Work and Unemployment, 1834-1911

Before the 1880s, people referred to an individual out of work as being unemployed or described a group of workers without jobs as the unemployed, but unemployment was not the cause of the unemployed state. Rather, those with the power to assist unemployed people regarded individuals without jobs as mostly being to blame for their own conditions. The Unemployed before Unemployment,examines being without work in this context. The Role of the Poor Law demonstrates the centrality of the Poor Law in defining attitudes toward and the treatment of people without work. The section Workers and Workless includes sources that compare perceptions of poor workers with the unemployed, developing the idea that there existed a group of people who were considered unemployable. It also contains materials that reveal the voices of the unemployed themselves. In Charity and Relief, the sources examine different approaches to helping unemployed people before structural understandings of unemployment existed. The period between the 1830s and 1880s witnessed several crises related to work and unemployment, notably the Irish Famine of the 1840s and the Lancashire Cotton Famine of the 1860s. The section Crises of Body and Nation will compare how these crises were represented as well as the ways those suffering asked for assistance. While the Irish were blamed for their own distress, the cotton workers were held up as model unemployed.