Nicholls, Sir George (1781–1865), poor-law commissioner and author, was born 31 December 1781 at St Kevern, Cornwall. He worked for the East India Company and in banking, but it was through his association with poor relief that he became involved with Ireland. He gained first-hand experience of poor relief – then a topic of intense public debate – in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, where he was an overseer of the poor law. A staunch supporter of Thomas Malthus (who argued that the existing poor law increased mendicancy), Nicholls advocated the prohibition of outdoor relief and the offer of the workhouse as a test of destitution. His views were publicly aired in a series of letters to the Nottingham Journal, later collected as Eight letters on the management of our poor (1822). His views, and his commitment to public service, were highly regarded; in 1834 he was appointed a poor law commissioner and supervised the implementation of the poor law amendment act in England. He was subsequently requested by Lord John Russell to report on the management of poverty in Ireland, where there was no state system for poor relief.
Nicholls made two brief tours of Ireland (June 1836; autumn 1837), and published his conclusions in Poor laws – Ireland. Three reports (1838). In contrast to the 1833 commission of inquiry into the poor law in Ireland under Archbishop Richard Whately (qv), Nicholls recommended the extension of the English poor law to Ireland. Such legislation, he argued, was the necessary ‘first step towards effecting an improvement in the character, habits and social condition of the people’ (Three reports, 20) and would facilitate the development of the Irish economy. Nicholls's reports formed the basis of the Irish poor law bill, which became law on 31 July 1838, and the following September he moved to Blackrock, Co. Dublin. Under his direction, Ireland was divided into 130 unions, each with its own workhouse and board of guardians (composed of local JPs and ratepayers). The new system was criticised for its expense and the haste of its implementation, and it proved insufficient to cope with the enormous scale of poverty in Ireland, even before the onset of the famine in 1845.
Nicholls returned to London in 1842, and in 1847 was appointed permanent secretary to the poor law board, the successor to the poor law commission. Ill health induced his retirement in 1851, and he devoted his remaining years to various business projects and to the writing of several works on the history of poor relief (such as A history of the Irish poor law (1856)). He died 24 March 1865 at his home in London, 17 Hyde Park St.