'It is impossible for our vestry to judge his case into perfection from here': Managing the distance dimensions of poor relief, 1800-40

Rural History

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 161-189

  King, Steve ^a  

^a OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ECONOMIC HISTORY; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; LEGISLATION; NINETEENTH CENTURY; POVERTY; RURAL POPULATION;

EASTERN HEMISPHERE; EURASIA; EUROPE; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE; WORLD;

EID: 24344484195     PISSN: 09567933     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0956793305001469     Document Type: Review

References (116)

1. The literature on these issues is substantial. See James Taylor, Poverty, Migration and Settlement in the Industrial Revolution: Sojourners' Narratives (Paolo Alto, 1989);
2. Anthony Brundage, The English Poor Laws, 1700-1930 (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 9-27;
3. Geoffrey Oxley, Poor Relief in England and Wales, 1601-1834 (Newton Abbott, 1974).
4. On these issues, see contributions to Andreas Gestrich, Steven King and Lutz Raphael, eds. Being Poor in Modern Europe (Bern, 2004), section 2;
5. Michael Rose, The Poor and the City (London, 1985).
6. Mary Rose, 'Social Policy and Business: Parish Apprenticeship and the Early Factory System 1780-1834', Business History, 31 (1989), 5-32.
7. On such mobility streams see Colin Pooley and Jean Turnbull, Migration and Mobility in Britain Since the 18th Century (London, 1998).
8. L. Hollen Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People 1700-1948 (Cambridge, 1998), p. 67.
9. Byung Song, 'Continuity and Change in English Rural Society: The Formation of poor Law Unions in Oxfordshire', English Historical Review, 114 (1999), 314-38.
10. For the classic exposition of this experience, and some of its nuances, see K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660-1900 (Cambridge, 1985).
11. Snell, Annals.
12. Pamela Sharpe, '"The Bowels of compation": A Labouring Family and the Law c. 1790-1830', in Tim Hitchcock, Peter King and Pamela Sharpe, eds. Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640-1840 (Basingstoke, 1997), pp. 87-108;
13. Thomas Sokoll, 'Negotiating a Living: Essex Pauper Letters From London, 1800-1834' in Laurence Fontaine and Jurgen Schlumbohm, eds. Household Strategies for Survival 1600-2000: Fission, Faction and Cooperation (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 67-72.
14. Karel Williams, From Pauperism to Poverty (London, 1981), pp. 148-55;
15. Steven King, Poverty and Welfare, 1700-1850: A Regional Perspective (Manchester, 2000), pp. 77-110.
16. See contributions to Steven King and Alannah Tomkins, eds., The Poor in England 1700-1850: An Economy of Makeshifts (Manchester, 2003).
17. J. Innes, 'Parliament and the Shaping of Eighteenth-Century English Social Policy', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 40 (1990), 63-92;
18. Williams, From Pauperism, pp. 148-50.
19. For an excellent micro-study see Joan Howard-Drake, 'The Poor of Shipton under Wychwood Parish, 1740-62', Wychwood History Society Journal, 5 (1989), 4-44;
20. Susannah Ottoway, The Decline of Life: Old Age in Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge, 2004).
21. For a brief discussion of open and closed parishes see Brundage, The English, pp. 22-3.
22. On relative versus absolute poverty in Essex, see Peter King, 'Pauper Inventories and the Material Lives of the Poor in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century', in Hitchcock, King and Sharpe, Chronicling pp. 155-91.
23. Lees, Solidarities, p. 126;
24. On geographical differences under the New Poor Law see Williams, From Pauperism;
25. King, Poverty, pp. 227-53.
26. Richard Smith, 'Ageing and Well-Being in Early Modern England: Pension Trends and Gender Preferences under the English Old Poor Law, c. 1650-1800', in Paul Johnson and Pat Thane, eds., Old Age From Antiquity to Postmodernity (London, 1998), pp. 64-95.
27. Anne Digby, Pauper Palaces (London, 1978);
28. Anne Crowther, The Workhouse System, 1834-1929 (London, 1981);
29. King, Poverty, 227-53.
30. For summary of recent debate, see Roger Wells, 'Migration, the Law and Parochial Policy in Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Southern England', Southern History, 15 (1993), 86-139.
31. Snell, Annals;
32. Brundage, The English;
33. Lees, Solidarities.
34. James Taylor, 'A Different Kind of Speenhamland: Non-Resident Relief in the Industrial Revolution', Journal of British Studies, 30 (1991), 183-208. At this stage it is impossible to calculate the relative importance of out-parish versus removal arrangements. I am grateful to Keith Snell for this point.
35. Thomas Sokoll, Essex Pauper Letters, 1731-1837 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 1-70;
36. James Taylor, 'Voices in the crowd: The Kirkby Lonsdale township letters 1809-36', in Hitchcock, King and Sharpe, Chronicling, pp. 127-54.
37. Steven King and Craig Muldrew, 'Cash, Wages and the Economy of Makeshifts in England 1650-1800', in Peter Scholliers and Leonard Schwarz, eds., Experiencing Wages: Social and Cultural Aspects of Wage Forms in Europe Since 1500 (Oxford, 2003), p. 160.
38. Taylor, 'A different kind of Speenhamland', 191.
39. Snell, Annals.
40. Sokoll, Essex Pauper Letters, pp. 1-70.
41. I am grateful to Keith Snell for sharing his conclusions on out-parish relief under the New Poor Law from his forthcoming book.
42. The communities are: Cowpe, Leigh, Ashton, Tatham, Rusholme and Aughton. See Rawtenstall Library, uncatalogued, 'Poor law accounts of Cowpe'; Wigan Record Office, D/P/3/2,'Outparish accounts of Leigh'; Lancashire Record Office (hereafter LRO), PR3891/2, 'outparish and overseer accounts of Tatham'; LRO PR1879/4, 'Aughton overseer accounts'; Manchester Record Office, M10/761, 'Rusholme poor law accounts'. The accounts for Ashton can be found in the uncatalogued Lilford Collection at the Lancashire Record Office.
43. In Lancashire, the Southport, Bolton and Garstang unions all fall within this range, for instance.
44. The communities of Hulme, Tottington and Billington. Sources are detailed in subsequent footnotes.
45. Steven King and Geoffrey Timmins, Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 2001). While wages were high in Lancashire, it is important to recognise that they were unstable, often innacurately recorded and masked intense structural poverty amongst certain industrial workers and the casual trades.
46. See Roger Scola, Feeding the Victorian City: The Food Supply of Manchester, 1770-1870 (Manchester, 1992).
47. On the distribution of private asylums, see W. L. Parry-Jones, The Trade in Lunacy: A Study of Private Madhouses in England and Wales in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1972).
48. The point of this article, however, is not to investigate the detailed experiences of being poor or the rhetorical devices used in pauper letters. These are subjects for future work.
49. These figures include all monies coming into and going out of the three parishes under the out-parish system. Expenditure figures include administrative and legal expenses associated with removals or bastardy.
50. Calculated from Manchester Central Library (hereafter MCL) L82/8, 'Overseer correspondence' and L21/3, 'Out-parish relief books'.
51. Calculated from Lancashire Record Office (hereafter LRO) PR2391, 'Relief ledgers'.
52. Receiving cash was also a problem. Billington had relations with rural and rural industrial parishes as far away as Cumbria and with distant towns such as Leeds, Nottingham and Halifax.
53. MCL M10/815, 'Letters'. Emphasis here and subsequently is mine. The Hulme letters were originally pasted (in no particular order) into 5 large, A3, volumes. Subsequently many of them have worked loose and sit between pages. Though these are currently undergoing conservation, a selection of the originals (including the entire Hudswell series) is to appear in a Chatto and Windus series on 'Narratives of Poverty' edited by Dr Alysa Levene.
54. This is not to suggest that the generalised economy of makeshifts was robust for paupers inside or outside their parish. However, vestry minutes for Lancashire communities suggests that late or under payment were much rarer events for the proximate settled poor than their out-parish counterparts. For an Essex comparison, see Sokoll, Essex and for Westmorland Taylor, 'Voices'.
55. MCL M10/815, 'Letters'.
56. D. Marshall, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1969), p. 46.
57. There is a substantial literature on these credit mechanisms. For a digestible summary see King and Timmins, Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution, chapter 3;
58. Geoffrey Timmins, Made in Lancashire (Manchester, 1998), pp. 98-104;
59. Pat Hudson, The Genesis of Industrial Capital (Cambridge, 1986).
60. Payments could equally be made in kind. Some businesses may have been specifically chosen for this sort of arrangement because of their ability to deal in material payments.
61. It is important to remember that many overseers from Lancashire or Yorkshire would indeed have had some familiarity with the operation of merchant or industrial enterprises.
62. MCL M10/815, 'Letters'.
63. King and Tomkins, The Poor.
64. For an analysis of out-parish poor in the early nineteenth-century censuses of the poor made by many northern and western communities, see Steven King, 'The Clothing of the Poor: A Matter of Pride or Shame?', in Gestrich, King and Raphael, Being Poor, pp. 422-69.
65. MCL M10/813, 'Bills'. These are largely loose and in no numbered order.
66. Ibid. Of course, this assumes that there were balancing flows of paupers. In practice there were three types of relationship between parishes: Regular and large scale interchange of paupers; small scale and irregular/regular interchange; and one off cases. The cash distribution and accounting mechanisms would presumably have differed for each sort of relationship, but more work is needed here.
67. Rawtenstall Library (uncatalogued), 'The overseers' accounts of Cowpe'.
68. See letter on 2nd November 1824 from Kendal informing Seed that he is late with his allowances. LRO PR2391/13, 'Letter'.
69. Taylor, 'Voices in the crowd'.
70. LRO PR2391/25, 'Letter'.
71. Sokoll, Essex Pauper Letters. On money transmission mechanisms
72. See Thomas Ashton, 'The Bill of Exchange and Private Banks in Lancashire, 1790-1830', Economic History Review, 15 (1945), 42-68
73. Hudson, The Genesis of Industrial Capital.
74. MCL M10/814, 'Letters'.
75. On the smiliarities and differences between English and Welsh communities see Steven King and John Stewart, 'Death in Llantrisant: Henry Williams and the New Poor Law in Wales', Rural History, 15 (2004), 69-87.
76. MCL M10/815, 'Letters'.
77. Ibid. Note that here the overseer rather than the relieving officer was negotiating with the new Board of Guardians over out-parish relief arrangements.
78. Ibid.
79. MCL M10/809, 'Letters'.
80. MCL M10/814, 'Letter'
81. Ibid.
82. MCL M10/807, 'Out parish ledgers'.
83. MCL M10/811, 'Letters'.
84. MCL L82/8/3/28, 'Letter'.
85. Steve Hindle, On the Parish? The Micro-politics of Poor Relief in Rural England c.1550-1750 (Oxford, 2004).
86. MCL M10/809, 'Letters'.
87. On the role of inspection in Essex, see the commentaries to the letters provided in Sokoll, Essex.
88. MCL L82/8/3/30, 'Letter'. Lancashire paupers ought to have been used to experiencing and inviting inspection as they would have been inspected prior to claiming Friendly Society benefits. See Martin Gorsky, 'The Growth and Distribution of English Friendly Societies in the Early Nineteenth Century', Economic History Review, 51 (1998), 489-511.
89. MCL M10/810, 'Letters'.
90. MCL M10/811, 'Letters'.
91. MCL M10/811, 'Letters'.
92. On the chronology of vestries, see Brundage, The English Poor Laws pp. 18-23 and 50-52.
93. It is interesting that while Leeds refused to be part of a mutual billing system, Wortley overseers assumed this would be a natural and accepted course of action. MCL M10/813, 'Letters and bills'.
94. MCL L82/8/5/8, 'Letter' and L82/8/3/12, 'Letter'.
95. On public reform, see Ottoway, Decline of Life.
96. MCL M10/809, 'Letters'.
97. MCL M10/815, 'Letters'.
98. MCL M10/815, 'Letters'.
99. Ibid.
100. MCL M10/809, 'Letters'. Of course, some parishes may have preferred to keep their most troublesome paupers away from the locality using the out-parish system. I am grateful to Keith Snell for this observation.
101. Ibid.
102. Ibid.
103. For a review of the Webbs, see Alan Kidd, 'Historians or Polemicists? How the Webbs Wrote their History of the English Poor Laws', Economic History Review, 40 (1987), 400-17.
104. More recently, Bernard Harris, The Origins of the British Welfare State: Social Welfare in England and Wales 1800-1945 (Basingstoke, 2004).
105. See the review in King, Poverty, chapter 3.
106. MCL M10/809, 'Letters'.
107. MCL M10/815, 'Letters'.
108. Ibid.
109. MCL M10/808, 'Letters'.
110. MCL M10/815, 'Letters'.
111. See Crowther, The Workhouse, 101.
112. MCL M10/815, 'Letters'.
113. On migration in Lancashire see Steven King, 'Migration Networks and Labour Markets in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Lancashire', in Dietrich Ebeling and Steven King, eds. Paths to European Industrialisation (forthcoming, Greenwood Press, 2005).
114. Sokoll, Essex Pauper Letters, 1-70;
115. Steven King, 'Stop this Torment of Destiny: Negotiating Medical Relief in Lancashire 1790-1834', Bulletin of the History of Medicine (forthcoming, 2005).
116. I am grateful to Keith Snell for his perceptive comments on this issue and the wider resonances of this article.