Voluntary Action History Society

Tuesday 22 April 2008, 5.30pm
Wolfson Room, Institute for Historical Research, Senate House, London

Almshouse accommodation comprised a heterogenous range of residential charity founded by testamentary endowment, royal edict and a variety of other means. Ideally it offered free housing within a small, individual house of two or three rooms, and the means to maintain that household by dint of a small cash pension, but the reality could vary quite widely around this template. Almshouses as philanthropic ventures enjoyed their heyday before 1650 and experienced a revival of interest in the 19th century. Yet despite their fluctuating appeal to benefactors, and the comparative rarity of new foundations for the majority of the period 1650-1850, the poor continued to apply for places, live their latter years and ultimately die in almshouses. This paper will draw on a range of sources to characterise almshouse lives and draw lines of distinction between almshouses and other venues that accommodated the poor. It will argue that the longevity and desirability of such households was inevitably somewhat dependent on the generosity of the charitable foundation but also on the level of effective autonomy exercised by almspeople.