English Legal History and its Materials

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StatuteofLabourers 6 - 22 Oct 2014 - Main.FrancisWhite
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Palmer goes into great detail on how the massive depopulation during the Black Death led to the passage the Statute of Labourers and how it was used to force the able bodied of the lower classes to work and set maximum wages and prices. (Chapter 3 pg. 14-27) According to Wikipedia the law was not repealed until 1863.
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Rise of the Working Class and Corresponding Legal Changes

    • By the late 18th century, ~1 million people were receiving parish poor relief. [55]
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    • Bread Riots common until 1840s. [56] Also of note is the Great Cheese Riot of 1764, where "whole cheeses were rolled down the streets." [57] These riots peaked during the famine of 1795. [58]
    • Between 1760 and 1810, sixty-three new capital offenses are created, primarily for property crimes. [59]
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    • During the same period, the standard of living of poor people in England declines. "“The thirty years leading up to the new Poor Law of 1834 saw continuous attempts to hold down the poor-rates, to chip away at outdoor relief, or to pioneer the new-type workhouse” [56]
    • Speaking of workhouses: “Our intention,’ said one Assistant Commissioner, ‘is to make the workhouses as like prisons as possible’; and another, ‘our object… is to establish therein a discipline so severe and repulsive as to make them a terror to the poor and prevent them from entering’.” [58]
    • Bread Riots common until 1840s. [57] Also of note is the Great Cheese Riot of 1764, where "whole cheeses were rolled down the streets." [59] These riots peaked during the famine of 1795. [60]
    • Usually these actions were actually fairly disciplined. At least some of the time, the mob would force the farmers/merchants to sell their harvest at what was regarded as a fairer price, and let the farmer keep the proceeds. Despite their popularity, the leaders of these actions were at least sometimes hanged if they were caught.[61]
    • Between 1760 and 1810, sixty-three new capital offenses are created, primarily for property crimes. [62] (find some specific examples?)
    • specific details of 1834 Poor Law Amendment?
  -- FrancisWhite
[1] Ordinance of Laborers 1349, full text available at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/seth/ordinance-labourers.asp (I always thought Prof. Moglen was joking when he started writs with "The king to the sheriff, greeting," but it actually does begin exactly that way.)
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 [53] Slack at 37. [54] Slack at 39-40, 62. [55] E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, at 147. Full text available at https://libcom.org/library/making-english-working-class-ep-thompson
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[56] Thompson at 122. [57] Thompson at 124. [58] Thompson at 127. [59] Thompson at 117.
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[56] Thompson at 522 [57] Thompson at 122. [58] Thompson at 524 [59] Thompson at 124. [60] Thompson at 127. [61] Thompson at 124-126. [62] Thompson at 117.
 -- AllysonMackavage - 25 Sep 2014
 
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