Provincial Poor Laws and Pauper Auctions: The Elizabethan Welfare System in Colonial Canada

Guest: Victoria Hooton (Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory). In this episode Christopher Murphy travels back in time with Victoria Hooton to discuss the regulation of poverty in England and Wales in the early 17th century, with a specific focus on the 1601 Act for the Relief of the Poor. The Act reflected the prevailing moral sensibilities of the time, regarding who the worthy and the unworthy poor were and where the boundaries of welfare responsibility were to be drawn. After providing an overview of the legislation, the focus turns to the implementation of this welfare system in the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick during the mid-18th and 19th century. (Audio Production: www.citysoundstudio.de)