In the early years of the New Poor Law, workhouses were explicitly prohibited from serving roast beef and plum pudding to inmates. Historians have recently begun to focus increased attention on the cultural meanings invested in specific food products and the politics of their production, distribution, and consumption. Unpacking the contentious disputes between local and central Poor Law authorities over the provision of roast beef to workhouse inmates similarly reorients the discussion of the pauper diet to address, not the amount or quality of food provided, but rather the cultural politics of what exactly a pauper was allowed to eat. A study of when and why paupers were and were not furnished with a festive meal of what was often termed “Old English Fare” provides a way of rethinking the place of the poor within local and national communities at a moment when attitudes toward poverty were undergoing profound changes.
