Joseph Townsend

Who was Joseph Townsend?

Joseph Townsend was a physician, geologist and vicar of Pewsey in Wiltshire, perhaps best known for his 1786 treatise A Dissertation on the Poor Laws in which he expounded a naturalistic theory of economics and opposed the provision of 'outdoor' relief to the able bodied poor under English Poor Laws thus anticipating the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. Townsend has been credited with anticipating Thomas Malthus' argument against public welfare assistance in An Essay on the Principle of Population. Unlike Malthus, however, Townsend advocated a system of social insurance, through compulsory membership of friendly societies which would meet the health and burial costs of the poor.

Educated at Cambridge, Townsend was ordained in the Church of England in 1763 and then studied Medicine at Edinburgh, he remained a practicising Anglican throughout his life, serving as the Rector of Pewsey from 1764 until his death. Townsend was also associated with the Countess of Huntingdon's Connection, establishing a chapel on her behalf in Dublin in 1767-8, and the Calvinist wing of Methodism in the late 1760s, and he is reputed to have allowed Methodists to preach from his pulpit in the 1780s. He was personal chaplain to the Duke of Atholl from 1769 and accompanied him on the 'grand tour'.