Teaching activities

1. Research the life of Friedrich Engels using the internet (see websites in resources list). Summarise your findings in the form of a biographical dateline. Use this information to analyse and evaluate Source C in more depth. Make reference to the nature, origins, purpose, value and limitations of the source as evidence about the treatment of paupers under the New Poor Law.

2. Source B is part of an autobiographical account written by a silk ribbon weaver called John Castle. Working with a partner, list the strengths and weaknesses of using such a source as evidence for the experiences of people who had been placed in workhouses.

3. Using the Google Images search engine, research workhouses under the New Poor Law (type ‘Plans of Workhouses’). What do the pictures tell you about how the new workhouses were designed so as to allow enforcement of the principle of less eligibility? Share this task with a partner, with each of you analysing different pictures, and then compare your findings.

4. Make a list of all the different types of sources that might be useful when studying Poverty and the Poor Law from 1815 to 1853. Categorise them under the following headings:

• Written official, e.g. Reports of Commissioners
• Written unofficial, e.g. pauper letters asking for relief
• Non-written official, e.g. workhouse buildings such as at Southall
• Non-written unofficial, e.g. paintings of the poor

With reference to the list, discuss the following statement with a partner:

‘Written official sources are far more reliable than any other category of sources when researching the causes of poverty in the first half of the nineteenth century and the way in which poverty was tackled by governments.’