The laws of settlement and the surveillance of immigration in eighteenth-century Kent

Continuity and Change

Volumn 3, Issue 3, 1988, Pages 391-420

  Landau, Norma ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY; IMMIGRATION; PETTY SESSION; POOR RELIEF; RURAL PARISH; SETTLEMENT DOCUMENT;

UK, ENGLAND, KENT;

EID: 0024162268     PISSN: 02684160     EISSN: 1469218X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S026841600000429X     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. Most prominently among these assessments, S. Webb and B. Webb, English local government, 7, English poor-law history: Part 1, The old poor law (London, 1927) 334–43. For a more moderate statement of the evidence on which they based their assertions, see
2. D. Marshall, The English poor in the eighteenth century (London, 1926) 163–9.
3. The major constituent statutes of the laws of settlement are: 13 and 14 Charles II c. 12, 1 James II c. 17, 3 and 4 William and Mary c. 11, and 8 and 9 William III c. 30. For a discussion of the development of this structure, see J. S. Taylor, ‘The impact of pauper settlement 1691–1834’, Past and Present 73 (1976) 42–43.
4. S. Webb and B. Webb, English local government, 1, The parish and the county (London, 1906) 13 n. 2.
5. S. Webb and B. Webb, The old poor law, 335;
6. D. Marshall, The English poor, 164–6;
7. E. M. Hampson, ‘Settlement and removal in Cambridgeshire, 1662–1834’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 2 (1928), and
8. E. M. Hampson, The treatment of poverty in Cambridgeshire 1597–1834, (Cambridge, 1934) chap. xi.
9. George A. Body, ‘The administration of the poor laws in Dorset 1760–1834, with special reference to agrarian distress’, (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Southampton University, 1965) 130;
10. G. W. Oxley, ‘The administration of the old poor law in the west-Derby hundred of Lancashire, 1601–1837’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Liverpool, 1966) 403;
11. J. S. Cockburn, ‘The work of the North Riding quarter sessions in the early eighteenth century’ (unpublished LL.M. thesis, Leeds University, 1961) 176;
12. J. Ely, ‘The eighteenth-century poor laws in the West Riding of Yorkshire’, American Journal of Legal History, 30 (1985) 5.
13. Marshall, The English poor, 169;
14. S. Webb and B. Webb, The old poor law, 331–5.
15. M. F. Lloyd-Prichard, ‘The treatment of poverty in Norfolk from 1700 to 1850’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1949) 183;
16. Hampson, ‘Settlement and removal in Cambridgeshire’, 277;
17. W. J. LeHardy, ed., Hertfordshire county records, 7 (Hertford, 1931), xxvii.
18. Oxley, ‘The administration of the old poor law’, 161, states that there was a decline in the percentage of removal orders appealed in Lancashire during the eighteenth century, but does not date this decline more precisely.
19. For example: Hampshire Record Office, 18/M51/595, Edward Tenison to Gabriel Walters, Lambeth Palace, May 26, 1709; Kent A.O., U120/011, B. H. Foote to Sir Edward Filmer, July 2; U120/012 papers relating to case of Richard Burden; J. Wake and C. C. Webster, eds., The letters of Daniel Eaton to the third Earl of Cardigan, 1725–1732, Northamptonshire Record Society, 24 (1971) 11, Daniel Eaton to Lord Cardigan [April 10, 1755].
20. An assumption maintained despite much evidence to the contrary. For a summary and assessment of that evidence, see Taylor, ‘The impact of pauper settlement’, 58–9.
21. R. Burn, The justice of the peace and parish officer, 3rd edn. (London, 1756), 547 sub ‘Poor (Removal)’.
22. Hampson, The treatment of poverty, 137–8;
23. Hampson, ‘Settlement and removal in Cambridgeshire’, 278–9.
24. Snell, Annals of the labouring poor, 18, argues that the cost of examination was so high that it inhibited examination of all except those who were chargeable or about to become chargeable. The clerk of Sittingbourne petty sessions received 1 s. for taking an examination in the 1720s, and 2s. (the fee mandated at Quarter Sessions) for each examination in the 1760s and the 1790s. (Kent A.O., PS/US1,4,6; Q/SO W9, July 14, 1753).
25. Snell, Annals of the labouring poor, 36–7. Dr Snell has informed me that these figures are based on a relatively small sample of the parish collections he examined. In a more recent analysis of a somewhat larger sample, he found that, for the percentage of examinees living in their parish of settlement, the mean of means of parish collections was nineteen per cent.
26. Body, ‘The administration of the poor laws in Dorset’, 127.
27. Snell, Annals, 17–8.
28. These Kentish examinations display a very similar pattern, whatever the gender of the examinee. Snell (Annals 20, 21) shows that, in the examinations and removal orders for eastern England that he analysed, seasonal pattern did not vary according to gender in the first half of the eighteenth century and there were marked similarities between the seasonal patterns for examination of males and females from 1751 to 1792.
29. The number of families in the division's rural parishes in 1791 was calculated by multiplying the number of families reported in the 1801 census by the ratio of the number of persons aged 25 or over in 1791 to the number of persons aged 25 or over in 1801. For the age distribution of, and number of, the English population, see E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The population history of England 1541–1871 (London, 1981) 529.
30. A. E. Newman, ‘The old poor law in East Kent 1606–1834’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Kent University, 1979), 226, 245, 224.
31. R. S. Schofield, ‘Age-specific mobility in an eighteenth-century rural English parish’, Annales de Demographie Historique 1970 (1971), 263. Cardington was larger than these Kentish parishes. It should also be noted that these estimates of annual immigration relate to the whole population.
32. P. Laslett, Family life and illicit love in earlier generations (Cambridge, 1977), calculated from Table 2.24, 101.
33. Laslett, Family life, 99 table 2.23. The above calculation included among the putative immigrants six households headed by persons who had been servants in Clayworth in 1676. It should be noted that the figures for Clayworth were compiled from sources which would capture annual immigration less completely then those for Cogenhoe, Cardington, and the Sittingbourne division.
34. For the marital status of males removed in Cambridgeshire, see Marshall, The English poor, 164–5, and
35. Hampson, ‘Settlement and removal in Cambridgeshire’, 277; in Yorkshire, see
36. Ely, ‘Eighteenth-century poor laws’, 12; in Gloucestershire.
37. D. Gowing, ‘Migration in Gloucestershire 1662–1865. A geographical evaluation of the documentary evidence related to the administration of the law of settlement and removal’ (unpublished Southampton University Ph.D. thesis, 1979), 47; for Kettering, Northamptonshire and Reigate, Essex, see
38. H. A. Randall, ‘Some aspects of population geography in certain rural areas of England in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’ (unpublished' Ph.D. thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1971), 198.
39. For further discussion, see N. Landau, ‘Regulation of immigration, economic structures, and definitions of the poor’, Historical Journal, forthcoming.
40. See Landau, ‘Regulation of immigration’ for discussion of evidence that those whose parish of settlement was at a considerable distance might be allowed to remain uncertificated.
41. Thirty-five per cent of the 81 widows and deserted wives questioned at Kent's petty sessions as to their husband's parish of settlement claimed ignorance, as did a considerable proportion of widows and deserted wives questioned elsewhere (Taylor, ‘The impact of pauper settlement’, 60 n. 47).
42. In 1802, King's Bench ruled that the examination of a dead person was inadmissible as evidence of his settlement (Rex v. Frystone, M. 42 George III). King's Bench had permitted the use of these examinations in the eighteenth century (M. Nolan, A treatise of the laws for the relief and settlement of the poor, 2nd edn. (London, 1808) 1 380–1, sub ‘Of the proofs necessary to support settlement by hiring, etc.’;
43. R. Burn, The justice of the peace and parish officer, 22nd edn. (London, 1814) 4 681–3, sub ‘Poor (Removal)’ section xix 2 g).
44. ‘A bill to prevent unnecessary and vexatious removals’, 1773, reprinted in S. Lambert, ed., House of Commons sessional papers of the eighteenth century (Wilmington, Delaware, 1975) 24 46–47, and same bill introduced in 1774, 125–7;
45. ‘A bill to prevent vexatious removals’, 1782, in 34 236;
46. ‘A bill [with the amendments] for the preventing vexatious removals’, 1788, 316;
47. ‘A bill for the preventing vexatious removals’, 1789, 64 60–61;
48. ‘A bill for preventing the removal of poor persons’, 1794, 92 41–42, and same bill as amended, 48–9.
49. ‘A bill to prevent the removal of poor persons until they actually become chargeable’, 95 125–7, and this bill as amended, 133–7.
50. For such discussion, see N. Landau, ‘Regulation of immigration’.
51. Marshall, The English poor, 251;
52. S. Webb and B. Webb, The old poor law, 348–9, 406–7, 424–7.
53. The debates and proceedings of the House of Commons, during the sixth session of the sixteenth parliament 2. Printed for John Stockdale (London, 1789) 236, Jekyll's speech, May 15, 1789. I wish to thank Joanna Innes for this reference.