Soyer’s Kitchen, Black ’47
Parliament answered first with the Temporary Relief Act of February 1847, widely known as the Soup Kitchen Act. It authorised a temporary national machinery of local relief committees under central direction. In each electoral division, magistrates, clergy, Poor Law guardians and leading ratepayers were drawn into the task of identifying destitution, obtaining provisions and distributing cooked food or rations. The Act was an extraordinary admission that the existing Poor Law, based chiefly on relief inside the workhouse, could not meet the emergency. It also marked a practical shift away from the idea that famine assistance should be earned through labour. Food was to be given because people were starving.