Himmelfarb, Gertrude. 1984. The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age. New York: Knopf.

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When did poverty cease to be a ‘natural’ condition and become a ‘social problem’? When did the pauper become distinguished from the poor? What image of the poor made one group ‘deserving’? and another ‘undeserving’, and how did one or other emerge as the dominant social problem? And how did these conceptions and definitions derive from the moral and intellectual climate of the time?……………….in the early industrial era the poor had become a challenge to the conscience of society.

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