Talk:Poor law union

"In 1894, rural districts and urban districts were set up based on the sanitary districts (and therefore indirectly on the unions). " This is slightly misleading as urban districts were not based on unions but on individual civil parishes.

Exile (talk) 22:12, 10 February 2008 (UTC)


 * And back Jack do it again.be Vigilant vigile 2A00:23C0:9885:DE01:CED2:4B9F:2039:4569 (talk) 07:42, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

This articles fails to mention an important point.

The Poor laws in the UK created the Tramp. As the poor laws stood, you could only stay in a workhouse one night, if you stayed longer, you were incarcerated there for one month. This means, in order to avoid incarceration, you had to move on to the next workhouse for your next nights sleep. The workhouses were arranged to be ones days walk apart. Hence this mad mad system was created with hundreds of humans being caught in an endless tramp of walking all day every day to get each nights sleep, for years on end, since as one 'of no fixed abode' you were not entitled to stop anyway as you were no longer 'of this parish'.

This needs mentioning, its historically significant. For a deeper exploration, read George Orwells novel 'Down and Out in Paris and London'

82.21.206.85 (talk) 23:09, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Article title
The present title, Poor law union, doesn't really make sense, as Poor Law is invariably capitalised. The only two sensible options are Poor Law union or Poor Law Union, both of which are represented in the literature, with the balance being significantly in favour of Poor Law Union. The latter would also be consistent with Poor Law Commission, for instance. Eric  Corbett  14:07, 17 December 2013 (UTC)