The Poor Law and Charity
The Poor Law and Charity: An Overview
A Brief Chronology of Change; Historical Perspectives.
Parish Relief
Rates, Vestries; Churchwardens and Overseers; Pensions, Collection and Charities; Rise of the Parish Employee.
Parish Nurses
Reputation; Nurses as Parish Contractors; Hannah Poole; The Country Nurse and the Rise of the Baby Farm.
Workhouses
The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; The London Workhouse; The Workhouse Test Act and Account of Several Workhouses; Parish Workhouses; Workhouse Conditions; London Workhouses in 1776-7; Contractors, Private Workhouses and Baby Farms; Henry Fielding's Plan.
Settlement
Certificates; Establishing a Settlement; The Process of Removal; Appeals; Friendly Passes.
Vagrancy
Who Were Vagrants?; Policing; Punishments; Vagrant Contractors; The Crisis of the 1780s.
Associational Charities
The Foundling Hospital; The Marine Society; The Magdalen Hospital; Summary.
Parliamentary Reform
Annual Registers of all Parish Poor Infants (1762); Better Regulation of the Parish Poor Children (1767); Better Relief and Employment of the Poor (1782); Towards the Early Nineteenth Century.
The Parish Poor
London in 1803; Working Backwards; Gender and Age.
If you are just getting started you may wish to consult the Research Guides provided; read the article on How to interpret an Eighteenth-Century Manuscript; and review the descriptions of the individual Document Types.
For a detailed reading list on these subjects, see the London Lives Bibliography.