The Andover workhouse scandal of the mid-1840s exposed serious defects in the administration of the English 'New Poor Law' (the Poor Law Amendment Act). It led to significant changes in its central supervision and to increased parliamentary scrutiny. The scandal began with the revelation in August 1845 that inmates of the workhouse in Andover, Hampshire, England were driven by hunger to eat the marrow and gristle from (often putrid) bones which they were to crush to make fertilizer. The inmates' rations set by the local Poor Law guardians were less than the subsistence diet decreed by the central Poor Law Commission (PLC), and the master of the workhouse was diverting some of the funds, or the rations, for private gain. The guardians were loath to lose the services of the master, despite this and despite allegations of the master's drunkenness on duty and sexual abuse of female inmates. The commission eventually exercised its power to order dismissal of the master, after ordering two enquiries by an assistant-commissioner subject to a conflict of interest; the conduct of the second, more public inquiry drew criticism.

A replacement master was recommended by the assistant-commissioner as acceptable to the PLC, but newspapers pointed out that the new master had resigned as master of a workhouse elsewhere whilst under investigation by the PLC. The assistant commissioner was 'advised to resign' and did so but published a pamphlet giving details of his dealings with the PLC and with the Home Secretary (to whom, if anybody, the PLC were responsible).

The Home Secretary described the affair as merely 'a workhouse squabble' but the Commons set up a select committee in March 1846 to investigate both the Andover workhouse and the workings of the PLC more generally. The select committee found that there had been great mismanagement in the Andover board of guardians, and that their administration of the law had been marked by very unnecessary harshness. The committee found that the PLC – because of a power struggle between the commissioners and their secretary – had not conducted their business, as required by the Act establishing them, by minuted meetings as a board; nor had adequate records been kept of their decisions and the reasons for them. The committee characterised the commissioners' conduct on matters within the committee's terms of reference as "irregular and arbitrary, not in accordance with the statute under which they exercise their functions, and such as to shake public confidence in their administration of the law", going on to note that the committee had in passing heard worrying evidence on matters outside its terms of reference on which it would be improper to base findings.

As a consequence of the committee's report (and hence of the Andover scandal), the Poor Law Administration Act 1847 replaced the Poor Law Commission with a Poor Law Board upon which a number of cabinet ministers sat ex officio.