How Successful Were The Liberal Reforms?

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of Booth and Rowntree, exploded the myth that poverty was the result of laziness, bad habits and lack of virtue. There investigations revealed a very much larger than expected number of people lived in poverty than government thought with areas such as York(30%) and East London(35%), putting pressure on the government to tackle the problem. Booth found that many causes of poverty were out with peoples control such as low pay, sickness, unemployment and old age The poor law system was criticised heavily by booth as it was realised that only 10% of the poor were being helped by poor law and the other 90% were being left to fend for themselves. He also evidenced that only 15% of the very poor were direct results of drink, laziness or character defects and for most people poverty was not something they could simply work their way out of. The reports of Seebohm Rowntree backed up Booths results, emphasising poverty was a national problem to which the government must address. From his ...

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