Chapter 3: Paupers and Pauperism, 1780-1832
The organisation of the parish-based relief system:
● Parish officials set Poor Rate, eligible/not, how much, indoor/outdoor
● unpaid+non-profesh (local farmers/respectable householders)
● overseers of the poor+churchwardens appointed annually by local
justices of peace (JPs) - tyrannical / settle old scores
● 1500 parish England+Wales - local needs, community →humane
● poor harvests → intolerable burden on locally raised finances
● Elizabethan PL → relief seeker returned to birthplace to get it (or if not
known - to place where lived for year +/ last parish didn’t break law)
● post-Settlement Act 1662, by birth/marriage/apprenticeship/
inheritance
● Removal Act 1795 prevented strangers removed unless applied 4 relief
- true attempt to provide clearly defined legal settlement/criteria for
removal
The problem of the ‘able-bodied pauper’:
● Soc writers/reformers poverty necessary; fear → work; indigence bad
● Cat: deserving = no fault of own+worthy of help eg. old, sick, child;
undeserving = poverty result of perceived moral failure eg. drunk/prost
● Overseers exploit system - common 4 magistrates to enquire closely
into pauper’s background+ circumstances b4 agree to parish app 4
removal of pauper fam -> freq→ pre-printed forms (apps for removal)
● Settlement Laws →control migrant pop + burden of providing for poor
won’t overwhelm parishes (parish property owners elected overseers →
keep Poor Rate low) - not applied consistently always / differed by
place
● squabbling, prevaricating and litigation between overseers of diff
parishes
● Local vestry minutes freq recorded fortunes of pauper fam+
manoeuvrings of overseers as paupers shunted back and forth across
parish boundaries
● Settlement Laws can’t prevent mobile pop→ growing cities late
18th/early 19th - magistrates couldn’t keep up w/ issue+carry out
settlement orders
, Outdoor relief systems - Speenhamland, Roundsman and the Labour Rate:
● Outdoor (able-bodied in homes) easy to administer + flexible - needed
due to cyclical unemp/ illness of breadwinner; Bad harvests +
Napoleonic Wars -> Lagging wages + higher food prices -> mass
starvation
● National solutions (incl raising of wages to lift families out of poverty +
national poor law budget) proposed by MP Whitbread+ PM William Pitt
barely debated in Commons (mostly employer, wage-paying
landowners) → flexible allowance system preferred (parishes topped
up low wages)
● widely used Speenhamland system: subsidized low wages thru rs
between bread price and no. of dependants in fam - noncash relief incl
flour; inconsistent since some parish consider each child while others
didn’t increase relief given until more than certain no. of child in fam
● Speenhamland widely popular south/east Brit → slack times during
agri yr -> seasonal unemp common but late 18th/early 19th worsened
by loss of cottage indus + lack of allotments for grow veg + loss of
common land cuz enclosures; rarely used in rural areas in north
(livestock farming→ full emp); never got legal backing, often
abandoned/crazy modified → overseers struggled w/ changing econ
conds after 1815
● Roundsman: work found for able-bodied even if too many paupers for
work available -> laborers in rotation to local farmers -> wages paid
partly by farmer/parish (ticket system) -> overseer made up diff from
poor rates after employer paid pauper; problem: proportion of
Roundsman’s wage paid by parish increased as farmers took
advantage
● Labour Rate: agreement between parishioners→ labour rate+ Poor
Rate; ratepayers who employed paupers+ paid them at parish-set rate
exempt from paying poor rates into general fund; those who didn’t had
to pay diff between wages they were paying and going rate into Poor
Rate “pot” -> PREVENTS Roundsman abuse; by 1832, ⅕ parishes
Labour Rate
Indoor relief in poorhouses, workhouses and houses of correction
● OG aim: impotent looked after in poorhouses, able-bodied work in WH,
if refused work, punished in house of correction, pauper child
apprenticed to trade to self-support → system not cost effective for
The organisation of the parish-based relief system:
● Parish officials set Poor Rate, eligible/not, how much, indoor/outdoor
● unpaid+non-profesh (local farmers/respectable householders)
● overseers of the poor+churchwardens appointed annually by local
justices of peace (JPs) - tyrannical / settle old scores
● 1500 parish England+Wales - local needs, community →humane
● poor harvests → intolerable burden on locally raised finances
● Elizabethan PL → relief seeker returned to birthplace to get it (or if not
known - to place where lived for year +/ last parish didn’t break law)
● post-Settlement Act 1662, by birth/marriage/apprenticeship/
inheritance
● Removal Act 1795 prevented strangers removed unless applied 4 relief
- true attempt to provide clearly defined legal settlement/criteria for
removal
The problem of the ‘able-bodied pauper’:
● Soc writers/reformers poverty necessary; fear → work; indigence bad
● Cat: deserving = no fault of own+worthy of help eg. old, sick, child;
undeserving = poverty result of perceived moral failure eg. drunk/prost
● Overseers exploit system - common 4 magistrates to enquire closely
into pauper’s background+ circumstances b4 agree to parish app 4
removal of pauper fam -> freq→ pre-printed forms (apps for removal)
● Settlement Laws →control migrant pop + burden of providing for poor
won’t overwhelm parishes (parish property owners elected overseers →
keep Poor Rate low) - not applied consistently always / differed by
place
● squabbling, prevaricating and litigation between overseers of diff
parishes
● Local vestry minutes freq recorded fortunes of pauper fam+
manoeuvrings of overseers as paupers shunted back and forth across
parish boundaries
● Settlement Laws can’t prevent mobile pop→ growing cities late
18th/early 19th - magistrates couldn’t keep up w/ issue+carry out
settlement orders
, Outdoor relief systems - Speenhamland, Roundsman and the Labour Rate:
● Outdoor (able-bodied in homes) easy to administer + flexible - needed
due to cyclical unemp/ illness of breadwinner; Bad harvests +
Napoleonic Wars -> Lagging wages + higher food prices -> mass
starvation
● National solutions (incl raising of wages to lift families out of poverty +
national poor law budget) proposed by MP Whitbread+ PM William Pitt
barely debated in Commons (mostly employer, wage-paying
landowners) → flexible allowance system preferred (parishes topped
up low wages)
● widely used Speenhamland system: subsidized low wages thru rs
between bread price and no. of dependants in fam - noncash relief incl
flour; inconsistent since some parish consider each child while others
didn’t increase relief given until more than certain no. of child in fam
● Speenhamland widely popular south/east Brit → slack times during
agri yr -> seasonal unemp common but late 18th/early 19th worsened
by loss of cottage indus + lack of allotments for grow veg + loss of
common land cuz enclosures; rarely used in rural areas in north
(livestock farming→ full emp); never got legal backing, often
abandoned/crazy modified → overseers struggled w/ changing econ
conds after 1815
● Roundsman: work found for able-bodied even if too many paupers for
work available -> laborers in rotation to local farmers -> wages paid
partly by farmer/parish (ticket system) -> overseer made up diff from
poor rates after employer paid pauper; problem: proportion of
Roundsman’s wage paid by parish increased as farmers took
advantage
● Labour Rate: agreement between parishioners→ labour rate+ Poor
Rate; ratepayers who employed paupers+ paid them at parish-set rate
exempt from paying poor rates into general fund; those who didn’t had
to pay diff between wages they were paying and going rate into Poor
Rate “pot” -> PREVENTS Roundsman abuse; by 1832, ⅕ parishes
Labour Rate
Indoor relief in poorhouses, workhouses and houses of correction
● OG aim: impotent looked after in poorhouses, able-bodied work in WH,
if refused work, punished in house of correction, pauper child
apprenticed to trade to self-support → system not cost effective for
