Anyone interested in Scottish family and Scottish local history should Essay

Anyone interested in Scottish family and Scottish local history should be aware of the changes in legislation in the nineteenth - Essay Example However, there had been previous laws, which concerned the relief of the poor within the country before the enactment of the 1845 act. Nevertheless, this particular act is particularly important to the history of the Scottish local family in that it was wholly intended to empower the individual parishes to enumerate own poor. Moreover, besides just enumeration of the poor, the enactment of the law empowered the state to enquire more into the poverty status of the people.Through the enquiry, the state would understand the circumstances around the poverty, understand whether the ‘poor’ would be in a position to work and establish whether there existed other family members who would be depended on by the family for survival. A characteristic feature that existed in the Scottish law previously had been a poor rate or levy, which had been imposed within the state in order to assist the poor. However, therefore was the need to evaluate the effectiveness of the legislations as they were prior to the 1845 enactment of the legislation, which saw the amendments, which led to the 1845-act formulation. The act of 1845 had main provisions, which revolved around the establishment of a supervisory board whose mandate was to effect poor law system regulation. It also provided for retaining the already existing ‘parish based systems’ via Parochial boards (The National Archives of Scotland, para 3). The boards had also powers to regulate taxes. Outdoor relief services for the poor were meant to remain with an attention to building more poor houses for the sick. Moreover, the act empowered the inspector of the poor to legitimize the applications of relief to the poor. The effects of the enactment of the legislation saw the able-bodied poor segment of the population miss an automatic entitlement to the poor relief, as was the case previously in England. However, under the legislation, the poor had the capacity to engage legal procedures to appeal for poor relief denied on them. Nevertheless, in spite of such a promising legislation as it were, it suffered a major drawback on the fact that it lacked a framework to address outdoor relief mismanagement, which was very prevalent. The nineteenth century legislations had great impacts on the records to the Scottish local family and as such, anyone interested in Scottish family and Scottish local history should be aware of these changes in legislation. This paper therefore intends to discuss the specific changes brought about by the legislation and the impact brought about to the records. The previous regimes of legislation ware more open and inclusive where the disabled as well as the poor were entitled to assistance with the blind, orphans, the sick as well as the old having the priority over the assistance though the able bodied had special provision to the relief under special occasions (Milner, 2). Under such instances, the able bodied were included in the provision of the ‘occa sional’ poor during hard times. It was the responsibility of the Kirk sessions and the landowners to oversee dispensation of the relief within the rural areas whereas the town councils as well as magistrates over saw the process within the urban areas (Milner, 1; General Register office for Scotland, 1).1 Each parish took care of its own poor through church collections, voluntary donations as well as through fines inflicted on the convicted sinners (Mitchison, 109; Clark,