History of the welfare state in the United Kingdom
[1] In medieval times, canon law required parishes to use one-third of tithe income to support the poor.
Parliament intervened with the Statute of Cambridge 1388 that penalized unauthorized departures, legitimized begging and required parishes to support their own poor.
[2] The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 established a stricter workhouse system and created unions of parishes administered by boards of guardians.
[3][4] It was designed make the alternative to paid labor an unpleasant experience, with a goal of punishing shirkers and minimizing expenditures.
The object of the workhouses, one official stated, "is to establish therein a discipline so severe and repulsive as to make them a terror to the poor and prevent them from entering.
They started with home tutoring, followed by very expensive "public schools" (like Eton College), and capped off at Oxford and Cambridge universities.
"[9] For England and Wales, Parliament began annual funding to schools operated by churches in the mid 1830s, and steadily increased the amounts and the oversight.
The main religious denominations set up full-time local elementary schools, with modest tuition, for their own children.
They taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion up to grade 8, as well as how to follow schedules, plan ahead, and behave in orderly fashion.
Nonconformists set up the "British and Foreign School Society" in 1808 to help with funding and textbooks, while the Church of England in 1811 set up a similar "National Society for Promoting Religious Education" to help its larger network of National schools.
They generally led to better outcomes than elsewhere in Great Britain but struggled to cope with the pressures of industrialisation and standards began to slip.
The Education (Scotland) Act 1872 introduced many of the same kinds of reforms as were taking place in England and Wales during the later 19th century.
[18] After a confused performance in 1906–1907 with few results, H. H. Asquith became prime minister in 1908 and shifted emphasis to new reform issues promoted by David Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Winston Churchill at the Board of Trade and as Home Secretary.
Reformers focused on the "People's Budget" of 1909 that proposed to fund expanded social welfare programmes with new taxes on land and high incomes.
[19] Liberals in 1906–1911 passed major legislation designed to reform politics and society, such as the regulation of working hours, National Insurance and the beginnings of the welfare state, as well as curtailing the power of the House of Lords.
[20] There were numerous major reforms helping labour, typified by the Trade Boards Act 1909 that set minimum wages in certain trades with the history of "sweated" or "sweatshop" rates of especially low wages, because of surplus of available workers, the presence of women workers, or the lack of skills.
[21] At first it applied to four industries: chain-making, ready-made tailoring, paper-box making, and the machine-made lace and finishing trade.
[21] It was later expanded to coal mining and then to other industries with preponderance of unskilled manual labour by the Trade Boards Act 1918.
6. c. 81) came into effect on 5 July 1948 and created the National Health Service in England and Wales thus being the first implementation of the Beveridge Model.
Note on source, as quoted in the text: "based on statistics of weekly earnings, Employment and Productivity Gazette."
