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Editorial work on this volume, funded by the Wellcome Trust, is
well advanced. The volume will contain Outline of a work intituled
'Pauper Management Improved', which was published by Bentham in
the Annals of Agriculture in 1797-8. In addition, the volume will
contain the text, established from unpublished manuscript, of Pauper
Management Improved, from which the Outline was extracted.
In this work Bentham sets out and defends in detail his plan for
the transfer of poor relief to a National Charity Company, to which
the existing poor rates would be transferred, and which would operate
an initial two hundred and fifty Industry Houses spread over the
territory of England and Wales. Of particular interest in this
regard are chapters on the principles of management, on education,
and on appropriate establishments, where the indigent with specific
disabilities would be housed.
In the Outline, Bentham deliberately ommitted 'every thing which does not go
to show the profitableness' of his plan; while the full version of Pauper
Management
Improved, while incomplete, presents a more balanced picture of Bentham's Poor
Plan.
The final element in the volume will be Bentham's short draft of a 'Body-providing
Bill', written in 1826, during a campaign by Bentham to persuade Home Secretary
Robert Peel to address the shortage of bodies available for anatomical dissection,
a camapaign that bore belated fruit with the passage of the Anatomy Act of 1832.
Michael Quinn (May 2007)
Writings on the Poor Laws, vol. 1 was published in May 2001
This research is funded by the Wellcome Trust