'Indiscriminate liberality subverts the morals and depraves the habits of the poor': A contribution to the debate on the poor law, parish clothing relief and clothing societies in early nineteenth-century England

Textile History

Volumn 40, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 51-69

  Richmond, Vivienne ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CLOTHING INDUSTRY; GARMENT; TEXTILE HISTORY;

EID: 70350056811     PISSN: 00404969     EISSN: 17432952     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1179/174329509x424622     Document Type: Article

References (125)

1. Brunei University Library, Working Class Autobiographical Archive, 1:371 Alfred Ireson, pp. 9-10.
2. Revd Arthur Young, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Sussex with Observations on the Means of its Improvement (London, 1793), p. 91.
3. Edward Carleton Tufnell, On the Dwellings and General Economy of the Labouring Classes in Kent and Sussex (London, 1841), pp. 3-4.
4. Steven King, Poverty and Welfare in England 1700-1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000);
5. Steven King, 'Reclothing the English Poor, 1750-1840', Textile History, xxxiii, no.1 (2002), pp. 37-47.
6. Peter Jones, 'Clothing the Poor in Early-Nineteenth-Century England', Textile History, xxxvii, no.1 (2006), pp. 17-37, P. 34.
7. Peter Jones, Textile History, Ibid., pp. 30-31. Jones actually refers to clothing clubs rather than societies. The terms 'clothing society' and 'clothing club' were used interchangeably. For continuity, and to distinguish them from commercial clothing clubs, I have used 'society' throughout except where a particular organization styled itself 'Club'.
8. Barry Reay includes clothing societies among a range of 'increasingly favoured .. . low-level savings' schemes, but stops short of asking the reasons for their origination and growing popularity. They are occasionally mentioned among the range of welfare services provided by the Church, and sometimes in connection with the Anglican reforms of the 1830s which encouraged clergy to take a more active pastoral role. Barry Reay, Rural Englands: Labouring Lives in the Nineteenth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 79;
9. Alun Howkins, Reshaping Rural England, A Social History 1850-1925 (London: HarperCollins Academic, 1991), p. 74;
10. Nigel Yates, 'An Age of Religious Pluralism 1830-1914', in Nigel Yates, Robert Hume and Paul Hastings, Religion and Society in Kent, 1640 - 1914 (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1994), pp. 83-84, 87.
11. Jones, 'Clothing', p. 29.
12. Jones, 'Clothing', Ibid., p. 34.
13. Eric J. Evans, The Forging of the Modern State; Early Industrial Britain 1783-1870 (Harlow: Longman, 1983), p. 402.
14. Mark Blaug, 'The Myth of the Old Poor Law and the Making of the New', Journal of Economic History, xxiii, no.2 (1963), pp. 151-184
15. Mark Blaug, 'The Poor Law Report Reexamined', Journal of Economic History, xxiv, no.2 (1964), pp. 229-245, P. 231.
16. Population figures given at 'Rotherfield', The Weald of Kent, Surrey and Sussex, http://www. thesussexweald.org/P5.asp?PId=525iRoth, [accessed 20/02/2006]; East Sussex Record Office [ESRO], Rotherfield Request Book [RRB] 1810-1811, PAR 465/7/1.
17. ESRO, RRB 1812-13, PAR 465/7/2; RRB 1820-1824, PAR 465/7/5. That there was no significant annual fluctuation in parish clothing provision in the areas Peter Jones examined is implicit, but not explicit.
18. ESRO, Private Correspondence of Lord Sheffield, SPK P.6.
19. Jess Steele, Turning the Tide: The History of Everyday Deptford (London: Deptford Forum, 1993) PP. 49, 60, 93.
20. Lewisham Local Studies Centre [LLSC], Churchwardens and Overseers Committee [COC] Minutes 1809-1813, SPD/4/3; COC Minutes 1813-17, SPD/4/4; COC Order Book 1819-25, SPD/4/15; COC Minutes 1822-25, SPD/4/7; COC Minutes 1825-1829, SPD/4/8.
21. LLSC, COC Minutes 1809-13, SPD/4/3; COC Minutes 1813-17, SPD/4/4; COC Minutes 1822-25, SPD/4/7; COC Minutes 1825-1829, SPD/4/8. Clothing supplied for women followed a similar pattern.
22. ESRO, RRB 1820-1824, PAR 465/7/5; RRB 1828-30, PAR 465/7/6; RRB 1830-31, PAR 465/7/7; RRB 1832-33, PAR 465/7/9. Peter Jones also notes the emphasis on clothing young people going into service. Jones, 'Clothing', p. 28.
23. Return of all Applications addressed to the Poor Law Commissioners on the subject of providing Clothes for Infants born in Workhouses on their being taken out, and of all Answers given, since the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act, Parliamentary Papers, 1846, XXXVI, 16.
24. Howkins, Reshaping, p. 74.
25. Return of all Applications addressed to the Poor Law Commissioners on the subject of providing Clothes for Infants born in Workhouses on their being taken out, and of all Answers given, since the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act, Parliamentary Papers, 1846, XXXVI, 16-17.
26. Parliamentary Papers, 1846, XXXVI, Ibid., 17.
27. Copy Correspondence between the Board of Guardians of the Ledbury Union and the Reverend Edward Higgins and the Poor Law Commissioners, Parliamentary Papers, 1846, XVI, 3-5.
28. Copy Correspondence with the Board of Guardians of the Cricklade and Wootton Basset Union, the Assistant Commissioner of the District, and the Poor Law Commissioners, Parliamentary Papers, 1846, XXXVI, 6, 8, 11, 14.
29. The Times, 24 January 1846, p. 6.
30. Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1J95-1865 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), pp. 16, 26.
31. Prochaska and Owen also stress the influence of evangelicalism. F. K. Prochaska, 'Philanthropy', in F. M. L. Thompson, The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750-1950, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), iii, pp. 378-79;
32. D. Owen, English Philanthropy 1660-1960 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 93-96.
33. Revd John Barlow, The Probable Effects of Clothing Societies in Improving the Habits and Principles of the Poor (London, 1828), p. 19.
34. Revd John Thomas Becher, The Antipauper System; Exemplifying the Positive and Practical Good, Realized by the Relievers and the Relieved, Under the Frugal, Beneficial, and Lawful, Administration of the Poor Laws, Prevailing at Southwell, and in the Neighbouring District (London, 1828), p. 30.
35. Anon., The District Visitor's Manual. A Compendium of Practical Information and Facts, for the Use of District Visitors (London, 1840), p. 123.
36. For typical clothing society rules, see British Library [BL], 'Kettleburgh Penny Clothing Club, 1837' (n.p., 1837).
37. Revd F. Litchfield, Three Years Results of the Farthinghoe Clothing Society With a Few Remarks on the Policy of Encouraging Provident Habits Among the Working Classes (Northampton, 1832), p. 5.
38. The Reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor, III (London, 1802), p. 332.
39. J. R. Poynter, Society and Pauperism: English Ideas on Poor Relief, 1795 - 1834 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), pp. 91, 225.
40. 'Aldworth Parish Records', Berkshire Record Office, http://www. berkshirerecordoffice.org.uk/ collections/summary/pdfs/dp4.pdf [accessed 16/01/2001];
41. Revd D. Capper, Practical Results of the Workhouse System, as Adopted in the Parish of Great Missenden, Bucks (London, 1834), p. 63;
42. 'History of the City and County of the City of Exeter', from White's Devonshire Directory of 1850, GENUKI UK & Ireland Geneaology, http: //www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/genuki/DEV/Exeter/ExeterHist1850/ index.html, [accessed 9/01/2001];
43. 'Essex Charities', Rossbret Poor Law Website, http://www/work-houses.co. uk/charities.htm [accessed 9/02/2001];
44. Revd George Cotterill, A Pastoral Address to the Members of Clothing Clubs (London, n.d.);
45. 'Norfolk: Earlham', in William White's History, Gazetteer, and Directory of Norfolk 1845, GENUKI UK & Ireland Geneaology, http://www.uea.ac.uk/s090/ genuki/NFK/places/e/earlham/white1845.shtml, [accessed 24/01/2003];
46. Senate House, Goldsmiths Library, Hinton Clothing Club, B.834; BL 'Kettleburgh'; BL, 'Rules of the Clothing Club at Stutton' (n.p., 1833); BL, 'Rules of the Ubbeston Provident Clothing Society' (Halesworth, n.d.); BL, 'Rules of the Ufford Penny Clothing Club' (Woodbridge, n.d.); Litchfield, Three Years Results; Barlow, Probable Effects, 'Introductory Statement';
47. S. M. Pinches, 'Charities in Warwickshire in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries' (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leicester, 2001), pp. 170-72;
48. Jones, 'Clothing', pp. 29-30;
49. 'Leeds' in Langdale's Topographical Dictionary of Yorkshire, (1822), GENUKI UK & Ireland Geneaology, http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/WRY/ Leeds/index.html, [accessed 9/01/2001];
50. Blaug, 'Myth', pp. 158, 178.
51. Blaug, 'Myth', p. 167.
52. Kent, where the Deptford clothing society was well established by 1858, but the year of inauguration is unknown, had the highest poor relief expenditure of non-Speenhamland counties between 1802 and 1831. Blaug, 'Myth', pp. 178-179
53. Jones, 'Clothing', p. 31 (Jones' emphasis).
54. Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to examine the several Cases alluded to in certain Papers respecting the Operation of the Poor Law Amendment Act: Minutes of Evidence, Parliamentary Papers, 1837-1838, XIX, 90, 102.
55. There is a further point: when Williams refers to 'the Club' it is not at all certain that he is referring to the clothing club. The statement Jones quotes comes in the middle of a discussion of friendly societies, also known as benefit clubs. The beginning of the statement reads, 'The Benefit Clubs are of little Benefit to them . ..'. Williams has previously explained that parishioners pay 4d per month into the clothing club and the discussion later continues as follows:In this Clothing Club do you limit them to a Penny a Week? Yes, we do. ... [W]hat is the Deduction per week from their Means of maintaining their Family for the sake of those Clubs? The Club is 1s. 3d. a Month, and the other 1s 4d. a Month; that would be 1s. 7d. a Month ... Do they get any thing in the Club towards the Funeral, in the Case of the Death of the Subscriber? There is a clear distinction between 'the Club', which references to funeral expenses identify as the friendly society, and the 'clothing club' which is elsewhere distinguished as the 'penny club'. Report . .. Operation . .. Poor Law, 102-103
56. Capper, Practical Results, p. 81.
57. Jones, 'Clothing', p. 22.
58. Michael E. Rose, 'The Disappearing Pauper: Victorian Attitudes to the Relief of the Poor', in Eric M. Sigsworth, In Search of Victorian Values: Aspects of Nineteenth-century Thought and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 62.
59. P. H. J. H. Gosden, The Friendly Societies in England 1815-75 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1961), pp. 23-24, 41, 52-53, 60;
60. Martin Gorsky, 'The Growth and Distribution of English Friendly Societies in the Early Nineteenth Century' , Economic History Review,51, no.3 (1998), pp. 489-511, pp. 493-97;
61. Simon Cordery, British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 49-51;
62. Nicola Sian Reader, 'Female friendly societies in industrialising England, 1780-1850' (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 2005), pp. 63, 89, 223.
63. Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London, A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), p. 12;
64. see also Rose, 'Disappearing', p. 60.
65. Anne Summers, 'A Home from Home - Women's Philanthropic Work in the Nineteenth Century', in Sandra Burman ed., Fit Work for Women (London: Croom Helm, 1979), p. 51;
66. Mary MacKinnon, 'English Poor Law Policy and the Crusade Against Outrelief, Journal of Economic History, xxxxvii, no.3 (1987), pp. 603-625, p. 612.
67. Robert Humphreys, Sin, Organized Charity and the Poor Law in Victorian England (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), p. 5.
68. Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, With Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance (London, 1859).
69. Melanie Tebbutt, Making Ends Meet, Pawnbroking and Working-class Credit (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1983), p. 113.
70. Revd Edward L. Cutts, Address to District Visitors (London, n.d.), pp. 16-17.
71. Jones, 'Clothing', p. 32.
72. BL, 'Kettleburgh';
73. BL, 'Rules of the Haveningham Provident Clothing Society' (Halesworth, n.d.); Litchfield, Three Years, pp. 4-5;
74. ESRO, 'Rules of the Uckfield Clothing Society', PAR 496/9/3/1.
75. BL, 'Kettleburgh';
76. BL, 'Rules' .. . Stutton.
77. Jones, 'Clothing', p. 29.
78. Edwin Grey, Cottage Life in a Hertfordshire Village: How the Agricultural Labourer Lived and Fared in the Late '60's and the '70's (Harpenden: Harpenden and District Local History Society 1977), pp. 38-39.
79. Capper, Practical Results, p. 81.
80. See, for example, Litchfield, Three Years, p. 5.
81. Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to examine the several Cases alluded to in certain Papers respecting the Operation of the Poor Law Amendment Act: Minutes of Evidence, Parliamentary Papers, 1837-1838, XIX, 102-103
82. Blaug, 'Myth', p. 171;
83. Reay, Rural Englands, pp. 34-35;
84. K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor; Social Change and Agrarian England 1660-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 25 n. 24, 29, 129-30, 45, 51-60.
85. For a full account of the Swing Riots, see E. J. Hobsbawm and George Rude, Captain Swing (London: Pimlico, 1993).
86. Howkins, Reshaping, pp. 65, 75.
87. Barlow, Probable Effects, p. 22.
88. Returns for Ripe in the 1851 Census of England and Wales, The National Archives of the United Kingdom; C. J. Barnes, Sussex (East) Census - 1851 Index (Hastings: C. J. Barnes, 1994).
89. ESRO, Account Book of Ripe Parish Clothing Club 1854-1869, PAR 462/26/1. 'Adults' refers to persons aged eleven and over, the age at which males here entered full-time agricultural labour.
90. Returns for Ripe . .. 1851 Census; Barnes, Sussex; Returns for Ripe in the 1861 Census of England and Wales, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.
91. Returns for Ripe . .. 1851; Barnes, Sussex.
92. ESRO: Account Book .. . Ripe, PAR 462/26/1; Returns for Ripe . . . 1851 Census; Returns for Ripe .. . 1861 Cenus; Barnes, Sussex;
93. Revd E. Boys Ellman, Recollections of a Sussex Parson (London, c. 1915), pp. 16, 275.
94. ESRO, Ripe Magazine (December 1902), PAR 462 7/30/1.
95. Anne Digby, Pauper Palaces (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 22.
96. ESRO, Vestry Book of the Parish of Ripe in the County of Sussex, 1855-1874, PAR 462/12/3.
97. ESRO, General Ledger of West Firle Union, G12/20/2; ESRO, West Firle Union Minute Book, G12/1a/1.
98. Returns for Rotherfield in the 1861 Census of England and Wales, National Archives of the United Kingdom; ESRO, Rotherfield Clothing Club Book, PAR 465/17/1; ESRO, Rotherfield Clothing Club Report 1867, AMS 1189.
99. Blaug, 'Myth', p. 177;
100. Rose, 'Disappearing', p. 64.
101. M. Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 65;
102. see also Stedman Jones, Outcast, pp. 251-252
103. Alan Kidd, 'Philanthropy and the "Social History Paradigm"', Social History, xxi, no.2 (1996), pp. 180-192, pp. 186-87.
104. King, 'Reclothing', p. 47.
105. Only a minority of clothing society goods were supplied ready-made. Whether the remainder was supplied as lengths of fabric, or cut out and ready for sewing is unclear.
106. The Society in Iford, Sussex, for example, continued until 1931. ESRO, Iford Clothing Club Accounts 1890-1931, PAR 403/26/1.
107. Reports of Special Assistant Commissioners on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, Parliamentary Papers, 1843, XII, 312.
108. First Report of the Central Board of His Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiring into the Employment of Children in Factories, Parliamentary Papers, 1833, XX, C2, 14.
109. John Styles similarly noted regional variations in clothing provision in eighteenth-century England, although different from those in the nineteenth. John Styles, 'Clothing the North: The Supply of Non-elite Clothing in the Eighteenth-Century North of England', Textile History, xxv, no.2 (1994), pp. 139-166, p. 160.
110. Barry Godfrey, 'Law, Factory Discipline and "Theft", The Impact of the Factory on Workplace Appropriation in Mid to Late Nineteenth Century Yorkshire', British Journal of Criminology, xxxix, no.1 (1999), pp. 56-71.
111. For a full discussion of the improved independent clothing opportunities in the industrial north, see Tina Vivienne Richmond, '"No Finery": The Dress of the Poor in Nineteenth-Century England' (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 2004), ch. 4.
112. Humphreys, Sin, p. 17.
113. Alan J. Kidd and K. W. Roberts eds, City, Class and Culture, Studies of Social Policy and Cultural Production in Victorian Manchester (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), p. 55.
114. E. H. Hunt, 'Industrialization and Regional Inequality: Wages in Britain, 1760-1914', Journal of Economic History, XLVI, no.4 (1986), pp. 935-966, pp. 953-56, 960-61.
115. E. H. Hunt, Journal of Economic History, Ibid., p. 857.
116. For trades unions, see also Henry Pelling, A History of British Trade Unionism (Middlesex, 1963), ch. 3. For friendly societies, see n. 37 above.
117. Evans, Forging, p. 154;
118. Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute (London: Phoenix Press, 2001), pp. 83, 203-07, 275.
119. Raphael Samuel, 'Mineral Workers', in Raphael Samuel ed., Miners, Quarrymen and Saltworkers (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), p. 67.
120. Children's Employment Commission, Appendix to First Report of the Commissioners. Mines, Part I, Parliamentary Papers, 1842, XVI, 533.
121. There were some Nonconformist clothing societies - Charles Booth, for example, mentioned some run by Wesleyan missions in 1902 - but they do not appear to have been common. C. Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London, Third Series: Religious Influences, 7 vols (London, 1902-03), vn, pp. 21, 204.
122. Children's Employment Commission, Appendix to First Report of the Commissioners. Mines, Part I, Parliamentary Papers, 1842, XVI, 533.
123. Reports of Special Assistant Commissioners on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, Parliamentary Papers, 1843, XII, 335, 337-39.
124. Kidd and Roberts, City, pp. 50-51.
125. Grey, Cottage, p. 39.