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The laws of settlement and the surveillance of immigration in eighteenth-century Kent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Norma Landau
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Continuity and Change , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , December 1988 , pp. 391 - 420
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Most prominently among these assessments, Webb, S. and Webb, B., English local government, 7, English poor-law history: part I, The old poor law (London, 1927) 334–43.Google Scholar For a more moderate statement of the evidence on which they based their assertions, seeMarshall, D., The English poor in the eighteenth century (London, 1926) 163–9.Google Scholar

2 (Cambridge, 1985) 18–19.

3 The major constituent statutes of the laws of settlement are: 13 and 14 Charles II c. 12, I James II c. 17, 3 and 4 William and Mary c. 11, and 8 and 9 William III c. 30. For a discussion of the development of this structure, see Taylor, J. S., ‘The impact of pauper settlement 1691–1834’, Past and Present 73 (1976) 42–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Webb, S. and Webb, B., English local government, 1, The parish and the county (London, 1906) 13 n. 2.Google Scholar

5 Webb, S. and Webb, B., The old poor law, 335Google Scholar; Marshall, D., The English poor, 164–6Google Scholar; Hampson, E. M., ‘Settlement and removal in Cambridgeshire, 1662–1834’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 2 (1928)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem, The treatment of poverty in Cambridgeshire 1597–1834, (Cambridge, 1934)Google Scholar chap. XI.

6 3 George II c. 29.

7 See n. 5.

8 Body, George A., ‘The administration of the poor laws in Dorset 1760–1834, with special reference to agrarian distress’, (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Southampton University, 1965) 130Google Scholar; Oxley, G. W., ‘The administration of the old poor law in the west-Derby hundred of Lancashire, 1601–1837’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Liverpool, 1966) 403Google Scholar; Cockburn, J. S., “The work of the North Riding quarter sessions in the early eighteenth century’ (unpublished LL.M. thesis, Leeds University, 1961) 176Google Scholar; Ely, J., ‘The eighteenth-century poor laws in the West Riding of Yorkshire’, American Journal of Legal History, 30 (1985) 5.Google Scholar

9 Marshall, The English poor, 169; S. Webb and B. Webb, The old poor law, 331–5.

10 Lloyd–prichard, M. F., ‘The treatment of poverty in Norfolk from 1700 to 1850’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1949) 183Google Scholar; Hampson, ‘Settlement and removal in Cambridgeshire’, 277; Lehardy, W. J., ed., Hertfordshire county records, 7 (Hertford, 1931), xxvii.Google Scholar

11 This calculation and all other counts in this article exclude examinations and removal orders noted in a petty sessions minute book which refer to immigrants to parishes not in that petty sessional division. Occasionally, parish officers brought settlement business to petty sessions other than their own. Usually this occurred before the late eighteenth century, before all petty sessions met with absolute regularity. Inclusion of such documents would prevent analysis of change in the volume and conduct of a division's settlement business. As certificates to parishes out of the division issued by parishes in the division and examinations relevant to these certificates are revelatory of the manner in which a division's parishes conducted settlement business, these documents are included in the appropriate numerations and calculations.

12 The documents at petty sessions were collated with overseers' accounts and lists of removal orders of the following parishes. The parishes are listed by petty sessional division. Places not within these petty sessional divisions are labelled ‘other parishes’. Unless otherwise noted, these records are deposited at the Kent Archives Office (hereafter Kent A. O.). Wingham division – Ash-next-Sandwich vestry minute books and original removal orders deposited at the parish church; Bromley division – Bromley, Bromley Central Library, vestry record book, Orpington P277/8/1, P277/11/1, and North Gray P102/12/2; Malling division – Aylesford P12/12/4, West Peckham P285/13/2; Sevenoaks division – Cowden P99/12/2, Penshurst P287/13; Sittingbourne division – Hartlip P175/11/4, P175/11/5, Bredgar P43/12/4, P43/12/6, Bobbing P33/13/3, P33/13/4, and Borden P35/12/2; Ashford division – Charing P78/13/1; Bearsted division – Linton P229/12/2; Other parishes – Maidstone P241/13/2, P241/13/5; and in Canterbury Cathedral Library – Petham, U3/84/13/2a, Chislet U3/55/13/1.

13 Oxley, ‘The administration of the old poor law’, 161, states that there was a decline in the percentage of removal orders appealed in Lancashire during the eighteenth century, but does not date this decline more precisely.

14 Public Record Office (hereafter P.R.O.), C231/9.

15 For example: Hampshire Record Office, 18/M51/595, Edward Tenison to Gabriel Walters, Lambeth Palace, May 26, 1709; Kent A.O., U120/011, B. H. Foote to Sir Edward Filmer, July 2; U120/012 papers relating to case of Richard Burden; Wake, J. and Webster, C. C., eds., The letters of Daniel Eaton to the third Earl of Cardigan, 1725–1732, Northamptonshire Record Society, 24 (1971) 11Google Scholar, Daniel Eaton to Lord Cardigan [April 10, 1755].

16 Agreement among justices about interpretation of the settlement laws was most probably fostered by the growing number of judges' decisions. As these laws were relatively new in the eighteenth century, it might be expected that a few decades of judges' decisions would diminish some uncertainties about their application. Nonetheless, since no decision or statute promulgated in George I's reign clarified a dispute of difficulty in the application of these laws relevant to many cases, the evolution of the judges' case law does not explain the precipitous decline in appeals in this period.

17 An assumption maintained despite much evidence to the contrary. For a summary and assessment of that evidence, see Taylor, ‘The impact of pauper settlement’, 58–9.

18 R. Burn, The justice of the peace and parish officer, 3rd edn. (London, 1756), 547 sub ‘Poor (Removal)’.

19 Hampson, The treatment of poverty, 137–8; Hampson, ‘Settlement and removal in Cambridgeshire’, 278–9.

20 Kent A.O., P12/8/1, P285/13/1, P243/13/147.

21 The Malling division is the only division whose minute books cover any of the fifteen years following 1795.

22 Snell, Annals of the labouring poor, 18, argues that the cost of examination was so high that it inhibited examination of all except those who were chargeable or about to become chargeable. The clerk of Sittingbourne petty sessions received 1s. for taking an examination in the 1720s, and 2s. (the fee mandated at Quarter Sessions) for each examination in the 1760s and the 1790s. (Kent A.O., PS/USI,4,6; Q/SO W9, July 14, 1753).

23 The categorisation and numeration of cases resulting in certification, removal, and simply examination requires rules for deciding whether related documents constitute one sustained regulatory action or two actions. I adopted the following arbitrary rules. If a removal order followed within 14 months of examination, then the examination produced the removal order; and if the removal order was issued more than 14 months after examination, then the examination and removal order each constitute a different instance of parochial surveillance. If one or more examinations, each unaccompanied by a removal order, follow within two years of the first examination, or if a certificate follows within two years of the initial examination, all documents together constitute just one instance of parochial surveillance. Very few people appear as the principals in two discrete settlement actions while they remained resident in the same parish; even fewer were the subject of more than one settlement action because, in the periods indicated in Table 1, they were noted first as immigrants to one parish and then to another.

24 These minute books also record 36 removal orders against adult males without accompanying examinations.

25 Examinations from 1717 to 1725 for Sevenoaks, and examinations from 1723 to 1726, 1760 to 1764, 1789 to 1792, for Milton-next Sittingbourne.

26 Kent A.O., P253/8/3; Sevenoaks Library, D292b.

27 Besides the records listed in notes 12 and 20, petty sessions records were also compared with the following parish collections. Unless otherwise noted the following are at the Kent A.O. Sittingbourne division – Bobbing P33/13/1–3, Bredgar P43/8/1, Borden P35/8/2, Milton-next Sittingbourne P253/8/3; Malling division – West Malling list of certificates in Kent A.O. catalogue, Aylesford P12/28/22; Bearsted division – Loose P233/12/6, Lenham P224/8/1; Bromley division – Orpington P277/13/1; Tonbridge division – Tonbridge P371/8/1; Sevenoaks division – Westerham P389/13/1, Cowden P99/13/2, and the following at the Sevenoaks Library, Otford D875, Sevenoaks D292b; Wingham division – Ash-next-Sandwich, in church of same, register of certificates, original certificates; other parishes – Maidstone P241/13/1, New Romney P309/13/2, Sutton at Hone P358/8/1, Tenterden P364/13/1, Cranbrook P100/16/1, and the following at Canterbury Cathedral Library: Petham U3/84/1a, Walmer U360/13/1, St. Dunstan's Canterbury, register of certificates, scrapbook, bundle of certificates.

28 17 George II c. 5, 11 William III c. 18, 12 Anne c. 13.

29 Great Britain, House of Commons, Report from the committee appointed to make enquiries relating to the employment, relief, and maintenance of the poor; the apprehending and passing of vagrants; and regulating house of correction (1776), Fourth Schedule, 64–70. The figure for east Kent is somewhat lower than the average of £13 a year recorded in the treasurer's accounts as spent on vagrants from 1769 to 1771 (Kent A.O., Q/FAe2), and the figure for west Kent is about the same as that spent in 1759 and in 1778 through 1780 (Kent A.O., Q/SO W9, January 1760; Q/SO W 11). Most probably, a large proportion of west Kent's expenditure was devoted to vagrants apprehended in the Blackheath division, the division bordering London whose settlement records are not included in this study. In 1748, the clerk of the division was complaining of the county treasurer's refusal immediately to reimburse Blackheath's high constable for apprehending vagrants; ‘A set of Profligate Wretches tho there may be no danger from at 50 miles from London, yet notwithstanding the greatest Care Swarms so thick about us that we are neither Safe on our Roads, or in our Beds, from their Numbers.’ (Kent A.O., Q/SB 1747, William Radley to David Fuller, Greenwich, Jan. 12, 1747[8]).

30 Overseers' accounts, deposited in Kent A.O. and grouped according to petty sessional division: Bromley division – Orpington P277/8/1, P277/11/1, and North Cray P102/12/2; Malling division – Aylesford P12/12/4; Sevenoaks division – Cowden P99/12/2; Sittingbourne division – Hartlip P175/11/4, P175/11/5, Bredgar P43/12/4, P43/12/6, and Borden P35/12/2.

31 One was resident in Cowden when she was examined.

32 Snell, Annals of the labouring poor, 36–7. Dr Snell has informed me that these figures are based on a relatively small sample of the parish collections he examined. In a more recent analysis of a somewhat larger sample, he found that, for the percentage of examinees living in their parish of settlement, the mean of means of parish collections was nineteen per cent.

33 Body, ‘The administration of the poor laws in Dorset’, 127.

34 Snell, Annals, 17–8.

35 The date of marriage is given for 91 of the 144 males whose married state is noted in the examinations of 1749 through 1757. At least 36 of the 53 married males whose date of marriage is not noted had children living with them at the time of examination and so are unlikely to have married within the preceding two months.

36 This calculation is based only on those whose examinations are recorded in petty sessions records. As the clerks of the Tonbridge and Wingham divisions did not record examinations, these divisions are not included in the calculation.

37 These Kentish examinations display a very similar pattern, whatever the gender of the examinee. Snell (Annals 20, 21) shows that, in the examinations and removal orders for eastern England that he analysed, seasonal pattern did not vary according to gender in the first half of the eighteenth century and there were marked similarities between the seasonal patterns for examination of males and females from 1751 to 1792.

38 Certificates to parishes other than the rural parishes of the Sittingbourne division are excluded from this calculation.

39 The documents comprising these 173 cases are as follows: 88 cases consisting of examinations only; 64 cases consisting of certificates only; 5 cases in which examination and removal resulted in the issue of a certificate; and 16 cases of examination leading to certification.

40 The number of families in the division's rural parishes in 1791 was calculated by multiplying the number of families reported in the 1801 census by the ratio of the number of persons aged 25 or over in 1791 to the number of persons aged 25 or over in 1801. For the age distribution of, and number of, the English population, see Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S., The population history of England 1541–1871 (London, 1981) 529.Google Scholar

41 Possession of a freehold in the parish of residence bestowed a settlement in that parish, but I found no examination of a freeholder living in the parish of his freehold. There are some examinations of persons who paid annual rents of £10 who lived in the parish in which they paid rent. The purpose of such examinations frequently seems to be proof of the settlement, proof desired by the examinee so he can rest assured that he can remain in the parish, or proof desired by the parish officers so that they can tax the examinee without adding to the number of persons claiming settlement in the parish.

42 Newman, A. E., ‘The old poor law in East Kent 1606–1834’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Kent University, 1979), 226, 245, 224.Google Scholar

43 Kent A.O., P35/12/2; Bromley Central Library, Bromley Poor Assessments.

44 If one assumes that 75 per cent of the families in rural Sittingbourne could be impeded by the laws of settlement, then the overseers annually subjected 3.33 per cent of those families to the settlement laws because they had moved.

45 N = 199.

46 Schofield, R. S., ‘Age-specific mobility in an eighteenth-century rural English parish’, Annales de Demographie Historique 1970 (1971), 263.Google Scholar Cardington was larger than these Kentish parishes. It should also be noted that these estimates of annual immigration relate to the whole population.

47 Laslett, P., Family life and illicit love in earlier generations (Cambridge, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, calculated from Table 2.24, 101.

48 Laslett, Family life, 99 table 2.23. The above calculation included among the putative immigrants six households headed by persons who had been servants in Clayworth in 1676. It should be noted that the figures for Clayworth were compiled from sources which would capture annual immigration less completely then those for Cogenhoe, Cardington, and the Sittingbourne division.

49 The small area of these Kentish parishes might transform change of residence into interparochial migration more frequently there than elsewhere.

50 For the marital status of males removed in Cambridgeshire, see Marshall, The English poor, 164–5, and Hampson, ‘Settlement and removal in Cambridgeshire’, 277; in Yorkshire, see Ely, ‘Eighteenth-century poor laws’, 12; in Gloucestershire, Gowing, D., ‘Migration in Gloucestershire 1662–1865. A geographical evaluation of the documentary evidence related to the administration of the law of settlement and removal’ (unpublished Southampton University Ph.D. thesis, 1979), 47Google Scholar; for Kettering, Northamptonshire and Reigate, Essex, see Randall, H. A., ‘Some aspects of population geography in certain rural areas of England in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1971), 198.Google Scholar

51 For further discussion, see Landau, N., ‘Regulation of immigration, economic structures, and definitions of the poor’, Historical JournalGoogle Scholar, forthcoming.

52 This last benison of the certificate was conferred in 1731, by 3 George II c. 29.

53 See Landau, ‘Regulation of immigration’ for discussion of evidence that those whose parish of settlement was at a considerable distance might be allowed to remain uncertificated.

54 Thirty-five per cent of the 81 widows and deserted wives questioned at Kent's petty sessions as to their husband's parish of settlement claimed ignorance, as did a considerable proportion of widows and deserted wives questioned elsewhere (Taylor, ‘The impact of pauper settlement’, 60 n. 47).

55 In 1802, King's Bench ruled that the examination of a dead person was inadmissible as evidence of his settlement (Rex v. Frystone, M. 42 George III). King's Bench had permitted the use of these examinations in the eighteenth century (M. Nolan, A treatise of the laws for the relief and settlement of the poor, 2nd edn. (London, 1808) 1 380–1, sub ‘Of the proofs necessary to support settlement by hiring, etc.’; R. Burn, The justice of the peace and parish officer, 22nd edn. (London, 1814) 4 681–3, sub ‘Poor (Removal)’ section xix 2 g).

56 ‘A bill to prevent unnecessary and vexatious removals’, 1773, reprinted in Lambert, S., ed., House of Commons sessional papers of the eighteenth century (Wilmington, Delaware, 1975) 24 46–7Google Scholar, and same bill introduced in 1774, 125–7; ‘A bill to prevent vexatious removals’, 1782, in ibid. 34 236; ‘A bill [with the amendments] for the preventing vexatious removals’, 1788, ibid. 316; ‘A bill for the preventing vexatious removals’, 1789, ibid. 64 60–1; ‘A bill for preventing the removal of poor persons’, 1794, ibid. 92 41–2, and same bill as amended, 48–9.

57 ‘A bill to prevent the removal of poor persons until they actually become chargeable’, ibid. 95 125–7, and this bill as amended, 133–7.

58 For such discussion, see Landau, N., ‘Regulation of immigration’.Google Scholar

59 Marshall, The English poor, 251; Webb, S. and Webb, B., The old poor law, 348–9Google Scholar, 406–7, 424–7.

60 The debates and proceedings of the House of Commons, during the sixth session of the sixteenth parliament 2. Printed for John Stockdale (London, 1789) 236, Jekyll's speech, May 15, 1789. I wish to thank Joanna Innes for this reference.