The 1834 Poor Law, 700 charities, and the Charity Organization Society

This reading sets two traditions side by side, then ask which type of body should provide services so that low-income older people living alone can keep living in the community in a super-aged society. That super-aged frame is left as the writer’s, not recast as a later official label. The problem of older people living alone, they write, is closely tied to emotional isolation: a break with family, and weaker ties with friends and neighbors, deepen that isolation, and a lack of emotional support leads people to doubt the value of their own existence and lowers the quality of life.

The 1834 Poor Law, in this telling, changed the poor-law system into a centralized arrangement run on the principle of inferior treatment and through large workhouses. Charity groups then increased, acting separately and without a plan, until by the 1870s some 700 charities were active in London and about 840,000 people were receiving outdoor relief from them, so that aid could be given twice. Social resistance grew to a lowering of the poor’s self-reliance and to a life dependent on charities, and after 1870 a policy based on individualism and self-help was carried out around the Charity Organization Society. Those figures stay in the 1830s and 1870s.

The COS, this reading says, was based on an individualism linked to laissez-faire classical economics, and so opposed any form of state interference except intervention grounded in the 1834 Poor Law. It saw the cause of poverty as personal laziness, and held that self-help should be reached through organized, systematic charity. It distinguished charity from public relief, and judged who was deserving of charity by a person’s character.

Toynbee Hall in 1884, Hull House in 1889, and about 400 houses by 1910

The settlement-house movement began as a nineteenth-century British urban poor movement, a social-reform effort that tried an institutional approach to the problem of poverty. A settlement, as described in this reading, is a community-based house set up in an urban center, where people of different social, economic, or cultural backgrounds share knowledge, skills, and values and discusses, for mutual benefit.

In 1884, Canon Barnett, an Anglican priest, with students from Oxford and Cambridge, started Toynbee Hall, called the first settlement in the world. Barnett urged Oxford students to take part, and a good number answered; among them were people later important for the idea of equality as a basis of the welfare state. Life in a settlement in their youth had a large effect: Tawney concluded that charity can never solve the problems of poor people, including poverty itself. Beveridge, later known for the Beveridge Report, took his first step as a social reformer in 1902 as deputy warden of Toynbee Hall. The British movement, represented by Toynbee Hall, is called a concrete activity that raised individual capacity for social reform, and a school for pioneers who later led changes in social policy.

That British movement soon crossed to the United States. In 1889 Jane Addams founded Hull House in Chicago, and the movement spread across the country; by 1910 about 400 settlements had appeared in the United States. The original aim of the American movement, this reading says, was to offer English and civic education to poor immigrants; with time it came to include issue discussion, vocational education, hygiene, childcare, sports, and other services for daily life. Those dates stay in 1884, 1889, 1902, and 1910.

A writer’s preference, two named sources, and a stray citation left unused

Set against the COS, the settlement movement is said to have tried an institutional approach that sought change in society as a whole through exchange among social classes. Beginning in Britain in 1884, it was based in the community: educated people lived with the poor, shared education and culture, and tried to raise the quality of life. It stressed social interaction and communal solidarity, and tried to link the problem of poverty to structural social reform.

The writer prefers that settlement model for supporting low-income older people living alone so they can keep living in the community. In later life, they write, bodily function declines and illness related to aging appears, yet older people also try to build a more active life, a stance said to match the settlement’s philosophy. A settlement is based in the community and aims at exchange among different classes and generations. In this telling it can work with the community to offer regular health checks, exercise programs, and health education; provide a safe, comfortable place to live, or carry out projects that improve housing; and, through social activities and community programs, let older people living alone take part in society and have their value recognized, reducing isolation. That preference is left as the writer’s suggestion, not as later enacted policy.

Two sources are named: Lee Ki-yong, a study of welfare needs among older people as the aging population grows (Dankook University master’s thesis, 2010), pages 9–11; and Kim Ji-hyun, on the development and effect of a cognitive-behavioral program to raise ego integrity in depressed older women living alone (Myongji University doctoral thesis, 2016), pages 7–19. A stray later citation that is not part of this essay is left unused. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Notes comparing settlement houses and the Charity Organization Society, and asking which type should support low-income older people living alone in the community.
2. The 1834 Poor Law; about 700 London charities and 840,000 people on outdoor relief in the 1870s, left in those years; COS individualism, self-help, and a judgment of the deserving by character.
3. Toynbee Hall in 1884, Tawney and Beveridge in 1902, Hull House in 1889, and about 400 American settlements by 1910; the writer’s preference, left as a suggestion; Lee Ki-yong (2010) and Kim Ji-hyun (2016).

Last updated: 14 November 2026