| Summary: | <p>While the historiography of the workhouse in England has largely followed a vertical line, namely taking a top-down or bottom-up approach, this thesis aims to extend the boundary of workhouse research horizontally by integrating multifaceted socio-economic factors, which have been overlooked or considered just in passing in previous discussions, in order to analyse often highly localised patterns of workhouse provision and regime. The term ‘ecologies’ recurring throughout this research is chosen to crystallise my holistic approach.</p>
<p>For this purpose, neither a national nor a parish-based study is appropriate because the former tends to generalise findings and the latter to seek peculiarity. This project focuses on a county, Hampshire, and does not just establish that there were intra-county variations in workhouse ecologies but goes further to compare and classify them using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Drawing on statistical analyses, it demonstrates that various factors, such as demographic characteristics, transport infrastructure, and socioeconomic structure possibly affected regional variations in workhouse provision under the Old Poor Law. Using parochial administrative records, we then examine how workhouse ecologies in the different divisions formed by differing combinations of socio-economic factors produced difference in practical terms.</p>
<p>Moreover, unlike most existing research that usually ends or begins in 1834, the year of the passage of the New Poor Law, this thesis covers both the Old and New Poor Laws to explore changes and continuities through the transitional period. A structural transformation in poor relief administration was brought about by the new act, but to varying degrees within the county, in ways affected by past regional patterns. Regional patterns surviving from the Old Poor Law made it unfeasible to impose the intended uniformity on poor law administration and workhouse practices.</p>
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