Clothing the poor in early-nineteenth-century England

Textile History

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 17-37

  Jones, Peter ^a  

^a ESRC Westminster Pauper Biographies Project

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

LEGISLATION; SOCIAL IMPACT; TEXTILE HISTORY;

EID: 33645818558     PISSN: 00404969     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1179/004049606x94459     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. This paper is the result of work done as a Research Fellow at the AHRC Centre for Textile Conservation and Textile Studies based at the Textile Conservation Centre, University of Southampton between September 2004 and February 2005: http://wsa2.nextnm.com/textile-conservation-centre/. Evidence for St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster, is from the ESRC Westminster Pauper Biographies Project: http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/j.p. boulton/esrcframeset.htm where I am currently a Research fellow. My thanks are due to the staff of both the AHRC Centre and the ESRC Project, and also to Barbara Burman, Leonard Schwarz and John Styles for their useful and incisive comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
2. For work on plebeian consumption, see especially Beverly Lemire, 'Peddling Fashion: Salesmen, Pawnbrokers, Taylors, Thieves and the Second-hand Clothes Trade in England, 1700-1800', Textile History, XXII, no. 1 (1991);
3. "'A Good Stock of Cloaths" The Changing Market for Cotton Clothing, 1750-1800', Textile History, XXII, no. 2 (1991);
4. and Fashion's Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, 1600-1800 (Oxford: Pasold Research Fund, Oxford University Press, 1991);
5. John Styles, 'Clothing the North: The Supply of Non-élite Clothing in the Eighteenth-Century North of England', Textile History, XXV, no. 2 (1994);
6. 'Custom or Consumption? Plebeian Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England', in Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger eds, Luxury in the Eighteenth-Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002);
7. and, most recently, Miles Lambert, "'Cast Off Wearing Apparell" The Consumption and Distribution of Second-Hand Clothing in Northern England During the Long Eighteenth- Century', Textile History, XXXV, no. 1 (2004).
8. Steve Hindle, On the Parish?, pp. 183-84 and pp. 270-71;
9. though Hindle does deal with the issue of badging the poor at length in his book, and elsewhere, in 'Dependency, Shame and Belonging: Badging the Deserving Poor, c.1550-1750', in Cultural and Social History, 1 (2004), pp. 6-35.
10. For an excellent overview of the state of poor law historiography, see Steven King and Alannah Tomkins, The Poor in England 1700-1850:
11. An Economy of Makeshifts (Manchester: MUP, 2003), 'Introduction'; for an exhaustive bibliography, see Steven King, Poverty and Welfare in England 1700-1850:
12. A regional Perspective (Manchester: MUP, 2000), pp. 275-92; and see also Tim Hitchcock, Peter King and Pamela Sharpe, Chronicling Poverty: the Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640-1840 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997).
13. Steven King, 'Reclothing the English Poor, 1750-1840', Textile History, XXXIII, no. 1 (2002).
14. Evidence from D. O. P. Okeden to His Majesty's Commission for Inquiring into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws, 1834, p. 2.
15. For a fuller picture of the operation of poor relief during this period, see especially Lynn Hollen Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700-1948 (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), and King, Poverty and Welfare.
16. and King, Poverty and Welfare.
17. Pamela Sharpe, "'The Bowels of Compation" A Labouring Family and the Law, c.1790-1834', in Hithcock, King and Sharpe, Chronicling Poverty, p. 88.
18. King, 'Reclothing', pp. 42, 46, 38.
19. King, 'Reclothing, pp. 37-38.
20. Lemire, 'A Good Stock of Cloaths', p. 317.
21. Population figures for the three parishes are taken from the 1801 Census, Abstract of answers and returns, pursuant to Act 41 Geo. 3, for taking an account of the population of Great Britain in 1801.
22. H[ampshire] R[ecord] O[ffice] 4M81/PO40, p. I: Joseph Bailey of Hammersmith to the overseers of Brockenhurst, Hampshire, 28 February 1808.
23. 'The economy of makeshifts' is by now a term that enjoys common usage among social historians, and one that is rarely explained. It was coined by Olwen Hufton in 1974, in her book on The Poor in Eighteen-century France 1750-1859 (Oxford, 1974).
24. In the words of Alannah Tomkins and Steven King, it is used to denote 'the patchy, desperate and sometimes failing strategies of the poor for material survival'. For a fuller discussion of its usage and development, see Tomkins and King, The Poor in England, 'Introduction', pp. 1-38.
25. For a useful initial discussion of pauper letters as a source, see Thomas Sokoll's 'Introduction' to his Essex Pauper Letters (Oxford, 2001).
26. See, however, close and detailed study, "'It is impossible for our Vestry to judge his case into perfection from here" Managing the Distance Dimensions of Poor Relief, 1800-1840', Rural History, 16, no. 2 (2005), pp. 161-89, in which he argues persuasively that the experience of out-parish paupers was in fact entirely representative.
27. King, 'Reclothing', p. 42.
28. HRO 22M84/PV4: Ringwood Vestry Wants Book [hereafter 'Ringwood Wants Book'], 1823-29.
29. The figure for the number of inmates in the workhouse is the result of ongoing work under the auspices of the ESRC Westminster Pauper Biographies Project. See Note 1 above.
30. Excluding regular and irregular subsistence payments in cash.
31. City of Westminster Archive Centre F4079: St Martin-in-the Fields Churchwardens' and Overseers' Minutes [hereafter 'St Martins Minutes'], 1800-18.
32. Excluding regular and irregular subsistence payments in cash.
33. HRO 43M67/PVI&2: Amport Vestry Minute Books [hereafter 'Amport Vestry Minutes'], 1809-30.
34. The 1834 Report on the Poor Law, for example, suggested that 'the most usual form' of outdoor relief was 'that of relieving the applicants, either wholly or partially, from the expense of obtaining house-room'. (See Checkland and Checkland, The Poor Law report of 1834: Vol. XXVII (1834; reprinted London, 1974), p. 1.) This analysis, though clearly inaccurate according to the evidence presented here, illustrates the concern of the authors of the Poor Law Amendment Act with the high cost of paying rent arrears from the poor rates.
35. Blankets could cost as much as lls. a pair by the 1830s, although a figure of 8s. 6d. was perhaps more commonplace. See, for example, HRO 44M69/M8/23, note 1: 'Prices of Articles to supply a Penny Clothing Club Society', 11 November 1831.
36. HRO 25M60/PO23 Fawley Overseers' Vouchers, 7 January 1830.
37. Select Committee on the Operation of the Poor Law Amendment Act, 1837: Minutes of Evidence, p. 58 (Evidence of John Kearsey, Overseer of Selborne).
38. 1837 Select Committee on the Poor Law Amendment Act, p. 94.
39. William Cobbett, Political Register, 6 November 1830
40. 'The Farmers Never Done', reproduced in Roy Palmer (ed.), The Painful Plough (Cambridge: CUP, 1972).
41. Sokoll ed., Essex Pauper Letters, pp. 470-71.
42. The register of admissions to the workhouse in St Martin's for the year 1788, for example, shows that 756 women over the age of 16 were admitted, as opposed to 264 men in the same age group, a ratio of almost 3:1.
43. HRO 25M60/PO23: Vouchers to the Overseers of Fawley, 1730-1832.
44. Wrappering was, as the name suggests, a coarse cotton cloth mostly used for wrapping or covering (possibly even mattresses or beds) but which could also be used in a number of other ways where hard-wearing cotton cloth was required.
45. King, 'Reclothing', p. 44.
46. See, for example, G. Smith, The Laboratory; or School of Arts, containing a large collection of secrets, experiments and manual operations in arts and manufacture (London, 1799), p. 72.
47. Once again, see, for example, HRO 44M69/M8/23, note 1: 'Prices of Articles to supply a Penny Clothing Club Society', 11 November 1831: 'stout printed shirting' cost 6 1/2d. per yard, whereas plain 'calico' cost 5 1/2d. per yard.
48. I am indebted to John Styles for enlightening me on the nature of these textiles.
49. Ringwood Wants Book, 17 November 1827 and 10 September 1828
50. Amport Vestry Minutes, 5 December 1810
51. King, 'Reclothing', p. 42.
52. Ringwood Wants Book, 17 November 1827;
53. Amport Vestry Minutes, 2 October 1811, 27 December 1820, 6 June 1810, 6 February 1811, 7 march 1810
54. HRO 25 M60/PVI: Fawley Vestry Minutes, 27 September 1820.
55. Sokoll ed., Essex Pauper Letters, p. 275.
56. See note 2 above.
57. For an excellent overview of both the work and context of clothing clubs, albeit with a slightly later focus than this article, see Vivienne Richmond, "'No Finery" the dress of the poor in nineteenth-century England' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, Goldsmiths College, 2004), Chapter 5.
58. HRO 60M70/PG1: Barton Stacey Clothing Club, 'RULES'.
59. Ibid., 'Accounts'.
60. House of Lords Select Committee on the Operation of the Poor Law Amendment Act, 1837-8: Minutes of Evidence, pp. 101-02 (my emphasis).
61. Jeanette Neeson, Commoners: common right, enclosure and social change in England, 1700-1820 (Cambridge: CUP, 1993), p. 41.
62. The New-Fashioned Farmer', Bodleian Library, Oxford, Harding B11 (2367).
63. Roberto Leydi, Canti Sociale Italiani (Milan, 1963)
64. quoted in Roy Palmer, The Sound of History (Oxford, 1988), p. 9.
65. Cobbett, Political Register, 23 December 1815, 7 April 1821.
66. 'Eight Seven', Prosperity of the Labourer the Foundation of Universal Prosperity (1827), p. 5.
67. John Denson, A Peasant's Voice to Landowners on the Best Means of Benefiting Agricultural Labourers and of Reducing the Poor's Rates (1830), 'Letter VII, p. 36.
68. King, 'Reclothing', p. 45.
69. A. Offer, 'Between the gift and the market: the economy of regard', Economic History Review, L, no. 3 (1997), p. 454.
70. Steven King and Christiana Payne, 'Introduction: The Dress of the Poor', Textile History, XXXIII, no. 1 (2002), p. 5.