Question

what was offered to the poor by the authorities

Answer 1

Although many deterrent workhouses developed in the period after the New Poor Law, some had already been built under the existing system.[1] This workhouse in Nantwich, Cheshire dates from 1780.

The English Poor Laws[2] were a system of poor relief which existed in England and Wales[3] that developed out of late-medieval and Tudor-era laws being codified in 1587–98. The Poor Law system was in existence until the emergence of the modern welfare state after the Second World War.[