Providing for the Poor

Front matter

New Historical PERSPECTIVES

IAS wus

The Old Poor Law, bi O O ar p) G ra) O uo OO E © > O MH ar

Contents

List of illustrations List of tables

List of abbreviations Acknowledgements Notes on contributors

Preface: The Small Bills and Petty Finance project Peter Collinge and Louise Falcini

III Ii2

CAS DCRO DHC ESRO SRO TNA VCH

List of abbreviations

Cumbria Archive Service Durham County Record Office Dorset History Centre

East Sussex Record Office Staffordshire Record Office The National Archives

Victoria County History

Acknowledgements

The production of Providing for the Poor has been made possible through the support and interest shown by many colleagues, friends and organizations. It emerged out of the research conducted during the project ‘Small Bills and Petty Finance: Co-creating the History of the Old Poor Law’. At the pilot stage in Staffordshire, this was funded by Keele University’s Impact Acceleration Fund and the Jack Leighton Trust. The expansion of the project to include the counties of Cumbria and East Sussex was made possible through generous funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Archivists and search-room staff in record offices and libraries in Brighton, Carlisle, Kendal and Stafford gave generously of their time and assistance and granted permission to reproduce images from items in their collections. Particular thanks go to Matthew Blake in Staffordshire; to Robert Baxter, Louise Smith, Michael Stephens, Sarah Wood and Andrew Wright in Cumbria; and to Elizabeth Hughes and Christopher Whittick, who supported and enabled the project in East Sussex.

Several of the chapters began life as conference and study day presentations in Amsterdam, Derby, Edinburgh, Keele, Leiden, Oxford, Vancouver, York and Zurich and benefited from the questions and discussions they generated. Thanks are due to Joe Harley and Peter Jones who, along with Elizabeth Spencer, collaborated in our project workshops and augmented our sense of what it is possible to achieve with overseers’ vouchers.

Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. Steven King produced a detailed report on the draft of Providing for the Poor and, along with Heather Shore, ran a workshop for the editors of the volume. Their timely advice has been invaluable.

We are grateful to our publishers, the Royal Historical Society and the University of London Press.

Ben Jackson of Sussex Humanities Lab provided valuable research and technical development for the ‘Small Bills’ data capture platform and associated mobile phone app, while Kelcey Swain of Larchwood Research created the project website.

The ‘Small Bills’ project and this book have benefited enormously from the dedication, enthusiasm and research skills of the volunteers:

e in East Sussex: Mary Barnett, Susan Carnochan, Gina Cuthbertson, Kay Dixon, Linda Grange, Hilary Holt, Elizabeth Hughes, Jean Irvin, Jane Long, Christine Morris, Margaret Rowe, Sandra South, Veronica Stevenson, Joan Turner and Anne White.

- in Staffordshire: Denise Allman, Brian Cooper, John Hughes, Janet Kisz, Josh Newton, Sandra Probert, Rose Sawyers, Norman Moir, Dianne Shenton and Jackie Williams.

Peter Collinge and Louise Falcini xii

Notes on contributors

Peter Collinge is a researcher and writer. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher on the AHRC-funded project ‘Small Bills and Petty Finance: Co-creating the History of the Old Poor Law’. He was awarded his PhD on businesswomen in Georgian Derbyshire from Keele University in 2015. He teaches at Keele University. His research interests span public history; the Old Poor Law; businesses and their networks; and health, leisure and tourism in the long eighteenth century. His published work includes articles in Business History, Epoch, The Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Midland History and Northern History.

Louise Falcini is a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex and a member of the Sussex Humanities Lab. Her research focuses on the poor and marginalized in the long eighteenth century. She completed her AHRC-funded PhD at the University of Reading in 2018, examining cleanliness and the poor in eighteenth-century London. She has subsequently published on vagrancy and migration, including a large collaborative dataset. Her broader research interests include the technologies and infrastructure of co-production and how these can be made simple, cheap and accessible.

Tim Hitchcock is Professor of Digital History at the University of Sussex, and from 2014 to 2021 served as co-director, and latterly director, of the Sussex Humanities Lab. He has published widely on the histories of poverty, gender and sexuality, focusing primarily on eighteenth-century London. With Professor Robert Shoemaker and others, he has also created a series of websites that give direct public access to primary sources evidencing the history of Britain and underpinning the evolution of a ‘new history from below’. These sites include The Proceedings of the Old Bailey <https://www.oldbaileyonline.org>; London Lives, 1690 to 1800 <https://www.londonlives.org>; Locating London's Past <https://www.locatinglondon.org>; Connected Histories <https://www. connectedhistories.org>; and Digital Panopticon: The Global Impact of London Punishments, 1780-1925 <https://www.digitalpanopticon.org>.

Samantha A. Shave is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Lincoln. Their research is concerned with the development and impact of xiii poor relief policies and practices under the Old and New Poor Law. Their published work includes a monograph, Pauper Policies: Poor Law Practice in England, 1780-1850 (Manchester, 2017), and journal papers in Rural History, The Historical Journal, Continuity and Change and The Agricultural History Review. Samantha is a regular expert consultant for popular radio, TV and print media and, in 2018, a guest on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time on the Poor Laws.

Elizabeth Spencer is Lecturer in Eighteenth Century and Public History at the University of York. She was awarded her WRoCAH-funded PhD from the University of York in 2018 with a thesis that explored the description of women’s clothing across the long eighteenth century, and has since published on the topic. Her article “None but Abigails appeared in white aprons’: the apron as an elite garment in eighteenth-century England’ was awarded the Textile History prize for 2018. Elizabeth’s current research focuses on women and accounting in England between 1680 and 1830, and she has broader research interests in gender, consumption and material culture across the early modern period.

Alannah Tomkins is Professor of Social History at Keele University. Her research has focused on the history of the English Poor Law and the social history of medicine, her most recent book being Medical Misadventure in an Age of Professionalisation, 1780-1890 (Manchester, 2017). She was the principal investigator on the AHRC-funded project ‘Small Bills and Petty Finance’. Her forthcoming work is related to the history of nursing before 1820.

The Interludes in Providing for the Poor have been produced by volunteer researchers on the AHRC-funded project ‘Small Bills and Petty Finance’: William Bundred and Margaret Dean in Cumbria; Elizabeth Hughes and Jean Irvin in East Sussex; and Janet Kisz and Dianne Shenton in

Staffordshire.

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Preface: The Small Bills and Petty Finance project Peter Collinge and Louise Falcini

In June 1784 Joseph Wilson, overseer of the poor for the parish of Skelton, Cumberland, drew up ‘A Bill of Expences and Trouble Concerning Jane Sewel Child & Father’. It included the cost of a journey to Penrith, about seven miles from Skelton; another journey made by Wilson and John Turner to Matterdale; and five shillings paid to a midwife.* The total bill amounted to 16s 6d. After the birth, Jane Sewell and her new-born child were denied further relief. Sewell then approached magistrate William Wilson to intervene.’ She complained that, despite her being very poor and unable to provide for herself and her child, the parish had repeatedly declined relief. In response, Wilson issued a summons instructing Skelton’s overseers to appear before him at Mrs Roper’s Sun Inn, Penrith, to explain their decision. Having heard the case, Wilson ordered relief. Surviving overseers’ vouchers, the bills and receipts generated as part of the administration of the Old Poor Law show that over the next four years Jane Sewell received regular relief for her child’s maintenance. The receipt of money was acknowledged by Sewell’s father.’ There is then a silence in the records until 1793 when, after the birth of her fourth illegitimate child, a warrant was issued. This instructed Jane Sewell and John Nicholson, the putative father, to appear before magistrates William Wilson and Edmund Law at Isaac Wilkinson’s inn, Penrith, for examination.°

I

‘Sewel appears as ‘Sewell’ in other documents. Cumbria Archive Service (CAS), PRio/V/t1o/11, Expenses and trouble concerning Jane Sewel child & father, 3 June 1784; PR10/76, Skelton, Warrants, 30 July 1793; PR 10/81, Skelton, Overseers’ accounts, 1734-1817; M. Dean, ‘Jane Sewell (1759-1823) Parish of Skelton, Cumberland’, The Poor Law (2019) <https:// thepoorlaw.org/jane-sewell-1759-1823-parish-of-skelton-cumberland> [accessed 13 Apr. 2021].

> Tt also included unspecified expenses amounting to 3s 6d and payment of 2s 6d ‘to a woman.

3 Steven King notes that ‘petitions by paupers to magistrates represent the end of a long, parochially based decision-making process’. S. King, ‘Poor relief and English economic development reappraised’, The Economic History Review, | (1997), 360-8, at 363.

+ CAS, PRio/74, Skelton, Warrant for refusal to pay on bastardy orders, 28 Sept. 1784.

5 For example, CAS, PRro/V/12/35, 18 May 1786.

€ CAS, PR10/76, Skelton, Warrants, 30 July 1793.

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In the struggle for welfare between individuals, localized politicking and the wider economics of the parish, Sewell’s story is a familiar one. It identifies a range of people each of whom, for different reasons, had an interest in the Old Poor Law: Sewell herself; Nicholson; Sewell’s father; the overseer, Joseph Wilson; John Turner; the innkeepers, Mrs Roper and Isaac Wilkinson; and the magistrates, Wilson and Law. As the receipt of 19s 6d each quarter gave Sewell (albeit limited) spending power, it is likely that there were others in the locality, such as retailers, who also took an interest in the case.’ Parish relief would allow Sewell to settle in part or in full any outstanding debts she may have accrued or to pay for food, lodgings, fuel and children’s clothing as she saw fit.

The partial biography of Jane Sewell draws attention to overseers’ vouchers as a new evidential pathway for research into the Old Poor Law and into the wider operation and administration of parish welfare during the latter part of the long eighteenth century. It also raises methodological issues relating to overseers’ vouchers, namely their presence, absence or unevenness in the historic record. As discussed in the Introduction, such issues could have arisen from the ways in which information was recorded in the vouchers or transferred between documents at the time, or by later retention and archival policies. In this volume, issues of presence, absence or unevenness issues are combined with thematic topics regarding parish welfare. These include the agency of the poor, illegitimacy, the role of parochial administrators and wider authorities, and the involvement of goods and service providers. Each is examined from different, yet interconnected, standpoints. Elizabeth Spencer, Peter Collinge and Alannah Tomkins use the rich detail of the vouchers to explore new perspectives on the provision of relief for the poor. Tim Hitchcock, Louise Falcini and Samantha Shave either use the vouchers as embarkation points for new thinking about the Old Poor Law or consider how researchers might approach future work on welfare more broadly defined. Collectively, the contributors ask: Who was responsible for the poor and in what capacity? What was the extent, nature and duration of the relief given? And who, other than the poor, benefited from or participated in the process and with what agency?

Research into the bills and receipts generated in the process of administering the Old Poor Law was made possible by a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, ‘Small Bills and Petty Finance: Co-creating the History of the Old Poor Law. This collaboration involved the universities of Keele and Sussex, over forty volunteer researchers, and the staff of the county

7 No vouchers are extant to show how Sewell spent her relief money. * AHRC grant number AH/R003246/1.

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Preface record offices of Cumbria, East Sussex and Staffordshire. Although bills and receipts form one of the cornerstones in histories of consumption, they tend to be limited to specific sections of the literature, including the wealthy and their purchases.’ Indeed, although they are an important historical resource, before the ‘Small Bills’ project began in 2018 overseers’ vouchers appeared only tangentially in the historiography of the poor law. Their absence is not hard to account for. At best, their survival is patchy. Even so, their sheer volume is problematic for individual researchers. Both issues are discussed further in the Introduction. Moreover, the vast number of transactions they document and the inconsistent ways in which their contents were recorded present significant methodological challenges. Over the course of four years, however, the collaborative nature of this project, utilizing the commitment, skills and local knowledge of volunteer researchers — explored in Chapter 7, ‘Public histories and collaborative working’ — provided the means by which this information was gathered. By capturing, coding and analysing the information contained in thousands of overseers’ vouchers from thirty parishes and townships across three counties, the “Small Bills’ project has generated a significant new dataset.” Consisting of some 41,500 lines, it reflects the goods and services supplied to the poor and enables research on the Old Poor Law to go beyond existing scholarship on pauper letters and inventories, parish practices and policies.”

Providing for those unable to support themselves created complex relationships that crossed boundaries of gender, class and age. Through the lens of overseers’ vouchers, the actions of both parish officials and the parish poor become more visible, as do the roles of tradespeople and service providers, their assistants, clerks, apprentices and family. The vouchers thus help to fill the silences in parochial account books or to give context to the many transactions they record. They help to clarify what Steven King termed the ‘ambiguities around poor law expenditure’, and make possible a

° For example, J. Stobart, “So agreeable and suitable a place”: the character, use and provisioning of a late eighteenth-century suburban villa’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, xxxix (2016), 89—102.

© See the project website, The Poor Law: Small Bills and Petty Finance 1700 to 1834 <www.thepoorlaw.org>.

« S. King and P. Jones, Navigating the Old English Poor Law: The Kirkby Lonsdale Letters, 1809—1836 (Oxford, 2020); J. Harley, Norfolk Pauper Inventories, c.1690-1834 (Oxford, 2020); T. Sokoll, “Writing for relief: rhetoric in English pauper letters, 1800-1834’, in Being Poor in Modern Europe: Historical Perspectives, 1800—1940, ed. A. Gestrich, S. King and R. Lutz (Oxford, 2006), pp. 91-111; S. Ottaway, The Decline of Life: Old Age in Eighteenth Century- England (Cambridge, 2004); S. A. Shave, Pauper Policies: Poor Law Practice in England, 1780-1850 (Manchester, 2017).

xvii more granular analysis of the microeconomics of the parish.” The vouchers, however, are by no means comprehensive and do not provide a universal answer to the uncertainties of parish finance, especially in relation to vagrancy. Yet, as shown in the case of Jane Sewell, they do expose processes and tensions that stand behind the recording of expenditure in overseers’ accounts. Providing new insights into the economics of poverty and of the parish, such processes and tensions are linked through financial reciprocity, obligation, parochial responsibility and overlapping networks.

The conundrum of determining what constitutes a representative sample of different socio-economic communities is well known, and for historical research into materials like vouchers can never be fully resolved. Each county selected for the ‘Small Bills’ project — Cumbria (incorporating the historic counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, parts of Lancashire “North of the Sands’ and parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire), Staffordshire and East Sussex (half of the historic county of Sussex) — however, benefits from the survival of a good range of vouchers from a variety of settlement types. Vouchers are particularly numerous for East Sussex’s parishes. Both the nature of the vouchers and the individual settlements from which they have been drawn are explored further in the Introduction. The project counties fall on either side of the broad north-west—Midlands—south-east axis identified in Steven King’s analysis of regional poor relief, itself built on the older economic history division between highland and lowland. While acknowledging what could amount to significant differences within local areas, overall this suggests the existence of a relatively generous provision in the south-east (based on an established wider definition of entitlement) and stricter conditions in the north-west. A decline in relative wages and an associated fall in demand for women’s labour, particularly in the rural south-east and rising wages in the north-west, however, mean that these differences in entitlements measure the way in which the poor law worked rather than living standards.” Indeed, by the 1790s, ‘eight out of the eleven highest-wage counties were in the north and midlands and only three were in the south-east’."® This underlines the economic hardships of the early nineteenth century suffered in the largely rural areas of the southern counties despite a more ‘generous’ relief system.

» S. King, Poverty and Welfare in England, 1700-1850 (Manchester, 2000), p. 87. 3 King, Poverty and Welfare, pp. 7-8. 4 King, Poverty and Welfare, pp. 257, 261-5.

5 F, W. Botham and E. H. Hunt, “Wages in Britain during the Industrial Revolution, The Economic History Review, xl (1987), 380-99, at 396.

‘© Botham and Hunt, “Wages in Britain during the Industrial Revolution’, 397.

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