The death of a husband had adverse economic effects for the majority of Victorian women, but for working-class mothers the threat of destitution was an almost inevitable feature of widowhood. Widows, with some restrictions, were entitled to outdoor relief under the Poor Law Amendment Act (1834), and they comprised the largest group of adult paupers outside of the workhouse well into the early twentieth century, outnumbered only and always by their children. Able-bodied widows therefore presented crucial opportunities for poor law officials in the quest to minimise outdoor relief and make significant reductions in welfare spending. Focusing particularly on the 1830s, 1840s, and 1870s (the first decade of the so-called crusade against out-relief), this article examines the competing discourses of deservingness and deception that dominated the representations and treatment of able-bodied widows in poor law legislation, orders, reports, and parliamentary debates. An uneasy combination of sympathy and suspicion shaped officials’ treatment of these women, rendering them ambiguous figures in the dominant dichotomy of the deserving and undeserving poor, potential drains on the economic prosperity of the state, threats to the nuclear family, and, by extension, a danger to the nation’s moral core. These discourses, I suggest, reflect a wider ideological unease with and attempts to mitigate and police the widow’s exceptional social status in Victorian Britain as a woman with sexual experience, potential economic independence, yet no male guardian.

中文翻译：

---

欺骗、应得和贫困：健全的寡妇和新济贫法

丈夫的去世对维多利亚时代的大多数女性产生了不利的经济影响，但对于工薪阶层的母亲来说，贫困的威胁几乎是寡居的必然特征。根据《济贫法修正案》（1834 年），寡妇在有一些限制的情况下有权获得户外救济，她们是 20 世纪早期济贫院外最大的成年乞丐群体，人数仅多于她们的孩子，而且总是超过她们的孩子。因此，身体健全的寡妇为穷苦的法律官员提供了至关重要的机会，以寻求最大限度地减少户外救济并大幅减少福利支出。特别关注 1830 年代、1840 年代和 1870 年代（所谓的反救济运动的第一个十年），本文考察了在不良法律立法、命令、报告和议会辩论中支配健全寡妇的陈述和待遇的关于应得性和欺骗性的竞争性话语。同情和怀疑的不安结合导致了官员对这些妇女的对待，使她们在应得和不值得的穷人的主要二分法中成为模棱两可的人物，国家经济繁荣的潜在流失，对核心家庭的威胁，以及，更进一步，对国家的道德核心构成威胁。我认为，这些话语反映了一种更广泛的意识形态上的不安，并试图减轻和监管维多利亚时代英国寡妇作为一名有性经验、潜在经济独立但没有男性监护人的女性的特殊社会地位。