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POOR RELIEF AND THE DANGEROUS AND CRIMINAL INSANE IN SCOTLAND, C. 1740–1840
| By R. A. Houston |
University of St. Andrews |
| Nearly a century ago in Religion and the rise of capitalism, R. H. Tawney opined: "there is no touchstone... which reveals the true character of a social philosophy more clearly than the spirit in which it regards the misfortunes of those of its members who fall by the way."1 Historians have not been slow to follow up the implications of this judgement, which originated in the eighteenth century with Samuel Johnson. Their writings on poor relief tend to conform to dichotomies and to value judgements of which Tawney (and perhaps Johnson) would have been proud: funding by rating or voluntary charity; deserving v. undeserving; family v. 'state' or home v. institutional care; 'generous' v. 'mean' provision; included or excluded paupers; givers v. receivers. This article questions conventional dichotomies by looking at one category, the pauper insane who presented a threat to themselves or others. The legal, financial and logistical problems of dealing with this group exemplify the complex and contingent moral and social relationships involved in poor relief, while at the same time illustrating wider developments in care. In some senses dangerous lunatics were an unusual component of the poor, notably in being expensive to care for, but they can also be seen as an unusually well-documented type of poor, from whose experience generalisations may be made about funding and provision, decision making and ideologies. |
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The modern historiography of Scottish poor relief from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century conventionally portrays it as an undeveloped version of the English system.2 It takes one side in early-nineteenth-century debates, about the appropriate source and locus of poor relief, which condemned "the utter inadequacy of private benevolence."3 It assumes that the lack of structured care based on rating—the foundation of the English model—equates to parsimony—a point which ignores not only the importance of voluntary giving in England, but also the alternative argument in the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century debates: that administrators of tax revenues lacked the incentive to economise and to target relief properly.4 It sees moral simplification as the easiest way to contain expenditure, for as well as demonstrating entitlement and need, the poor had to conform to standards of passivity, malleability, predictability and gratitude. By focusing on limited entitlements and debates on disablement, historians of Scotland have studied exclusion more than provision.5 As in England, contemporary debates and historical analyses have also centred on provision for the able-bodied poor (or its lack), whereas (except for the very late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) the time and resources of practising administrators were concerned overwhelmingly with the impotent poor.6 |
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