. And at least a roof.

Much depended as always on the staff

Ireland is so different to us Brits... I arrived just before the NHS so grew up
with the service. Never knew any differently

sunbeam

My parents were born in the early 1930s. Both left school at 14 (no free secondary education unless you got a scholarship) and became economic migrants/emigrants to the UK sending most of their earnings back to support their families at home. This was the norm in my part of the west of Ireland.

Most fathers were also migrants for nine months of the year, leaving their wives to care for the young, the old, the disabled and run their small farms. Is it any wonder depression was so rampant here? Of course there wasn't much treatment for it in those days apart from incarcerating you permanently in the local psychiatric hospital, so people soldiered on as best they could, relying on the help of their families.

I was born in 72 and 'works in England' is listed as my father's occupation on my birth cert. Everyone knew that was shorthand for working in the construction trade. He got a job in Ireland in the late 70s and it was so fantastic that he could come home at weekends.

Visconti

junk_sales_man wrote: »

vast majority of travellers engage in criminality , painting the roof of a farmers hayshed with paint which is 90% diluted is fraud , ditto with dodgy tarmac jobs

Any proof to back up this wild sweeping statement ? Have you ever watched cowboy builders or programs like that ? Suppose they are all travellers too ? The builders who built dodgy apartment blocks with no fire regs etc were they travellers ? I guess the corrupt bankers are travellers too ?

Graces7

mariaalice wrote: »

I had to study this, religious organizations and after the dissolution of the monasteries it was outdoor relief mostly in the winter given in each parish and the person has to be from the parish then it was the workhouses. The pension was introduced in 1909 they had to be over 70.


[/url] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_John_Barnardo

Orphans or sometimes children were put by parents were apprenticed out at a very young age.

The British army the poverty draft.

people went hungry and suffered from malnutrition.

At the bottom level, people weaved in and out from employment to low-level
crime and back again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Labour_and_the_London_Poor

Scrapping "outdoor relief" and forcing the very poor into the workhouse was one of the cruellest measures ever taken. Families, especially the old who had been together all their lives,were split up

I did voluntary work in the 80s in the UK in an old folks hospital in the UK and even then the couples were split up

It is dehumanising

Harry Palmr

Life was nasty brutish and short

If you were poor and workless, you joined the army/navy, you emigrated, you lived rough and died young (now in 2018 the average death is 47 for rough sleepers in the UK so little has changed in that regard). Women had the added option of whoring and catching disease and then dying.

We should all thank our lucky stars that three-four generations ago so much changed.

Graces7

mariaalice wrote: »

In Ireland, they had community welfare officers and people were expected to sell their possession before they got help.

Ireland largely followed the Brittish system.

Even the sheets off their beds...

Graces7

mariaalice wrote: »

Basically, people lived one step above starvation a lot of the time.

And they helped each other and had more sense of community than we have today. I grew up in the back streets of a Lancashire town just after the war. There was still dire poverty.

Annasopra

facehugger99 wrote: »

Charities and relatives mainly.

Or chucked into workhouses, laundries etc etc

Richard Hillman

Visconti wrote: »

Any proof to back up this wild sweeping statement ? Have you ever watched cowboy builders or programs like that ? Suppose they are all travellers too ? The builders who built dodgy apartment blocks with no fire regs etc were they travellers ? I guess the corrupt bankers are travellers too ?

LOLZ

Annasopra

timthumbni wrote: »

The reason I started the thread was that I was watching a tv show set in Victorian times and it struck me how did those that did not or could not get a job actually survived.

Contrasts greatly to those housed/fed/ entertained with a massive tv nowadays. All at public expense.

They were basically thrown into workhouses, poorhouses, laundries, orphanages, mental hospitals - Ireland had the highest level of institutionalisation in the world in the 1950s - when they were not institutionalised they lived in tenement and slum housing.

There was also quite a lot of philanthropy towards workers (education, housing) from the likes of Guinnesses and Rowntrees

sunbeam

My grandmother, born in 1895, always referred to the county home as the workhouse. She was terrified of ending up there, even though she lived with us until her death.

Guy:Incognito

Avatar MIA wrote: »

Prostitution, theft, death. Joining the army was a great source of income for a host of people, including the Irish within the BA.

Great times really.

Joining the army wouldn't fall in to the category of "those who can't get work" . That's a job.

Visconti

Richard Hillman wrote: »

LOLZ

Lol pmsl

Avatar MIA

Visconti wrote: »

Lol pmsl

ROTFPMSLOL

Avatar MIA

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

Joining the army wouldn't fall in to the category of "those who can't get work" . That's a job.

It was, of last resort for some. And it was done because there was no other jobs or welfare. There was a time when nearly half the British army was made up of Irish. Some did of for the career, to see the world, but most Irish did it out of necessity.