Vagrancy, Impressment and the Regulation of Labour in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Slavery & Abolition

Volumn 15, Issue 2, 1994, Pages 102-113

  Rogers, Nicholas ^a  

^a YORK UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

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EID: 0039919950     PISSN: 0144039X     EISSN: 17439523     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01440399408575128     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Cited by James Stephen Taylor, Poverty, Migration, and Settlement in the Industrial Revolution (Palo Alto, California, 1989), p.28.
2. E.E. Lipson, The Economic History of England (London, 1920), Vol. iii, p.265.
3. On the administration of the settlement acts and a reinterpretation of their effectiveness, see James Stephen Taylor, ‘The Impact of Pauper Settlement 1691-1834’, Past nd Present, 73 (Nov. 1976), pp. 42-74; for the contemporary comment on the restrictive nature of the acts
4. William Hay, Remarks on the Laws Relating to the Poor with Proposals for their Better Relief and Employment (London, 1751), p.9.
5. See David Levine, ‘Production, Reproduction, and the Proletarian Family in England, 1500-1851’, in Levine (ed.), Proletarianization and Family History (Orlando, Florida, 1984), pp. 87–128. Levine shows that while the total population grew sevenfold from 1520 to 1850, the proletariat grew 23-fold.
6. Bernard Mandeville, A Letter to Dion (London, 1732: Augustan Reprint Society, no. 41, Los Angeles, 1953), pp.50-1
7. See also Philip Harth (ed.), The Fable of the Bees, (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1970), pp. 209–10.
8. Robert Brenner, ‘The Origins of Capitalist Development: a Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism’, New Left Review, 104 (July/Aug. 1977), p.27.
9. J.H. Clapham, ‘The Spitalfields Acts, 1773-1824’, Economic Journal, 26 (1916), p. 461.
10. See Mary B. Rose, ‘Social Policy and Business: Parish Apprenticeship and the Early Factory System 1750-1834’, Business History, 31,4 (Oct. 1989), pp. 5–29. It is noteworthy that pauper apprentices were not indentured for standardized terms of service; rather, until they reached the age of majority. See GLRO, Registers of Apprenticeship, St. Luke, Chelsea, 1791–1802.
11. See A.L. Beier, Masterless Men (London, 1985), pp. 171–5.
12. Joanna Innes, ‘English Houses of Correction and “Labour Discipline” c. 1660-1780: A Critical Examination’ (unpublished paper, July 1983).
13. See Peter D'sena, ‘Perquisites and Casual Labour on the London Wharfside in the Eighteenth Century’, London Journal, 14,2 (1989), pp. 130-47
14. Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged (London, 1991), pp. 417–36.
15. On the Night Poaching bill, see P.B. Munsche, Gentlemen and Poachers (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 25-6,99-101
16. and Roger Wells, Wretched Faces. Famine in Wartime England 1793–1801 (Glouceser and New York, 1988), pp. 167–8.
17. See Douglas Hay, ‘War, Dearth and Theft in the Eighteenth Century: The Record of the English Courts’, Past and Present, 155 (May, 1982), pp. 117-60
18. Nicholas Rogers, ‘Confronting the Crime Wave: The Debate over Social Reform and Regulation, 1749-53’, in L. Davison, T. Hitchcock, T. Keim and R.B. Shoemaker (eds.), Stilling the Grumbling Hive: the Response to Social and Economic Problems in England, 1689–1750 (Stroud, England and New York, 1992), pp. 77–98.
19. The expenses on passing vagrants in Somerset and Yorkshire rose significantly at the end of the American war, for example; information received from Joanna Innes of Somerville College, Oxford. For the end of the Napoleonic war, see the figures presented to parliament by the vagrancy contractor for Middlesex, Thomas David, B.P.P., 1821, iv, p.151.
20. These figures are based on the vagrancy examinations for Middlesex, 1757-58,1764-65, 1776–77, housed in the Greater London Record Office. For concerns about pilfering among this mobile population, see The Times, 27 July 1786, where Kent was said to be ‘sadly infested with a number of idle people, men and women, who come under pretense of picking of hops, or harvest work; and till they can get employment, they support themselves by theft, in robbing the farmers of poultry &c’
21. The importance of unemployment and industrial accident as causes of vagrancy is evident in the annual reports of the London Mendicity Society, the first being published in 1819. It is less evident, although probably significant, in the formulaic vagrancy examinations of the eighteenth century.
22. On the gender bias of vagrants passed out of London, see Nicholas Rogers, ‘Policing the Poor in Eighteenth-Century London: The Vagrancy Laws and their Administration’, Histoire sociale-Social History, 34,47 (May 1991), pp. 127–47.
23. On family break-down as a factor in female poverty, see also David A. Kent, ‘“Gone for a Soldier”: Family Breakdown and the Demography of Desertion in a London Parish, 1750-91’, Local Population Studies, 45 (1990), pp. 27–42.
24. Saunders Welch, A Proposal to Render Effectual a Plan to Remove the Nuisance of Common Prostitutes from the Streets of this Metropolis (London, 1758), pp. 47-50,56.
25. R. P. Hastings, Essays in North Riding History 1780–1850 (Northallerton, 1981), p. 154.
26. For an example of the latter, see the case of William Dunn, apprehended in St. Martin-in-the-fields, March 1784, for ‘diserting [sic] and leaving Mary his wife and their child chargeable to the said Parish’. Westminster Lib., Parish examinations, St. Martin-in-the-fields, F 5069/244-5. For an example of an abandoned apprentice who was apprehended for vagrancy, see the case of Mary Bentley, a fifteen-year-old, who after ten months was ‘turned out of Door and never served her said master since’. F 5069/312.
27. Cited in C.J. Ribton-Turner, A History of Vagrants and Vagrancy and Beggars and Begging (London, 1887), pp.214-15.
28. Henry Richard Fox Bourne, The Life of John Locke (London, 1876: reprint, 1969), Vol. 2, p.379.
29. Under 2 & 3 Anne c.6 clause 16. For earlier impressments, see Beier, Masterless Men, pp. 161–2.
30. Public Advertiser, 6 Jan. 1776. On taking up vagrants, see Times, 2 Oct. 1787.
31. Times, 2 Oct. 1787. For examples of recruits raised under the vagrancy acts, see PRO Adm 1/1912, H 297, Adm 1/1913, H 144.
32. On this phenomenon, see N.A.M. Rodger, ‘Stragglers and Deserters from the Royal Navy During the Seven Years’ War’, Bulletin, Institute of Historical Research, 57 (1984), pp.56-79.
33. The Newcastle and Liverpool figures are calculated from the returns of the recruiting officers in Adm 1. for the year 1778. For the Seven Years War, see Stephen F. Gradish, The Manning of the British Navy During the Seven Years War (London, 1980), 69–70 and Rodger, ‘Stragglers’, pp. 56–79.
34. Charles Butler, An Essay on the Legality of Impressing Seamen (London, 2nd. ed., 1778), pp.6, 33.
35. Philonauta, The Sailor's Happiness (London, 1751), pp. 19–20.
36. R.M.S. Pasley (ed.), Private Sea Journals, 1778–1782 (London, 1931), p.61
37. cited by Daniel A. Baugh, British Naval Administration in the Age of Walpole (Princeton, 1965), p. 147.
38. Middlesex Journal, 3–5 Jan. 1771.
39. See pp. N.A.M. Rodger, The Wooden World. An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (London, 1986), 164–82.
40. PRO Adm 1/3677/28.
41. PRO Adm 1/1834 (Gordon) 1 Feb. 1759.
42. PRO Adm 1/1834 (Gordon) 17 June 1759.
43. PRO Adm 1/579, Admiral Pringle's report, 1795.
44. For a more detailed discussion, see Nicholas Rogers, ‘Liberty Road: Opposition to Impressment in Britain during the American War of Independence’, in Colin Howell and Richard J. Twomey (eds.), Jack Tar in History: Essays in the History of Maritime Life and Labour (Fredericton, New Brunswick, 1991), pp.63-5.
45. PRO Adm 1/3680/256.
46. See Hay, ‘War, Dearth and Theft’, pp. 117–60.
47. PRO Adm 1/1542 (Geo Barker), 21 June 1808.
48. York Courant, 19, 26 March 1771; London Evening Post, 27 Feb. to 1 March 1777.
49. London Evening Post, 3–6 Nov. 1739.
50. PRO Adm 1/1498 (Bover) 6 Jan. 1778 Adm 1/1904 (Hamilton) 18 April 1778.
51. See, for example, PRO Adm 1/3681/112.
52. For an example of a young London servant appealing to his master to have him discharged from the navy, see PRO Adm 1/1612/2124 (Cunninghame).