A bit of a long winded follow on from Russell
The Poor Law was the system for the provision of social security in operation in England and the rest of the United Kingdom from the 16th century until the establishment of the Welfare State in the 20th century.
For much of the period of the Poor Law, the dependent poor were classified in terms of three groups:
The impotent poor could not look after themselves or go to work. They included the ill, the infirm, the elderly, and children with no-one to properly care for them. It was generally held that they should be looked after.
The able-bodied poor normally referred to those who were unable to find work - either due to cyclical or long term unemployment in the area, or a lack of skills. Attempts to assist these people, and move them out of this category, varied over the centuries, but usually consisted of relief either in the form of work or money.
The 'vagrants' or 'beggars', sometimes termed 'sturdy rogues', were deemed those who could work but had refused to. Such people were seen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as potential criminals, apt to do mischief when hired for the purpose. They were normally seen as people needing punishment, and as such were often whipped in the market place as an example to others, or sometimes sent to so-called 'House of Correction'. This group was also termed the idle poor.
Elizabethan Poor Law
The Poor Law Act 1601 also known as the Elizabethan Poor Law and Old Poor Law (after the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834) formalised earlier practices of poor relief. It created a collectivist national system, paid for by levying local rates (or property taxes). It made provision:
To board out (making a payment to families willing to accept them) those young children who were orphaned or whose parents could not maintain them, to provide materials to "set the poor on work"
To offer relief to people who were unable to work -- mainly those who were "lame, impotent, old, blind", and
"The putting out of children to be apprentices".
Relief for those too ill or old to work, the so called helpless poor, was in the form of a payment or items of food ('the parish loaf') or clothing. Some aged people might be accommodated in parish alms houses, though these were usually private charitable institutions. Meanwhile able-bodied beggars who had refused work were often placed in houses of correction. However, provision for the many able-bodied poor in the workhouse, which provided accommodation at the same time as work, was relatively unusual, and most workhouses developed later. Assistance given to the deserving poor that did not involve an institution like the workhouse, was known as 'outdoor relief'.
Scotland launched its own Poor Law system in 1579. As the Act of Union which united England and Scotland did not alter Scotland's legal system, this Poor Law system did not disappear after 1707. Reforms similar in intent to the English reforms of 1834 were made in 1845.
18th Century Workhouse
The eighteenth-century workhouse movement began at the end of the seventeenth century with the establishment of the Bristol Corporation of the Poor, founded by Act of Parliament in 1696. The corporation established a workhouse which combined housing and care of the poor with a house of correction for petty offenders. Following the example of Bristol some twelve further towns and cities established similar corporations in the next two decades. Because these corporations required a private Act, they were not suitable for smaller towns and individual parishes.
Starting with the parish of Olney, Buckinghamshire in 1714 several dozen small towns and individual parishes established their own institutions without any specific legal authorization. These were concentrated in the South Midlands and in the county of Essex. From the late 1710s the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge began to promote the idea of parochial workhouses. The Society published several pamphlets on the subject, and supported Sir Edward Knatchbull in his successful efforts to steer the Workhouse Test Act through parliament in 1723. The act gave legislative authority for the establishment of parochial workhouses, by both single parishes and as joint ventures between two or more parishes. More importantly, the Act helped to publicise the idea of establishing workhouses to a national audience. By 1776 some 1912 parish and corporation workhouses had been established in England and Wales, housing almost 100,000 paupers. Although many parishes and pamphlet writers expected to earn money from the labour of the poor in workhouses, the vast majority of people obliged to take up residence in workhouses were ill, elderly, or children whose labour proved largely unprofitable. The demands, needs and expectations of the poor also ensured that workhouses came to take on the character of general social policy institutions, combining the functions of creche, and night shelter, geriatric ward and orphanage.
In 1782, Thomas Gilbert finally succeeded in passing an act that established poor houses solely for the aged and infirm and introduced a system of outdoor relief for the able-bodied. This was the basis for the development of the Speenhamland system, which made financial provision for low-paid workers.
19th Century
The 1832 Royal Commission into the Operation of the Poor Laws was set up following the widespread destruction and machine breaking of the Swing Riots. The report was prepared by a commission of nine, including Nassau William Senior, and served by Edwin Chadwick as Secretary. The Royal Commission's primary concerns were with illegitimacy (or "bastardy"), reflecting the influence of Malthusians, and the fear that the practices of the Old Poor Law were undermining the position of the independent labourer.
After 1847 the Poor Law Commission was replaced with a Poor Law Board. This was because of the Andover workhouse scandal (In 1846, a Select Committee of the House of Commons investigated alleged abuses of paupers in the workhouse in Andover, Hampshire. The Master, an ex Sergeant-Major called M'Dougal, was known as a drunken bully who mistreated and starved his charges. Many paupers were so hungry they ate the peelings left for the pigs and even sucked the bones they were grinding up for fertiliser. Paupers were locked in the mortuary as a punishment and female paupers were subject to sexual abuse by M'Dougal and his son.) and the criticism of Henry Parker who was responsible for the Andover union as well as the tensions in Somerset House caused by Chadwicks failure to become a Poor Law Commissioner.
End of Poor Relief
The reforms of the Liberal Government 1906-14 (see Liberal reforms) made several provisions to provide social services without the stigma of the Poor Law, including Old age pensions and National Insurance, and from that period fewer people were covered by the system. Means tests were developed during the inter-war period, not as part of the Poor Law, but as part of the attempt to offer relief that was not affected by the stigma of pauperism.
One aspect of the Poor Law that continued to cause resentment was that the burden of poor relief was not shared equally by rich and poor areas but, rather, fell most heavily on those areas in which poverty was at its worst. This was a central issue in the Poplar Rates Rebellion led by George Lansbury and others in 1921.
Workhouses were officially abolished by the Local Government Act 1929, which from 1 April 1930 abolished the Unions and transferred their responsibilities to the county councils and county boroughs. Some however persisted into the 1940s. The remaining responsibility for the Poor Law was given to local authorities before final abolition in 1948.
Here Endeth the Lesson
He is listed as being "Wholly Disabled", and unable to work. He was 72 when he died.
I have a feeling that those two daughters weren't making much money, and I wonder if he could have been on Poor Relief. 
For this article I did do a bit of cheating by copying and pasting of course 