Growing old in England 1878 to 1948

Abstract

This thesis deals with the experience of old age for working-class old people in England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It covers a time period from the beginning of the agitation for old age pensions in 1878 to the implementation of the Beveridge Plan in 1948, thus extending over the last three generations of the Poor Law and the decades generally thought to mark the birth of the Welfare State. The thesis is in three parts. The first deals with age and employment, the second with the living conditions and health of the elderly at home and in institutions, and the third with old people and the community.