established in 1875. In 1894 rural districts and urban districts were set up based on the sanitary districts (and therefore indirectly on the unions). In 1930, under the Local Government Act 1929, the poor law unions were finally abolished and their responsibilities transferred to the county councils and county boroughs. Ireland Under the Irish Poor Law Act of 1838, three Poor Law Commissioners" divided Ireland into poor law unions, in which paupers would receive poor relief paid for by a poor rate extracted by local poor law valuations (ratings of rate payers). The name "union" was retained from the English model although boundaries were unrelated to civil parishes. A union was named after the town on which it was centred, usually where its workhouse stood. Unions were defined as groups of poor law electoral divisions, in turn groups of townlands. Electoral divisions returned members (guardians) to the board of guardians, to which ratepayers who paid higher rates had more votes. During and after the Great Famine, the impoverished west was redrawn to create more unions for easier administration and for computation of where suffering was most endemic. When the Irish General Register Office was established in 1864, each union became a superintendent registrar's district, thus electoral divisions together formed a dispensary or registrar's district. The Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 divided administrative counties into urban and rural districts, with each rural district corresponding to the non-urban portion of a poor law union within the county. In the Irish Free State poor law unions and rural districts were abolished in 1925 and the powers of boards of guardians transferred to the county councils' Board of Health. In Northern Ireland, poor law unions survived until the Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Service in 1948. Scotland The Poor Law in Scotland was reformed by the Poor Law (Scotland) Act 1845. Poorhouses (as workhouses were generally known in Scotland) were organised at parish level. The Act permitted, but did not require, parishes to join together to build and operate poorhouses. A union of parishes operating a single poorhouse was known as a Combination. References External links Poor Law Unions at visionofbritain.org.uk Local government in the United Kingdom Poor Law in Britain and Ireland Defunct types of subdivision in the United Kingdom 1834 establishments in the United Kingdom