Agricultural History Review, Volume 48 Part 2 (2000), pp. 200–222

This article examines the impact of the crusade against outdoor relief in the Brixworth Union (Nol'thamp- tonshire), which was one of the most fervent supporters of central government's poor law retreilchment campaign in the late-Victorian era. The paper examines the relationship between the origins of the crusade against out-relief and the advent of agricultural trade unionism. It argues that guardians of the poor in the Brixworth Union anticipated central government's new anti-out-relief guidelines because they wanted to make a pre-emptive strike against trade union combination in 1871-2. This set the stage for a very protracted and bitter contest that was not resolved until the poor law was democratized in the mid 1890s. 

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