A report on Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 and An Essay on the Principle of Population

Out-door relief: Poor people coming to a workhouse for food, c. 1840

Title page of the original edition of 1798

A "Poor Law Bastille": 1835 model design of a workhouse to hold 300 paupers...

Part of Thomas Malthus's table of population growth in England 1780–1810, from his An Essay on the Principle of Population, 6th edition, 1826

... 'classified' (men, women, girls, boys) and segregated accordingly

One of the "Somerset House Despots": Sir Thomas Frankland Lewis, Chairman of Poor Law Commission 1834–39

Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population set out the influential doctrine that population growth was geometric, and that, unless checked, population increased faster than the ability of a country to feed it.

- Poor Law Amendment Act 1834

In the 1830s Malthus's writings strongly influenced Whig reforms which overturned Tory paternalism and brought in the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834.

- An Essay on the Principle of Population

2 related topics with Alpha

Malthusianism

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Idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population die off.

The Malthusian catastrophe simplistically illustrated

Global deaths in conflicts since the year 1400

A chart of estimated annual growth rates in world population, 1800–2005. Rates before 1950 are annualized historical estimates from the US Census Bureau. Red = USCB projections to 2025.

Growth in food production has historically been greater than the population growth. Food per person increased since 1961. The graph runs up to slightly past 2010.

Wheat yields in developing countries since 1961, in kg/ha Largely due to effects of the "Green Revolution". In developing countries maize yields are also still rapidly rising.

These concepts derive from the political and economic thought of the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, as laid out in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population.

Malthusians perceived ideas of charity to the poor, typified by Tory paternalism, were futile, as these would only result in increased numbers of the poor; these theories played into Whig economic ideas exemplified by the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834.