The significance of a ‘correct and uniform system of accounts’ to the administration of the Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834

Abstract

Accounting under the new Poor Law represents a significant landmark in the history of government accounting that has hitherto attracted little attention or comment. Charge and discharge accounting is rooted in feudal relationships and persisted well into the nineteenth century in the parishes and municipal corporations of England and Wales, especially in rural areas. In contrast, double-entry bookkeeping (DEB) in central government accounting, became a signature of the modern bureaucratic organisation. This paper argues that these radical differences were nowhere more apparent than in the new administrative apparatus created by the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. Evidence is drawn from national and local archives to document the design of an elaborate accounting system through which the central agency of the Poor Law Commission operated. It was not only the design of the accounting system that was significant but also its implementation. The paper draws on archival material to demonstrate the role of change agents and mimetic processes in institutionalising the new accounting practice. It reveals that in the unions studied there was an impressive uniformity and conformity of local practice in deference to the statutory authority of the Poor Law Commission.

Keywords:

• double-entry bookkeeping
• bureaucracy
• government accounting
• Poor Law
• change agents

Acknowledgements

This paper could not have been completed without the patience and encouragement of the Editors of Accounting, Business & Financial History and Accounting History Review. Anonymous referees provided constructive comments and the author is particularly grateful to Stephen P. Walker for his helpful insights, observations and suggestions for improving the paper.15

Notes

Although, the use of the terms ‘debit’ and ‘credit’ on the left and the right side respectively of a bilateral account may not be evidence for the use of DEB (for example, Edwards and Greener 2003).

As well as the debate between Keenan, Napier and Bryer in the pages of Critical Perspectives on Accounting, debates around the history of DEB have been revisited and summarised by Chiapello (2007).

A different explanation for the lack of central direction of the accounting required under the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act has been suggested by Coombs and Edwards (1994). They speculate that reform fatigue may have been a factor and that ‘it is unlikely that the government needed to be discouraged from introducing a DEB requirement but, if it did, there was an influential opponent in the persons of Jeremy Bentham and his disciple Edwin Chadwick’ (Coombs and Edwards 1994, 170). Subsequent research suggests that Bentham's opposition to DEB was not entrenched. Furthermore, as this paper argues, Chadwick became a champion of DEB. The ideological argument advanced here is more persuasive.

The continuing power of the ‘commercial brand’ can be discerned in a personal review of changes in government accounting at the end of the twentieth century by a leading academic adviser who equates full accruals accounting with sophistication and is embarrassed by how ‘almost primitive the public sector accounting arrangements’ were until the late twentieth century (Perrin 1998).

It has been suggested that Chadwick would have liked to abolish local administration altogether in favour of a fully centralised service but decided it would be too expensive (Finer 1970). However, Brundage (1988) produces convincing evidence that this was Nassau Senior's idea although it may well have been opposed on cost grounds by Chadwick.

The Commissioner's salary in 1834 was \pounds2000 per annum. The appointments were Shaw Lefevre, a Whig, and a friend and former bailiff of Lord Althorp; Thomas Frankland Lewis, a Tory country gentleman; and, George Nicholls a man well-known for his workhouse regime at Southwell, Nottinghamshire. Lefevre's and Lewis’ appointments could be seen as patronage. Chadwick was persuaded to take the job of secretary on \pounds1200 a year.

Jones (1985, 208) argues that it was not until 1867 that ‘parishes were for the first time uniformly required to adopt a double-entry system’. This was not the case. The removal of the Settlement Laws allowed Poor Law records to be simplified and the Poor Law Board took the opportunity to introduce a number of amendments to the forms in the various Schedules at that time (Poor Law Board 1867a and 1867b). However, the changes made to the parish records kept by churchwardens and overseers were minor and did not introduce DEB.

By 1834 there were 67 Gilbert Act Unions formed voluntarily by groups of parishes, mainly in rural areas in the East, South-east and Midlands. These were not subject to central government control before or after the 1834 Act. The Poor Law Commission had no authority over them and they were strongly opposed to any challenge to their local autonomy. Brundage describes them as expressions of the authority of local magistrates and country gentlemen landowners in their localities (2002, 21, 72).

In the early years of the new regime, the ‘paupers vanished as if by magic and the poor-rate fell by 20%’ and, although the change resulted from many factors, the Poor Law Commission claimed the credit (Anstruther 1973, 20). A full analysis of the statistics on Poor Law relief expenditure has been presented by Williams (1981) and has been re-examined recently by Snell (2006). Snell argues that the new law came at the end of a period of declining expenditure per head of population resulting from lessening pressure on resources after the Napoleonic Wars and from the growing economy. He concludes that the ‘claims made for the contribution of the New Poor Law in cutting expenditure were overplayed by its advocates’ (Snell 2006, 215).

Chadwick and Bowring were both acquainted with and influenced by the parliamentarian radical Joseph Hume as well as sharing a close connection with Jeremy Bentham. Also, towards the end of the 1820s, Chadwick had published articles in the Westminster Review, edited by Bowring. Chadwick took over from Bowring as Bentham's secretary in 1831, living for a time in Bentham's house, while Bowring investigated the public accounts in France and the Netherlands in his new role as secretary to the 1831 Commission on Public Accounts. After Bentham's death in 1832, Bowring became Bentham's literary executor and the editor of his collected works.

The wording of the auditor's statement is as follows: ‘I have examined the several accounts of which this is the balance sheet, and the several subsidiary accounts applicable to them, and I have compared the several debits with the vouchers and the corresponding credits and I do hereby certify that the entries appear to be correct and legal …’ (Poor Law Commissioners 1836b, 138).

Thomas Stevens, a Berkshire squire, was a respondent to the 1832 Royal Commission and in January 1836 became an Assistant Commissioner.

A note appears in response to one of his letters dated 28 October 1835 stating that the Commissioners ‘are willing he should make a trial of his forms in the Unions where complaints of the forms recommended are made’ (MH33/1). It is not clear if this refers to the forms kept by the Union Clerk, the Relieving Officers, the Master of the Workhouse or the parish officers. The trial may have had no implications for the Union ledger accounts.

The ten counties are Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Somerset, Wiltshire, Worcestershire and Herefordshire.

Abingdon was the first Union formed under the 1834 Act, on 1 January 1835. Initially, it consisted of 14 parishes but was enlarged to 38 on 7 October 1835. The earliest surviving minutes relate to the enlarged Union.