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The extent and nature of pauperism in five Oxfordshire parishes, 1786–1832

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2013

RICHARD DYSON
RICHARD DYSON*
Affiliation:
Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester.
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Abstract

This article examines the nature of pauperism in the south and east of England during the time of the Old Poor Law by using census material from five predominately rural parishes in Oxfordshire between 1786 and 1832. The proportion of people receiving poor relief was calculated for each parish, together with the types of people receiving such relief. While pauperism was significant in some parishes, others had relatively low levels of people receiving relief, and groups of poor hit by traditional life-cycle poverty were still common. Previous notions of widespread pauperism in the south and east during this period may thus need to be revised, with greater acknowledgement of the influence of local factors.

Ampleur et nature du paupérisme dans cinq paroisses d'oxfordshire, 1786–1832

Cet article examine la nature du paupérisme dans le sud et l'est de l'Angleterre à l'époque de l'ancienne Loi des Pauvres, à partir de recensements effectués dans cinq paroisses en majorité rurales d'Oxfordshire, entre 1786 et 1832. Pour chaque paroisse, on a calculé la proportion de personnes recevant l'assistance aux pauvres, et dressé également la typologie des bénéficiaires de cette aide. Alors que le niveau de paupérisme était significatif dans certaines paroisses, d'autres en présentaient des niveaux relativement faibles, avec peu de gens bénéficiant d'une aide. Certains groupes de pauvres se trouvaient encore frappés par des moments de pauvreté correspondant traditionnellement à certaines phases du cycle de vie. L'idée commune que le paupérisme était fort répandu dans le sud et l'est de l'Angleterre pendant cette période doit donc être sérieusement révisée, et il faudra aussi tenir compte de l'influence des facteurs locaux.

Ausmass und struktur des pauperismus in fünf gemeinden in oxfordshire, 1786–1832

Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Struktur des Pauperismus im Süden und Osten Englands in der Zeit des Alten Armenrechts und benutzt dafür Volkszählungsmaterial für fünf überwiegend ländliche Gemeinden in Oxfordshire zwischen 1786 und 1832. Für jede Gemeinde wurde der Anteil der Armenunterstützungsempfänger errechnet und dabei auch nach unterschiedlichen Typen von Unterstützungsempfängern differenziert. Während der Pauperismus in einigen Gemeinden weit verbreitet war, war der Anteil der Unterstützungsempfänger in anderen vergleichsweise niedrig, wobei dort eher traditionelle Gruppen von Armen anzutreffen waren, die von lebenszyklischer Armut betroffen waren. Die landläufige Vorstellung eines zu dieser Zeit im südöstlichen England weit verbreiteten Pauperismus mag daher revisionsbedürftig sein, wobei wohl auch der Einfluss lokaler Faktoren stärker als bisher berücksichtigt werden sollte.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , December 2013 , pp. 421 - 449
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

ENDNOTES

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15 See P. Laslett, ‘Mean household size in England since the sixteenth century’, in P. Laslett ed., Household and family in past time (Cambridge, 1972), 125–58; R. Wall, ‘Regional and temporal variations in English household structure from 1650’, in J. Hobcraft and P. Rees eds., Regional economic development (London, 1977), 89–113; Saito, O., ‘Who worked when: life-time profiles of labour force participation in Cardington and Corfe Castle in the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries’, Local Population Studies 22 (1997), 14–29Google Scholar.

16 T. Sokoll, Household and family among the poor: the case of two Essex communities in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Bochum, 1993). See also the brief analysis in Baker, D. ed., ‘The inhabitants of Cardington in 1782’, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 52 (1973), 44–52Google Scholar.

17 Oxfordshire History Centre (hereafter OHC), MSS. D.D. Par. Ewelme e.3, List of inhabitants 1786; PAR 227/10/MS/1, List of Salford inhabitants 1814; Eureka Partnership eds., The people of Bletchingdon (Aylesbury, 2002), 7–9; The people of Steeple Aston and Middle Aston (Aylesbury, 2005), 11–13 (originals in OHC, Bletchingdon, PAR 36/1/E/2; Steeple Aston, PAR 251/1/R1/2); R. Fasnacht and C. Hicks eds., The making of a Regency village: origin, history and description of Summertown in 1832 (Oxford, 1983). The author is grateful to John and Eileen Bartlett and Angela Hillier of the Eureka Partnership for bringing his attention to the Bletchingdon and Steeple Aston censuses.

18 Census of England and Wales 1811, BPP 1812, XI, 265.

19 Williams, From pauperism to poverty, 149.

20 The word ‘parish’ is used here as a descriptive term. Technically speaking, Summertown was a township, part of the larger parish of Oxford St Giles's.

21 Census of England and Wales 1801, BPP 1802, VII; Census 1831, BPP 1833, XXXVI. The 1751 listing is found in Eureka Partnership, The people of Bletchingdon, 5–6. Bridget Taylor also found population increase occurring in Bletchingdon after the 1770s: B. J. Taylor, ‘The economic and demographic context of enclosure: a case study from Oxfordshire, circa 1550 to 1850’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1989), 249.

22 OHC, QSD L.42, Bletchingdon land tax 1795; QSD L.233, Salford land tax 1814.

23 OHC, QSD L.18, Steeple Aston land tax 1811; A. Crossley ed., A history of the county of Oxford (hereafter VCH Oxon), vol. XI: Wootton Hundred (northern part) (Oxford, 1983), 37.

24 OHC, QSD L.115, Ewelme land tax 1785.

25 R. Fasnacht, Summertown since 1820 (Oxford, 1977), 8, 41; Crossley, VCH Oxon, vol. IV: Oxford (Oxford, 1979), 196, 278.

26 Smith, ‘Ageing and well-being’, 84–90. For Summertown, see Crossley, VCH Oxon, vol. IV, 350.

27 Sokoll, Household and family, 76–89.

28 The parish pensioner John Stacey of Ewelme, for example, lived in the household of his married daughter and her husband, neither of whom received any poor relief: OHC, MSS. D.D. Par. Ewelme e.3, fol. 42.

29 OHC, PAR 36/5/F1/1, Bletchingdon overseers' accounts 1787–99; MSS. D.D. Par. Ewelme b.10, Overseers' accounts 1772–91; PAR 227/5/F1/3, Salford overseers' accounts 1803–26; PAR 251/5/F1/2, Steeple Aston overseers' accounts 1810–32; MSS. D.D. Par. Oxford St Giles b.32, Overseers' accounts 1824–33.

30 Transcriptions and indexes of the parish registers of Bletchingdon, Ewelme, Salford, Steeple Aston and St Giles's (the parent parish of Summertown) were consulted in the Oxfordshire History Centre.

31 For Ewelme, 14 out of 57 paupers could not be traced; Salford, 5 out of 24; Bletchingdon, 7 out of 40; Steeple Aston, 1 out of 11. It is impossible to do the same calculation for Summertown, as it forms part of the much larger St Giles's parish in Oxford.

32 Sokoll, Essex pauper letters, 16–17. Williams, Poverty, gender and life-cycle, 33.

33 Some pension households might also receive additional casual relief.

34 Eastwood, Governing rural England, 135.

35 For trends in prices, see Feinstein, C. H., ‘Pessimism perpetuated: real wages and the standard of living in Britain during and after the industrial revolution’, Journal of Economic History 58 (1998), 625–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 W. Thwaites, ‘Oxford food riots: a community and its markets’, in A. Randall and A. Charlesworth eds., Markets, market culture and popular protest in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland (Liverpool, 1996), 137–62.

37 T. S. Ashton, Economic fluctuations in England 1700–1800 (Oxford, 1959), 181.

38 K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the labouring poor: social change and agrarian England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1985), 15–66.

39 Poor relief expenditure in Bletchingdon was consistently higher in the winter months between 1787 and 1799: Taylor, ‘Enclosure’, 163.

40 No data for Summertown are given, as the township did not exist in 1802. One explanation for the lower percentages could be that the paupers receiving occasional relief in the 1802 report did not have any dependants listed, unlike the regular paupers.

41 Baker, ‘Cardington’, 46.

42 Sokoll, Household and family, 150, 213.

43 Williams, Poverty, gender and life-cycle, 54.

44 King, ‘Reconstructing lives’, 329; Williams, From pauperism to poverty, 150.

45 Dyson, R., ‘Welfare provision in Oxford during the latter stages of the old Poor Law, 1800–1834’, Historical Journal 52 (2009), 943–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 King, Poverty and welfare, 155–6.

47 Ibid., 156. See also, R. Wall, ‘Families in crisis and the English Poor Law as exemplified by the relief programme in the Essex parish of Ardleigh 1795–7’, in E. Ochiai ed., The logic of female succession: rethinking patriarchy and patrilineality in global and historical perspective, International Symposium vol. 19 (Tokyo, 2002), 101–27. Williams found that 20–30 per cent of her Bedfordshire paupers were on casual relief: Williams, Poverty, gender and life-cycle, 39.

48 For household budgets, see Horrell, S. and Humphries, J., ‘Old questions, new data, and alternative perspectives: families' living standards in the Industrial Revolution’, Journal of Economic History 52 (1992), 849–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Horrell and Humphries, ‘Women's labour force participation’. For analysis, see Thomson, D., ‘The decline of social welfare: falling state support for the elderly since Victorian times’, Ageing and Society 4 (1984), 451–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snell, K. D. M. and Millar, J., ‘Lone-parent families and the welfare state: past and present’, Continuity and Change 2 (1987), 387–422CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, S., ‘Poor relief, labourers' households and living standards in rural England c.1770–1834: a Bedfordshire case study’, Economic History Review 58 (2005), 485–519CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Report from her Majesty's Commission, 1834 Appendix B, 380.

50 D. Davies, The case of labourers in husbandry stated and considered (London, 1795), 138; Bletchingdon: F. M. Eden, The state of the poor: or, a history of the labouring classes in England (London, 1797), ii, 589.

51 See A. Young, General view of the agriculture of Oxfordshire (London, 1813), 321. Average family earnings were calculated by inflating the wage data given in Young to allow for the contribution made by women and children. See Horrell and Humphries, ‘Women's labour force participation’, 101.

52 Williams, ‘Poor relief’, 500.

53 T. Wales, ‘Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle: some evidence from seventeenth-century Norfolk’, in R. M. Smith ed., Land, kinship and life-cycle (Cambridge, 1984), 351–94; Laslett, P., ‘Family, kinship and collectivity as systems of support in pre-industrial Europe: a consideration of the “nuclear-hardship” hypothesis’, Continuity and Change 3 (1988), 153–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Esther White, for example, a 30-year-old pensioner from Summertown, was described as ‘a lame woman’ in the 1832 census: Fasnacht and Hicks, The making of a Regency village, 83.

55 Williams, ‘Poor relief’, 508–10. The weights used are: husband and wife 1.75, other adults 1.0, children 0.43.

56 Williams, ‘Poor relief’, 510. Ottaway finds a similar generosity towards the aged, Snell and Millar with lone parents: S. Ottaway, The decline of life: old age in eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 2004), 229–31; Snell and Millar, ‘Lone-parent families’, 407–9.

57 OHC, MSS. D.D. Par. Ewelme b.10.

58 OHC, Oxon Quarter Sessions Epiphany 1832; PAR 227/5/F1/3.

59 OHC, PAR 36/5/F1/1.

60 Bletchingdon had 18 pauper families receiving casual relief and 8 receiving pensions. Ewelme had 15 pauper families receiving casual relief and 8 receiving pensions.

61 King, Poverty and welfare, 165–6; Williams, ‘Poor relief’, 500–6.

62 Boyer, English Poor Law, 122–45.

63 Crossley, VCH Oxon, vol. XI, 36.

64 Census 1811, 260–4.

65 Fasnacht and Hicks, The making of a Regency village, 90, 92.

66 OHC, PAR 227/10/MS/1.

67 Bletchingdon was enclosed in the early seventeenth century, Steeple Aston in 1767 and Salford in 1770.

68 OHC, MSS. D.D. Par. Ewelme e.3, Ewelme rectory papers 1786–1802.

69 M. Overton, Agricultural revolution in England: the transformation of the agrarian economy 1500–1850 (Cambridge 1996), 127.

70 OHC, E/6/2/E1/1, Particulars of the Annesleys' English Estates 1789; OHC, QSD L.42; J. H. Clapham, An economic history of modern Britain: the early railway age 1820–1850, 2nd edn (London, 1930), 110–11.

71 Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (hereafter Bodl), MSS. D.D. Dawkins c.41: I.F.2, Land tax redemption certificates; MSS. D.D. Dawkins c.41: I.F.5/1, Terrier of Salford parish, 1770.

72 Eureka Partnership, The people of Steeple Aston, 14–17.

73 OHC, MSS. D.D. Par. Ewelme e.3.

74 Fasnacht, Summertown, 41.

75 OHC, E/6/2/E1/1.

76 OHC, MSS. D.D. Par. Ewelme c.12/a, Deposition of Henry Tidmarsh (n.d.); S.I/i/1, Manor of Benson Court Rolls, 1796.

77 Eureka Partnership, The people of Steeple Aston, 11–13.

78 S. Murrell, ‘Two Salford families’, in Salford: more history of a Cotswold village (Salford History Group, 1985), 37–8; OHC, QSD L.233.

79 Fasnacht and Hicks, The making of a Regency village, 86, 116.

80 Reed, M., ‘The peasantry of nineteenth-century rural England: a neglected class’, History Workshop Journal 18 (1984), 53–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; D. R. Mills, ‘The nineteenth-century peasantry of Melbourn, Cambridgeshire’, in Smith, Land, kinship and life-cycle, 481–518.

81 Broad, ‘Parish economies of welfare’, 992–8. See also S. King and A. Tomkins eds., The poor in England, 1700–1850: an economy of makeshifts (Manchester, 2003); M. Gorsky, Patterns of philanthropy: charity and society in nineteenth-century Bristol (Woodbridge, 1999); Dyson, ‘Welfare provision in Oxford’, 953–9.

82 OHC, MSS. D.D. Par. Ewelme e.3.

83 12th report of the commissioners for inquiring concerning charities, BPP 1825, X, 276.

84 Crossley, VCH Oxon, vol. VI, 70; Crossley, VCH Oxon, vol. XI, 44; J. A. A. Goodall, God's house at Ewelme: life, devotion and architecture in a fifteenth-century almshouse (Aldershot, 2001).

85 See A. Tomkins, ‘Retirement from the noise and hurry of the world? The experience of almshouse life’, in J. McEwan and P. Sharpe eds., Accommodating poverty: the housing and living arrangements of the English poor, c. 1600–1850 (Basingstoke, 2011), 263–83.

86 OHC, MSS. D.D. Par. Oxford St Giles's c.11, Eynsham charity accounts 1798–1854.

87 Dyson, ‘Welfare provision in Oxford’, 956–7.

88 Bodl, MS Top. Oxon. c.476, fol. 108.

89 For an example of such a closed parish, see Broad, ‘Parish economies of welfare’, 992–6.

90 King, Poverty and welfare, 91–3.

91 Abstract of returns, 1803–4; Census 1801; account of money expended for maintenance of poor in England, 1829–34, BPP 1835, XLVIII; Census 1831.

92 See, for instance, Hindle, ‘Power, poor relief, and social relations’, 87–8; Berryman, B., Mitcham settlement examinations 1784–1814, Surrey Record Society 27 (1973), xii–xiiiGoogle Scholar. For the wider context of the laws of settlement, see Snell, Parish and belonging, 81–161.

93 Fasnacht and Hicks, The making of a Regency village, 106; OHC, MSS. D.D. Par. Oxford St Giles b.32.