How dependent were the ‘dependent poor’? Poor relief and the life-course in Terling, Essex, 17621834.
Despite the vast amount of research that has been published on the life-experiences of the poor in
the final century of the Old Poor Law, historians have only relatively recently begun to undertake
detailed investigations into the functioning of the poor law at a ‘micro-level’ within the parish, and
(in particular) whether it was playing an increasing role in supporting labourers’ household
economies across the life-course after the turn of the nineteenth century.
While the recent emphasis on the many overlapping and contradictory ‘experiences’ of
eighteenth-century poverty has brought a welcome focus on particular groups of recipients, such as
female wage-earners1, illegitimate children2, the elderly poor3, or the chronically sick4, this may have
come at the expense of an understanding of the composition or changing needs of the totality of
recipients in any particular parish. This holistic approach has been pursued most extensively in the
studies of Barry Stapleton, Thomas Sokoll, Steve King, Pamela Sharpe, Samantha Williams and
Samantha Shave.5 So far, only Susannah Ottaway, Samantha Williams and Samantha Shave have
reconstructed these life-time experiences of poor relief recipients, by assembling ‘pauper
biographies’ and assessing the flows of relief across the life-course between 1760 and 1834.6
Ottaway demonstrates the expansion in reliance on poor relief among elderly residents in
Terling and Puddletown, compared to Ovenden, Halifax, but also the diminution on the intensity of
care by the end of the eighteenth century.7 Williams and Shave both conclude that the size and
diversity of relief payments expanded in the period after 1795, but that dependence was by no
means uniform or universal.8 Williams’ study of two Bedfordshire parishes, (rural) Campton and
(small-town) Shefford, emphasized the importance of the life-course in driving demand for relief.
Most regular pensioners were the elderly and lone parents.9 Their numbers were swelled by coupleheaded families who received family-allowances during the agrarian crisis between ‘December 1799
and March 1802’.10 However, she finds that ‘while the secondary literature assumes the widespread
1
allocation of relief’ to such families after 1795, ‘such assistance was in fact far more sporadic and
limited’ in practice.11 Over time, though, rising levels of illegitimacy brought more lone women onto
the relief lists, while men over 60 years of age were increasingly crowded out of the over-stocked
post-war labour market.12 Even so, Williams found that ‘the vast majority of poverty was not
inherited by children from their parents’.13 Consequently, she concludes that ‘the pauper
biographies provide strong evidence that such relief was restricted to economic crises and was
largely supplementary in nature’, with only a minority of residents in Campton and Shefford (albeit a
‘substantial’ one) experiencing poverty that was more ‘life-time’ than ‘life-cycle’, extending across
concentrated periods of years.14
Shave’s micro-historical investigation into the relief histories of eight paupers in the Dorset
village of Motcombe questions many existing assumptions about the reasons why individuals
received relief, and whether occasional payments actually indicated ‘dependence’. She reveals a
very complicated relationship to relief, in which there were ‘notable absences of the poor law in
adults’ lives, absences which complicate the idea of a blanket dependency’.15 There was no
invariable rule that those with large families would seek relief, or become reliant on it. There was no
certainty that such families would come to depend on regular weekly or monthly pensions. Indeed,
the earning capacity of older children, or their residence elsewhere could reduce the dependency of
larger families.16 The Motcombe overseers displayed a tendency to employ single mothers as
servants to the parish workhouse, but apart from that they shared the highly varied and intermittent
patterns of relief experienced by other women, and men.17 Consequently, she argues that ‘there was
no solitary, universal experience of poverty within the context of the parish… [and] many welfares
under the provisions of the old poor law, not just one’.18
Such conclusions remind us that all relief decisions had a personal, human dimension,
however neat and impersonal the records appear in the surviving Overseers’ account books. They
also emphasize that we can impose distortions when we seek to abstract general trends from a
2
series of specific and highly individualised relief decisions. Any assessment of the extent of
households’ dependence on poor relief is fraught with issues of definition. As Karel Williams
observed in 1981, the Old Poor Law never resembled a ‘social security system’, because it never
comprehended all welfare needs (sickness, disability and residential care, income support,
unemployment assistance, universal old-age benefits) , and never attempted the necessary ‘detailed
differentiation of beneficiaries’.19 It provided some of these services, but generally to only a minority
of possible beneficiaries, and did so intermittently and (often) inadequately. Apart from those
profoundly disabled, chronically sick, or in extreme old-age, almost no-one depended 100-per-cent
on the parish for their subsistence. Instead, most recipients’ recourse to the parish was infrequent
and partial – during intervals in which earning capacity was reduced by bereavement, desertion,
accidents, sickness, pregnancy, inadequate employment opportunities, or insufficient wage-rates.20
If the degree of ‘dependence’ was relative, then so must be our judgements about the adequacy of
the institutional response. Unsurprisingly, therefore, historians have tended to divide between
‘optimists’ and ‘pessimists’ in interpreting the depth of poverty and the ‘generosity’ or otherwise of
overseers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.21
As King notes, ‘generosity’ is a difficult analytical concept because it so open-ended, and
potentially subjective – ‘generous’ compared to what, or ‘generous’ according to whom?22 In this
study, we will focus instead on the related concept of ‘dependence’, because it appears possible to
establish whether or not parish relief became more or less significant in labourers’ household
economies without the having to pass judgement on how such provision might have been perceived
by its recipients. Relative levels of ‘dependence’ can be analysed by examining changes over time in:
the age-, gender-profile and life-course experience of recipients; the frequency, value and purpose
of payments; and the size of relief payments compared to levels of adequate household income. In
doing so, this study attempts to integrate the approaches of Williams and Shave, in two ways. The
first is to link Shave’s forensic exploration of family circumstances to Williams’ awareness of the
broader dynamics of economic change and the pressures on relief expenditure. The second is to try
3
to strike the difficult balance between the depiction and recognition of the sub-atomic oscillations of
individual relief decisions, and the identification of regularities in some of these movements, in
certain circumstances, for particular categories of recipients, at specific points in the life-cycle.
1
This study concentrates on a detailed analysis of poor relief payments in the Essex parish of Terling
between 1762 and 1834. Terling is very well known in the social history of early modern England,
because it was the subject of Keith Wrightson and David Levine’s pioneering 1979 village study.23 It
has also featured in research on poverty in the eighteenth century, by Richard Smith and Susanna
Ottaway.24 An important legacy of this previous research is that the Cambridge Group for Population
and Social Structure (CAMPOP) holds a family reconstitution of the village, which has been consulted
for this study.25
In addition, this research is based on a full transcription of all poor law payments to named
individuals in Terling between 1762 and 1834, whether these were in the form of weekly pensions,
occasional payments, or a third category of ‘additional allowances’.26 Weekly pensions, or ‘weekly
allowances’ as they were termed in the overseers’ accounts, were specific sums allocated to be paid
weekly to particular recipients, listed at Michaelmas and Easter and adjusted through the year.
‘Additional allowances’ were first listed in 1808, as a form of regular, defined additional family
allowance paid primarily to male householders, and were recorded for the years 1808-9, 1816-19,
1824-9 and 1832-33 inclusive. All other payments recorded by the overseers, described here as
‘occasional payments’, were irregular, responsive and discretionary. As Ottaway has shown, 40-50
per cent of these payments were made ‘in kind’ in Terling, but almost always had a cash value
attributed to them.27 The analysis is based on these cash values, throughout. There were 86,545
4
weekly pension payments transcribed for the period 1752 and 1834; 48,911 occasional payments
between 1762 and 1834; and 8,345 additional payments between 1808 and 1834. In total, 143,801
payments were transcribed, paid to 1,498 separate recipients.28
These payments were recorded in an MS Access database, with a number of entry
protocols.29 Firstly, all payments were attributed directly to a single named beneficiary rather than
any intermediary recipient (such as a husband or parent). This might overstate the total number of
recipients, but it avoids inflating the sums received by each recipient. Secondly, recipients were
located within family groups identified by the CAMPOP family reconstitution. This helped confirm
their identity by reference to parents, siblings and respective ages, as far as possible.30 Inevitably,
some of these identifications remain tenuous, particularly in a village where there were, for
example, eight women called Mary Thurgood and five men called William White all in residence
simultaneously! Thirdly, the dates of each payment were converted to a weekly number, using a 53week year to allow for years beginning and ending in mid-week. Payments were then summed per
person, per denominated week, to create weekly totals that could add together payments of weekly
pensions, occasional payments and additional allowances to the same person in the same week.
2
Later eighteenth-century Terling was characterised by a sharp tripartite distinction between
landlord, tenant-farmers and waged agrarian labourers. Although 32 per cent of all household
members in the village were employed ‘chiefly in agriculture’ in 1801, the majority were either
agricultural day labourers, or casual field-workers. By 1820, the Strutt family owned almost all the
land in the parish. They rented their estate to approximately 20 tenant-farmers, who controlled the
parish vestry. In 1800, nine out of the 12 largest rate-payers were John Strutt’s tenants and the
5
parish vestry was a tightly-knit body in which the voices of 15-20 individuals predominated, even
before it opted for ‘select’ status under Sturges-Bourne’s Act.31 Although the Strutt family exerted
considerable influence in the village, the vestry was capable of independent action. For example, in
March 1824, the vestry thanked Col. Joseph Strutt for his offer of a parcel of land ‘rent free for the
purpose of employing the Poor in spade husbandry’, but rejected it because they were
‘apprehensive that it is not likely to be beneficial to the Parish’.32
The general pattern of poor relief expenditure in Terling reflected the growth of the
agricultural day-labour force, and supports existing depictions of a narrowing of alternative
employment opportunities, particularly for women and children in southern and eastern England.33
Table 1 sets Terling within the context of the county as a whole, and places the parochial returns to
parliament of the number and status of relief recipients in the year 1802-3 alongside parish
population figures for 413 Essex parishes in the 1801 Census. As Sokoll’s work on the Essex parish of
Braintree suggests, such figures are likely to be underestimates, but they provide a fairly consistent
basis for comparisons.34 In Witham Hundred, in which Terling was located, the numbers relieved in
the year Easter 1802-3 were equivalent to 21 per cent of the 1801 population.35 In Terling itself, the
figure was 18 per cent. Proportions of between 10 and 20 per cent were common in south Essex
(Barstable, Becontree, Chafford, Havering Liberty, Rochford, Thurstable, Waltham and Dengie
Hundreds), west Essex (Uttlesford & Freshwell Hundreds), and around Colchester (Colchester
borough, Tendring, Lexden and Harwich boroughs). The highest proportions of recipients (25-34 per
cent of the 1801 population) were in the populous, former cloth-producing hundreds of Hinckford,
Dunmow, and around Chelmsford, in the north and centre of the county. This echoes the
distributions of exemptions observed in the county in the mid-seventeenth century Hearth Taxes.36
Figure 1 depicts the longer-term dynamic of relief levels in the parish by illustrating the total
amounts paid per year to recipients of the three types of outdoor relief granted in Terling, weekly
allowances, irregular ‘occasional’ payments and additional allowances at constant 1778 prices. The
6
chronology of change in Terling resembles Sokoll’s study of Ardleigh (but not Braintree), Williams’
Bedfordshire parishes, and Baugh’s figures for southern England.37 Before 1775, the parish spent
generally less than £100 per annum, and made between 500 and 1,000 relief payments each year in
total.38 Between the late 1770s and the early 1790s, total expenditure regularly exceeded £100 per
annum, with a shallower rate of increase in the number of payments made each year. With the onset of the wartime harvest failures and price inflation from 1794, total spending immediately
doubled to £200 and then rose sharply to peak at over £500 in 1801. At the same time, the annual
number of relief payments also doubled to over 2,000 per annum. Once the crisis of 1800-1 had
subsided, relief levels stabilised at approximately double their pre-war level until the winter of 1815.
Relief levels peaked in 1816 at over £850 and nearly 5,000 payments (almost eight and five times the
respective figures for 1760-4). From then until 1825 expenditure never fell below £500, and was
rarely below £600, with more than 3,000 payments per year being made until 1830.
In general terms, there were similar changes in the numbers of actual recipients of this
relief, shown in Figure 2.39 On average, in each year between 1770 and 1774 65 persons had
received some form of relief, with around ten receiving regular weekly ‘pensions’. Between 1816
and 1833, at least 150 persons per annum received poor relief of some sort, of whom over 30 were
weekly ‘pensioners’. This total increase of 230 per cent was rather more than the 137 per cent
increase in the village’s total population (from approximately 650 to 890). On average, between
1820 and 1824, 22 persons per annum received relief for more than 50 weeks, where only 4 had
done so in the early 1770s (an increase of 550 per cent).
This evidence supports Eastwood’s contention that a fundamental shift occurred in the
extent and patterns of poor relief after 1795.40 In Terling, during the crisis years 1795-1801 and again
between 1815 and 1818 relief bills and relief rolls ballooned, because increasing sums of money
were paid to a larger number of people in more weeks each year.
7
3
This secular deterioration provides the background for a more detailed examination of the potential
role of poor relief within household economies, particularly in the period after 1795.41This task is
made easier because of the recording practices in Terling. In addition to recording Census returns in
the parish accounts in 1801 and 1811 (plus an informal parish census of 1809), the overseers also
surveyed the resident family units of those in receipt of relief in 1801, 1803, 1809 and 1811.42 In
doing so, they recorded the composition of the resident family members, including ages, state of
health (1801) and the number of children still at home.43 They also required relief recipients to
report their earnings, and distinguished between those of men, women and children, as well as
allowances received from the parish.
This information provides a preliminary definition of the notion of ‘dependence’ in the
village. The 1801 listing recorded 70 family groups, comprising 250 individuals. This represented 42
per cent of the 168 family units listed in the 1801 parish census, and 35 per cent of the 708
inhabitants.44 In fact, as Sokoll has observed, such a snap-shot measure under-records the total
number of inhabitants exposed to poor relief within Terling.45 Over time, 94 families (55 per cent) in
the 1801 Census, comprising as many as 367 individuals (52 per cent) received some kind of parish
relief.
Of the 69 pauper families listed in 1801, 15 were headed by women (21 per cent), mostly
widows, seven of whom were aged over 60. The 54 male-headed family units reflected a broader
age-range. Four were headed by men aged under 30, 20 by men aged between 30 and 40 years, 6 by
men aged 40 to 50 years, 5 by men in their 50s, and 19 by men aged over 60 years. The proportion
over 60 years old (38 per cent) was in line with the average of 34 per cent given by Ottaway for
southern and eastern England.46 This relatively wide spread of ages among male householders hints
8
at the new situation in the parish after 1795, in which a majority of regular male recipients were
able-bodied, wage-earners, whose poverty was a result of changing economic circumstances rather
than personal misfortune. In fact, only two out of the 35 male householders aged below 60 years
were recorded as not being in ‘good’ health. By contrast, only four out of the 19 aged over 60
enjoyed such ‘good’ health.
Similarly, in 1801, although some pauper families were big, their mean size was little
different to that of the entire parish, unlike in Ardleigh.47 In 1801, the mean size of the 94 units who
had, or would, receive relief was 4.3 (with a median of 4), while for the 74 families who never
received relief it was 4.9 (median also of 4). The difference was probably caused by lower number of
resident adolescent children in recipients’ families. In the pauper list of 1801 no resident child was
over 15 years old.48 These figures were somewhat lower than in 1778, when Ottaway found that
male-headed pauper households had 5.4 residents and female-headed households had 5.1. Perhaps
adolescent children were being bound out to service more systematically in 1801, as Sokoll suggests
in Ardleigh.49
The 1801 listing also detailed earnings per household, including casual earnings by women
and children, a practice repeated in 1803, 1809 and 1811. Obviously, there was an incentive to
understate earnings. However, given that at least 66 out of the 94 pauper family units in 1801 (70
per cent) were employed in ‘husbandry’ by the farmers who made up the parish ‘committee’ the
overseers could easily have checked these stated earnings.
Such considerations are important, because the figures reported in the 1801 pauper list
appear relatively high, compared to other estimates for the county. The figures were gathered in
January, so should not be distorted by harvest bonuses.50 Among male householders aged 22-39,
mean weekly earnings were 9.58s. per head, and mean total household income per week was 11.9s.,
compared to Richardson’s findings of a mean of 8s. 8d. for agricultural labourers in Essex in 1801.51
Among men aged between 40 and 59 years the figures were 10.1s. earnings and 13.1s. per week
9
household income. This suggests that labourers achieving total household income levels in excess of
county means were still in need of income supplements from the parish.52 These high male wagerates echo the conclusions of Snell, Horrell and Humphries, and Burnette that over the same period
employment opportunities and wages were increasingly concentrated on the male ‘breadwinner’.53
This may not fully have compensated for the corresponding reduction in women’s and children’s
earnings, in the absence of by-employments such as straw-plaiting, stocking-knitting or spinning in
mid-Essex.54
The survey suggested that poor relief comprised only a small percentage of household
income, making up only nine per cent of income for households headed by men aged 22-39 years
(the same contribution as women and children’s earnings), and only two per cent for those headed
by men aged 40-59 years (compared to 13.5 per cent from women and children’s earnings). Relief
was more significant among households headed by men aged over 60 years, but still comprised only
27 per cent of total household income, similar to proportions in Campton and Shefford.55 Even
among this group male earnings made up 63 per cent of total income. In 1809, relief was still
relatively marginal to the total household incomes of working-age men. Male householders aged 3039 received only five per cent of their income in relief payments, while those aged 40-59 years
received only 10 per cent of their income in relief, compared to 18 per cent from women and
children’s earnings. By contrast those aged over 65 now received 75 per cent of their income in relief
payments, closer to the 90 per cent of ‘minimum wages’ observed by Ottaway among recipients of
formal weekly ‘pensions’ in Terling, 1770-94.56
Women’s and children’s earnings in family units headed by men in 1801 amounted to only
1.8s. per unit in the 25 families (out of 55) in which they were recorded – or 16 per cent of total
household income, in line with Verdon’s findings for Essex in the period.57 The situation was even
bleaker in 1809. Even for women of working age (aged 30-59 years), earnings made up only 7 per
cent of their total household income. Children added another 10 per cent, but the remaining 83
10
percent came from the parish, in line with the findings of Snell and Millar.58 Only the contribution of
children lifted these women out of the same plight as those in their 60s and 70s, who received 93
per cent of their household income from the parish.
Given these findings, how should we begin to define ‘dependence’ on poor relief? The outer
parameters seem fairly clear. Female-headed households who derived 80 or 90 percent of their
income from poor relief were clearly dependent on the parish for their basic daily subsistence. Their
situation was fundamentally different from that of households headed by men aged less than 60
years, where relief provided less than 10 per cent of household income. However, we should
perhaps distinguish between dependence (poor relief as the largest single source of subsistence)
from reliance (poor relief as a significant and recurrent, but not sufficient, component of household
income). Dependence and reliance can only be reconstructed through a dynamic rather than a static
analysis, which assesses how often (as well as how much) relief was received in each year. The
dataset enables this analysis to be taken further than in previous studies, because allows us to
calculate the precise number of weeks in which relief was received, by every recipient across the
period 1762-1834. The patterns revealed also imply a deeper reshaping of household economies,
particularly a loss of resilience (through declines in the value of alternative sources of income, from
women and children), and the devotion of an increasing proportion of the weekly wage to food.
4
We can obtain a more detailed understanding of these dynamics by examining three groups of
listings of inhabitants or relief recipients, for whom more detailed age and life-course information is
available. The first, taken in 1775, lists 93 family groups, plus 14 families being relieved in outlying
parishes and four fractured families in the workhouse.59 Of these, 126 women and 108 men can be
11
identified in the database, and baptism dates attributed to them. The second is the 1801 listing
discussed above.60 The third incorporates all those who received relief in the database in 1810,
cross-referenced with listings of family groups taken on 4th Feb. 1809 and 4th May 1811.61 It records
the baptism dates of 40 women and girls, and 56 men and boys, of whom, 72 can be identified.
This additional information allows us to examine the relative value and intensity of relief for
recipients from across the age-spectrum among these two groups. Figures 3 & 4 illustrate the mean
values for women and men in the 1775, 1801 and 1810 groups of each individual payment received
by each person in each year between 1770 and 1835. These means have been distributed across the
age-range in each year, and controlled for the effects of inflation. While they follow the classic
Seebohm Rowntree profile of increased expenditure in late adolescence, they also support George
Boyer’s argument that the real value of per capita relief did not increase in southern England during
the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, contrary to Baugh’s findings.62 If anything, the
real per capita value of each payment declined slightly between 1775 and 1810, and tended to
remain between 3 s. and 4s – that is, at approximately 25 per cent of total household income.63
Although total relief bills increased enormously this was not because relief was being paid out to
individual recipients in larger amounts.
Tables 2 and 3 break down this general picture by illustrating the proportion of the total
sums paid to different age categories of women and men in the 1775, 1801 and 1810 groups. Several
changes over time are apparent. Firstly, as Ottaway found, until the mid-1790s women in all three
groups tended to receive a higher proportion of the value of poor relief than did men.64 The total
proportion of relief allocated to women peaked in the period 1790-1804, whereas for men the peak
came between 1805 and 1820. After 1800 female recipients never received a greater proportion of
the value of relief than men. Women may have sought relief more often between 1794 and 1800
because their earnings suffered more than men’s in the first round of wartime inflation, possibly
because men and boys took on their tasks as real wage costs fell. This shift might have been
12
exacerbated after 1800 if payments to women were increasingly subsumed within ‘household’ relief
payments to men.
Even so, between 1800 and 1825 the largest share of the value of relief clearly went to
working age men, aged 25-44 and 45-59. Relief was paid to these men primarily in the form of
occasional payments (income supplements) plus ‘additional allowance’ payments based on family
size after 1808, rather than weekly pensions. As male householders in each of these groups reached
old age in the 1820s and early 1830s, they received larger proportions of the total value of relief,
whereas their female peers generally did not.
The cause of the rises in relief costs is suggested by one of the key findings of this research,
shown in Figures 5 and 6. These depict the percentage of weeks per year in which relief was received
by each age group. The contrast between the experiences of women and men is instructive. All other
things being equal, we might expect the relief pattern for all recipients to match that of the women
in these two groups. Figure 5 shows a relatively linear increase in the frequency of relief for women,
from low levels of less than 5 weeks per annum before the mean age of first marriage (except for the
spikes associated with leaving for service), to 10-15 weeks per annum in child-bearing years, to 2025 weeks in later middle age, and 30-40 weeks per annum once over the age of 75 (the latter in line
with Ottaway’s findings).65 The same pattern recurs among the other two groups, although
adolescent girls in the 1810 group were much more likely to receive relief than their peers in the
1770s and 1780s, implying a diminution in either work opportunities or families’ capacity to equip
them for service.
Significantly, the male recipients in Figure 6 contradict this relatively linear picture. The 1775
group illustrate a more expected trend, of relatively infrequent relief until the onset of illness and
infirmity after the age of 60, with rapid rises thereafter, to an earlier peak than for women –
reflecting lower adult male life expectancy. The 1810 group follows the same overall trend, but with
substantial increases in the frequency with which relief was received. The increases are most striking
13
among working-age men, whose relief trajectory might have been expected to follow that of the
1775 group. Men aged 28 to 38 and 44 to 58 years received relief in twice as many weeks as their
peers in the earlier group, and about as often as women in the same group. Figure 6 also supports
the 1809 income survey, by indicating that men over the age of 70 were now wholly excluded from
the labour market in ways that had not been the case among the 1775 group.66
Receiving relief for up to five weeks per annum cannot be equated with ‘dependence’, nor
does it represent significant ‘reliance’. Instead, it is a short-term measure to plug a hole in the family
finances. This appears to have been the character of relief for working-age men in Terling in the later
eighteenth century. We might define ‘reliance’ on relief as the need to claim it for more than one-inthree, or one-in-two weeks per annum, so that it became a regular, unavoidable component of
household budgets, even if it was not the primary source of subsistence. For men among the 1775
listing, this need was incurred after the age of 60 years, and for women (particularly widows) after
about the age of 45 years. For men among the 1810 group, such reliance was reached in the same
age-range as for women, and even occurred in their late 20s, the age at which their daily labour
capacity must surely have been at its maximum. Such men were not receiving more relief per
payment in each age range, but they were now receiving twice as many payments per annum than
the previous generation.
5
If the total income of a male-headed household after 1800 in Terling was approximately 12s. per
week, what levels of relief indicate ‘reliance’ and ‘dependence’? We can draw arbitrary distinctions
at the levels of 4s. per payment per person, and 8s. The long-term, inflation-adjusted mean figure of
4s. per payment equates to a quarter of this weekly income for male households, but perhaps half
14
the income allocated to large female-headed households, and more than the maximum normally
allowed to lone males or females. A figure of 8s. per payment, equates to 50-75 per cent of maleheaded total household income, and the maximum normally allocated to larger female-headed
households. If sustained over 10 or 20 weeks per annum, the former sum implies ‘reliance’ on relief
for a regular, substantial portion of household income, while the latter suggests significant
dependence.
Tables 4 to 7 depict the distribution of the total value of payments above 4s. per week to
recipients of different ages within these three recipient groups. They illustrate payments on either
side of the threshold outlined above. Tables 4 and 5 detail the distribution of the total value of
payments over 8s. per week, averaged for each age group over five-year intervals. The distribution is
for women and men in the groups follows a pattern illustrated by Sokoll in Braintree, because it
suggests that those under 25 tended to receive the biggest share of the value of these payments,
rather than middle-aged men and women with families.67 In Terling, payments for adolescents were
often inflated by clothing costs, and ‘boarding out’ payments incorporating subsistence. The value of
payments to men in middle-age increased after 1800, reflecting wartime inflation and the gradual
ageing of the sample groups. By contrast, throughout the period, adult women rarely received
payments equivalent to more than 50 per cent of the adult male wage, except for one-off costs such
as clothing or medical bills.
Men aged over 45 years absorbed the largest proportion of the value of payments of 4-8s.
per week after 1800, particularly those recipients listed in 1801 and 1810. Again, this distribution
may reflect both the gradual increase in the mean age of the sample over time, and also the
crowding-out of older workers in an over-stocked rural labour market after 1815. This is more
noticeable, because it does not occur among female recipients, whose share of the value of these
payments dropped significantly in the years after 1800. Again, this highlights a wider shift of
payments away from women in the 22-59 age ranges and towards men of the same age. While this
15
may reflect growing dominance of the idea of the male ‘breadwinner’, it might also reflect changes
in the patterns of need created by falling real wage levels.
Relief payments proliferated among labouring families in Terling not as a substitute for
wages, but rather as a less dramatic supplement to household incomes. The pressure on household
incomes is shown in Table 7 not by dramatic shifts, but by the slow and inexorable increases in the
proportion of relief paid at 4-8s. per week to male household heads aged 45-59, and 60-74 years.
Among recipients in the 1775 group, approximately 10 per cent of the value of such payments had
gone to these two age groups between 1770 and 1794. Between 1800 and 1820 the proportion was
40-50 per cent. Among the 1801 group, the proportions were closer to 70 per cent between 1820
and 1834, and were similar among the 1810 group. Some of these increases reflected the ageing
sample groups, but they also demonstrate that poor relief was becoming an increasingly
indispensable and unavoidable part of their household budgets.
6
We can get a better sense of some of the reasons for these shifts, and the place of relief within
labourers’ household economies, by focusing in detail on one of our three sample groups, the 1801
pauper listing. This group was recorded mid-way across the time-period, allowing us to observe its
fortunes for equal lengths of time back to 1762 and on towards 1834. It also experienced the brunt
of the price rises after 1794 and was still economically active in the difficult decade after 1815.
Consequently, this group provides a valuable case-study of the relief history of a particularly
vulnerable population.
Figure 7 applies the 8s. per week threshold to women and men in the 1801 pauper list and
reveals a sharp distinction between their experiences over time. For women, the peaks in relief
16
came earlier, after the first price shock in 1794 and again in 1801. For men, the highest frequency of
relief at this level was in the post-war slump after 1815, as in Campton and Shefford and most of
southern England.68 Figure 8 illustrates the 1790s in greater detail. It shows that between the
autumn of 1794 and the summer of 1797 half the payments to women in this group were at, or
above, 8s. per week. By contrast, in the subsequent two years almost all payments were below this
threshold. Much of the increase in these payments came from more money being paid to widows in
the form of additional ‘occasional payments’, with the largest increases being incurred for ‘general
allowances’ to this group. In the five years after 1794 the largest increase in relief payments to the
1801 pauper list women was in the 40-59 and over-60 age groups. In fact, the short-term
‘emergency’ occasional payments which began in the autumn of 1794 and spring of 1795 were
eventually translated into increases in ‘weekly allowances’ by the winter of 1796-7.
This trend may indicate that female householders, whose incomes in 1801 averaged only
3.1s. per week, were the most vulnerable to the first wave of price increases after the autumn of
1794. For women in middle age with dependent children, or over 60 and in ‘indifferent’ health in
1801, this price shock may have changed their relationship to the poor relief system from one of
marginal need (particularly for more expensive items of clothing), plus periods of intermittent
dependence (during illness), to more persistent reliance on pensions or supplements – albeit, not
outright dependence until the onset of old age. Where this most marginal income group led, much
of the rest of the village’s male labouring population followed.
7
Once again, Figure 9 focuses in detail on the 5-year period in which large payments to men were
most pronounced, between 1815 and 1819. It is clear that there was a prolonged rise in the number
17
of payments to male recipients in the 1801 pauper listing between the autumn of 1815 and the
spring of 1818. From the summer of 1816 to the spring of 1818, the group received at least half of
the value of their relief in payments of 8s. or more. In the winter of 1817-18, between a third and a
half of the value of these payments were for sums of 12s. per recipient per week. In fact, this 1801
group regularly received 25 to 30 per cent of all payments in excess of 8s. per week in this period,
despite comprising only 14 per cent of all recipients in this period.
These sums imply that all these men were either completely without work or able to earn
less than half their normal income between the autumn of 1816 and the spring of 1818.69 More
speculatively, Figure 10 implies that if relief payments of 8s. per week to adult males indicate an
income deficiency of 75 per cent, and payments over 12s. suggest deficiencies close to 100 per cent,
then the winter of 1816-17 stands out as one in which as many as 20 per cent of all relieved family
units in the village (not just the 1801 group) repeatedly required relief payments equivalent to 75
per cent of their weekly income, with half of all recipients requiring payments equivalent to 50 per
cent of income. The former figure was perhaps double the usual level in the five-year period as a
whole.
For adult ‘breadwinners’, poor relief functioned primarily as an income supplement, even in
years as difficult as those immediately after the Napoleonic Wars. However, there were times when
they had to draw on it to supply a full week’s wage, generally when incapacitated by illness or injury.
In Terling, at least, the sums provided by the overseers seem to have been paid at realistic
replacement levels: 12-15s., or more, for a family of five to seven members, 6-7s. for a family of
three or four, and 4-5s. for an elderly husband and wife. These sums also support the general
contention of Morgan and Ó Gráda that ‘expenditure per head tended to be higher in the high-wage
parishes’.70
The fact that such payments were needed implies that the larger labouring families in
Terling lacked significant financial reserves. The largest households had at least one decade in which
18
a male head had five to seven mouths to feed, with few other sources of income. Normally, such
working-age householders resorted to poor relief perhaps only once every couple of months, when
family illness, or abnormal expenses, exceeded their weekly budgets. However, they seem to have
coped by devoting all their income to immediate needs, and were unable to build up savings to deal
with sudden shortfalls. It is clear that in relatively short-lived, but acute ‘crisis’ periods, such as 17945, 1799-1801, or 1815-17, many of these families may have become ‘dependent’ on the parish for
the bulk of their income. At other times, they were much more likely than their parents or grandparents had been to receive ‘occasional’ relief from the parish in perhaps 10 to 20 weeks per year.
8
Clearly, in Terling between 1762 and 1834 there were substantial changes in the size and regularity
of poor relief payments, and the profile of their recipients. These reflected a real, and appreciable,
growth in ‘reliance’ on poor relief by a substantial section of the agrarian labour force. Even so, we
can agree with Shave and Williams that the significance of these changes should not be exaggerated.
The dramatic increases registered in Figure 1 reflects the fact that an average of just under 50
people required substantial relief for 30 weeks or more each year after 1810, compared to an
average of eight per annum who had such a need in the early 1770s. Similarly, except in the crisis
years between 1794-6, 1800-1, and 1816-8, most recipients received individual sums that amounted,
at most, to perhaps only one-third or a half of adult male weekly earnings. The majority of recipients
undoubtedly received sums that made a substantial contribution to their household budgets (of up
to 6 or 7s.), but only for a week or two in each year.
As Williams has emphasized in Bedfordshire, most relief went to the same categories of
recipients as it had always done: orphaned children, single-parent families, large and sickly families,
19
those with chronic illnesses or disabling injuries, and the elderly who were no longer capable of
work. Although the numbers in most of these categories increased over time and the sums
expended rose substantially, this represented a simple intensification of the existing system.
However, the Terling evidence also qualifies Williams’ conclusion that ‘the huge shift in
welfare provisioning in favour of families, assumed as a given in the secondary literature, is simply
not evident at the micro-level’.71 Clearly, as Williams and Sokoll have shown, the welfare regime of
every parish differed slightly, according to local needs and the ‘welfare cultures’ that emerged
through the dialectic between ratepayers and recipients. Terling was more like Ardleigh than it was
like Campton or Shefford, because the vestry favoured extensive occasional relief over intensive
pension payments. Like Ardleigh, and unlike Braintree or the Bedfordshire parishes, it lacked much
non-agricultural employment, and possessed few jobs for women and children.
Even so, the development of regular payments to able-bodied, working age individuals and
families was a new, and highly important, feature in the parish’s relief system after 1795. The
expansion in expenditure after 1800 was driven by profound but subtle changes in the frequency
with which working-age families required relief. These had knock-on effects for existing groups of
recipients, diminishing the proportions of relief paid to the elderly, and (above all) directly to
women. While male householders only slipped into outright ‘dependence’ during acute familial or
economic crises, they experienced a creeping ‘reliance’ on relief through ‘family allowances’,
equivalent to 20-30 per cent of anticipated family income, for 10 or 20 weeks per year. For others,
the need to devote more and more income to the purchase of food resulted in a greater intensity
and value of ad hoc payments in each year. As in much of southern England, this pattern was at its
most pronounced in the dreadful period between the autumn of 1815 and the autumn of 1817,
when a deep but predictable post-war agrarian depression was amplified significantly by the
consequences of a freak climatic conditions experienced in 1816 (‘the year without a summer’).
20
Then, the parish was forced into the unprecedented step of providing sums equivalent to 50-75 per
cent of household income for perhaps half the families on relief.
If we take this period as the absolute nadir of dependence, then it represents the effects of
persistent unemployment among perhaps 14 per cent of family groups, and 17 per cent of the
population (that is, approximately 21 family heads, out of a total of 148 families in 1811, and 131
inhabitants out of a total of 759). This may have represented 20-25 per cent of the adult wageearning population of the village at this time.72 This was a real, and sharp, economic crisis, that
exacerbated a situation in which perhaps 5-10 per cent of the household heads found themselves
regularly, and significantly, short of funds at the end of each week.
This research supports the verdict of other local studies, and of Karel Williams, that the Old
Poor Law never became a comprehensive welfare system providing substantial long-term assistance
to the working age population of southern England after 1795. However, it also shows that the
relative levels of dependency represented by payments to labouring families are less important than
the absolute fact that relief was now being paid intermittently to working-age men, who had only
ever received it in emergencies in the generation before 1795. This relatively undramatic re-drawing
of the boundaries of entitlement still resulted in 230 per cent increase in the numbers of recipients,
and a 300 per cent real-terms increase in relief bills between the 1770s and 1810s. As in other
agricultural parishes, after the price-shocks of the late 1790s the ratepayers of Terling preferred to
substitute individual relief awards for a general increase in wage-rates, despite their apparently high
level.73 Reliance on relief accumulated silently in Terling, without ever registering a ‘huge shift’, but it
tipped the balance in the pattern of dependence nonetheless.
21
1
K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor: social change and agrarian England, 1660-1900 (Cambridge,
1985); S. Horrell & J. Humphries, ‘Women’s labour force participation and the transition to the malebreadwinner family, 1790-1865’, Economic History Review, xlviii (1995), 89-117; J. Humphries, Childhood and
Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 2010); J. Broad, ‘Parish economies of welfare,
1650-1834’, Historical Journal, xlii (1999), 985-1006; N. Verdon, Rural Workers in Nineteenth-Century England:
Gender, Work and Wages (Woodbridge, 2002); J. Burnette, Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution
Britain (Cambridge, 2007); S. Williams, ‘Poor relief, labourers’ households and living standards in rural England,
c. 1770-1834: a Bedfordshire case-study’, Economic History Review, lviii (2005), 485-519; S. Williams, Poverty,
Gender and Life-Cycle under the English Poor Law (Woodbridge, 2011); G. Shepherd, ‘Income, Domestic
Economy and the Distribution of Poverty amongst Labouring Families in the Parish of Cardington,
Bedfordshire, in the 1780s and 1850s’, Family and Community History, 13, 2 (2010), 128-43.
2
K. Honeyman, Child Workers in England, 1780-1820: parish apprentices and the making of the early industrial
workforce (Aldershot, 2007); T. Hitchcock, “‘Unlawfully begotten on her body”: illegitimacy and the parish poor
in St. Luke’s, Chelsea’, in Hitchcock, King & Sharpe, Chronicling Poverty, 70-86; P. Sharpe, ‘Poor children as
apprentices in Colyton, 1598-1830’, Continuity and Change, vi (1991), 253-70; S. King, The bastardy-prone subsociety again: bastards and their fathers and mothers in Lancashire, Wiltshire, and Somerset, 1800-40’, in A.
Levene, T. Nutt & S. Williams (eds), Illegitimacy in Britain, 1700-1850 (Basingstoke, 2005), 66-85; T. Nutt,
‘Illegitimacy, paternal financial responsibility, and the 1834 Poor Law Commission Report: the myth of the old
poor law and the making of the new’, Economic History Review, lxiii (2010), 335-61; A. Levene, ‘Family
breakdown and the “welfare child” in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain’, History of the Family xi
(2006), 67-79; S. King, Poverty and Welfare in England (Manchester, 2000), 144.
3
T. Wales, ‘Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle: some evidence from seventeenth-century Norfolk’, in R.
Smith (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-cycle (Cambridge, 1984), 351-404; L. A. Bothelo, Old Age and the English
poor law, 1500-1700 (Woodbridge, 2004); S. R. Ottaway, The Decline of life: Old Age in Eighteenth-Century
England (Cambridge, 2004); T. Sokoll, ‘Old age in poverty: the record of Essex pauper letters, 1780-1834’, in T.
Hitchcock, P. King & P. Sharpe (eds), Chronicling Poverty. The voices and strategies of the English poor, 16401840 (Basingstoke, 1997), 127-54; N. Goose, ‘Poverty, old age and gender in nineteenth-century England: the
22
case of Hertfordshire’, Continuity and Change, xx (2005), 351-84; R. M. Smith, ‘Ageing and well-being in early
modern England: pension trends and gender preferences under the English old poor law, c. 1650-1800’, in P.
Johnson & P. Thane (eds), Old Age from Antiquity to Post-Modernity (London, 1998), 64-95; D. Thomson, ‘The
welfare of the elderly in the past: a family or community responsibility?’, in M. Pelling & R. M. Smith (eds), Life,
Death and the Elderly: historical perspectives (London, 1991), 64-95.
4
S. King, ‘Sickness and Old Age’, in S. King, T. Nutt & A. Tomkins (eds), Narratives of the Poor in Eighteenth-
Century England, i (London, 2006); T. Sokoll, Household and Family among the Poor: The case of two Essex
communities in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Bochum, 1993); S. Williams, ‘Caring for the
sick poor: poor law nurses in Bedfordshire, c. 1770-1834’, in P. Lane, N. Raven & K. D. M. Snell (eds), Women,
Work and Wages in England, 1600-1850 (Woodbridge, 2004), 141-69; E. Miller, ‘English Pauper Lunatics in the
era of the Old Poor Law’, History of Psychiatry, 23, 2 (2012), 318-28; A. Levene, J. Reinarz & A. Williams, ‘Child
Patients, Hospitals and the Home in Eighteenth-Century England’, Family and Community History, 15, 1 (2012),
15-33.
5
B. Stapleton, ‘Inherited poverty and life-cycle poverty: Odiham, Hampshire, 1650-1850’, Social History, 18
(1993), 339-55; S. King, ‘Reconstructing lives: the poor, the poor law and welfare in Calverley, 1650-1820’,
Social History 22 (1997), 318-38; P. Sharpe, Population and Society in an East Devon Parish. Reproducing
Colyton, 1540-1840 (Exeter, 2002), 234-49; S. Williams, ‘Poor relief, labourers’ households and living standards
in rural England, c. 1770-1834: a Bedfordshire case-study’, Economic History Review, lviii (2005), 485-519; S.
Williams, Poverty, Gender and Life-Cycle under the English Poor Law (Woodbridge, 2011); S. A. Shave, ‘The
dependent poor? (Re)constructing the lives of individuals “on the parish” in rural Dorset, 1800-1832’, Rural
History, xx (2009), 67-97.
6
Williams, Poverty, 101-19; Shave, ‘Dependent poor?’, 77-88; Ottaway, Decline of Life, 204, has reconstructed
the relief histories of a limited number of elderly paupers, in addition to longitudinal surveys in Terling and
Puddletown, 1770-94.
7
Ottaway, Decline of Life, 189-220, 221-46.
8
David Eastwood has emphasised 1795 as a pivotal moment in provision of poor relief nationally, see D.
Eastwood, Governing Rural England: Tradition and Transformation in Local Government 1750-1840 (Oxford,
1994), 121.
23
9
Williams, Poverty, 56.
10
Idem, 58.
11
Ibid, 102.
12
Id., 101, 107, 114.
1313
Id., 119.
14
Williams, Poverty, 130.
15
Shave, ‘Dependent poor?’, 86 [italics as per original].
16
Idem, 85.
17
Ibid, 86-7.
18
Id., 89.
19
K. Williams, From Pauperism to Poverty (London & Boston, 1981), 41.
20
J. P. Huzel, ‘The Labourer and the Poor Law, 1750-1850’, in G. E. Mingay (ed.), The Agrarian History of
England and Wales Volume VI 1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1989), 772.
21
S. King, Poverty and Welfare in England 1700-1850 (Manchester, 2000), 48-77.
22
Ibid., 54-5.
23
K. Wrightson & D. Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525-1700 (New York & London,
1979).
24
Smith, ‘Ageing and well-being’, 64-95; Ottaway, Decline of life, 184-6, 198-202, 207-214, 222-39.
25
Ottaway, Decline of Life, 191. The reconstitution extends from 1537 to the mid-nineteenth century, but the
quality of marriage and burial data declines after 1788.
26
This is a different methodology to that adopted by Williams, whose cross-sectional analyses focus primarily
on recipients of regular weekly payments in Campton and Shefford, because these comprised a larger
proportion of total relief than in Terling. This tends to favour ‘pensioner’-groups (the young, lone parents, and
the elderly), over ‘non-pensioners’ (couple-headed, working-age households). Her qualitative surveys cover a
much broader spectrum of relief. Williams, Poverty, 54-66.
27
Ibid., 235.
28
There were few parish charities in Terling to supplement statutory provision, only clothes supplied by Henry
Smith’s Charity and two parish almshouses. Idem, 213, 215.
24
29
Rules for nominal linkage were that the identity of each person could be established only if they had two
separate familial identifiers between the overseers’ records and the FRF (e.g. reference to spouse of same
name, plus children of same name and age-range; reference to parent of same name, plus siblings; payments
for death of spouse linked to burial register/FRF event, plus remarriage or further named children). This
produced positive identifications (1,339) and negative ones (169). The latter (11 per cent of all recipients
recorded) formed a residual category where the linkage rules demonstrated that Person B was definitely not
Person A. Once identified (positively and negatively), each individual was given a unique serial number linked
to their pattern of relief recorded in the MS Access database.
30
Very occasionally, details of family structure recorded in the overseers accounts appear to contradict the
CAMPOP reconstitution (for example, by revealing the existence of additional children within a family born
outside the parish).
31
See H. R. French, ‘’Living in Poverty in Eighteenth-Century Terling’, in S. Hindle, A. Shepard & J. Walter (eds),
Remaking English Society. Social Relations and Social Change in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2013),
290-1.
32
ERO D/P 299/8/4 Terling Parish Vestry Book, 3 Mar. 1824.
33
S. Horrell & J. Humphries, ‘Women’s labour force participation and the transition to the male-breadwinner
family, 1790-1865’, Economic History Review, xlviii (1995), 89-117; J. Humphries, Childhood and Child Labour in
the British Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 2010); J. Broad, ‘Parish economies of welfare, 1650-1834’,
Historical Journal, xlii (1999), 985-1006; N. Verdon, Rural Workers in Nineteenth-Century England: Gender,
Work and Wages (Woodbridge, 2002); J. Burnette, Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain
(Cambridge, 2007).
34
Sokoll, Household and Family, 215.
35
‘Abstract of the answers and returns made pursuant to an act passed in the 43rd year of His Majesty King
George III’, (P.P. 1803-4, XIII.1), 152-171, compared with ‘Census of Great Britain, 1851. Population tables I.
numbers of the inhabitants, in the years 1801, 1811, 1821, 1831, 1841 and 1851 England and Wales, IV Eastern
Division (1852), (P. P. 1852-3, LXXXV.1), 20-1.
36
See C. Ferguson, C. Thornton & A. Wareham (eds), ‘The Essex Hearth Tax Return Michaelmas 1670’, The
British Record Society Hearth Tax Series Volume VIII (London, 2012), Map 6, 22.
25
37
Relief levels remained relatively constant, but extremely high, in Braintree after 1800. Sokoll, Household and
Family, 138, 223; Williams, Poverty, 36-8; D. A. Baugh, ‘The cost of poor relief in south-east England, 17901834’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 28 (1975), 60.
38
Figures for the 1760s probably reflect a doubling in total relief levels since 1700. Ottaway found that annual
per capita relief levels doubled from 4s.between 1700 and 1705 to 8s. between 1770 and 1774. Ottaway,
Decline of Life, 222.
39
Figure 2 charts the total numbers of recipients for each form of relief. It does not discount those who
received more than one type of relief per year (i.e. weekly recipients who also received ‘occasional
allowances’).
40
41
See above note 8.
For an examination of the general trends among all recipients of poor relief in Terling 1762-1834, see H. R.
French, ‘An irrevocable shift: detailing the dynamics of rural poverty in southern England: a case study’,
Economic History Review, lxviii (2015), ?
42
ERO D/P 299/12/4 & 5 Terling Overseers’ Accounts 1801-9, 1809-18.
43
ERO D/P 299/12/3 Terling Overseers’ Accounts, 1790-1801, ‘Return of the Poor Inhabitants of the Parish of
Terling Taken in the Month of January 1801’. The high degree of organisation of poor law payments and the
detailed surveys of the poor in Terling echo Shave’s observations about the effects of Sturges Bourne’s Act, but
they prefigure the Act and Terling only convened a select vestry in January 1824. Shave, ‘Sturges Bourne’s Poor
Law Reforms’, 414-20; ERO D/P 299/8/4 Terling Vestry Minutes, 1815-27, 29 Jan. 1824.
44
In Ardleigh in 1796, Sokoll found that those in receipt of relief comprised ‘40 per cent of the population’.
Sokoll, Household and Family, 127. Paupers comprised only 12-17.3 per cent of the population in Shefford
between 1801/3 and 1820/1. Williams, Poverty, 72.
45
Sokoll, Household and Family, 51-89.
46
Ottaway, Decline of Life, 184-7.
47
Sokoll, Household and Family, 154-81.
48
Ibid., 276.
49
Ottaway, Decline of Life, 210; Sokoll, Household and Family, 180; Williams, Poverty, 105.
26
50
Sokoll notes that in Ardleigh in 1790 adult males earned 8s. per week in winter, 9s. in summer, and 15s. in
harvest, an average of 8s. 9½d per week. Sokoll, Household and Family, 118.
51
T. L. Richardson, ‘Agricultural Labourers’ Wages and the Cost of Living in Essex, 1790-1840: A Contribution to
the Standard of Living Debate’, in B. A. Holderness & M. Turner (eds), Land, Labour and Agriculture, 17001920. Essays for Gordon Mingay (London & Rio Grande, 1991), 90.
52
Under the parish employment scheme adopted by the parish in Feb. 1824, pay rates were 9s. per week for
able-bodied men, 6s. per week for ‘old men’, and 3s. per week for ‘lads’. These rates may have reflected both
lower post-war male earnings levels, and the desire to impose a financial disincentive on parish employment.
ERO D/P 299/8/4 Terling Vestry Minutes, 12 Feb. 1824.
53
Snell, Annals, 45; Horrell and Humphries, ‘Women’s labour force participation’, 105; J. Burnette, ‘The wages
and employment of female day-labourers in English agriculture, 1740-1850’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser.,
LVII (2004), 664-90.
54
C.f. Shepherd, ‘Income, Domestic Economy and the Distribution of Property’, 141; Snell, Annals, 21-2; S.
Horrell and J. Humphries, ‘Women’s labour force participation and the transition to the male-breadwinner
family, 1790-1865’, Economic History Review 2nd ser., XLVIII (1995), 101-5; P. Sharpe, Adapting to Capitalism:
Working Women in the English Economy, 1700-1850 (Basingstoke, 1995), 135; Verdon, Rural Workers, 99-102;
Ottaway, Decline of Life, 217.
55
Williams, Poverty, 65.
56
Ottaway, Decline of Life, 231.
57
Verdon, Rural Workers, 60.
58
K. D. M. Snell & J. Millar, ‘Lone-parent families and the welfare state: past and present’, Continuity and
Change, ii (1987), 395-409.
59
ERO D/DRa E16 List of Labouring Families in the Parish of Terling, 5 May 1775.
60
195 of the 250 individuals listed in 1801 can be identified in the MS Access Database. Of these, dates of birth
can be found or estimated for 173 (or 89 per cent).
61
ERO D/P 299/12/4 Terling Parish Overseers’ Accounts, 4 Feb. 1809; ERO D/P 299/12/5 Terling Overseers’
Accounts, 4 May 1811.
62
B. Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty: Study in Town Life (London, 1901), 137; Baugh, ‘Cost of Poor Relief’, 57-62.
27
63
These figures are higher than Ottaway’s mean ‘pension’ sums of 29d (2s. 5d) for all female recipients in
Terling 1791-1800 and 27.1d (2s. 3d) for men, because they include the values of all ‘occasional payments’ per
annum. Ottaway, Decline of Life, 228.
64
Ibid.
65
Ibid., 243-4.
66
Ottaway’s finding for the period 1770-94 is that the age of 70 ‘was a very common marker of male
dependency’, whereas women’s dependency varied by location. Ibid., 202, 240-1.
67
Sokoll, Household and Family, 265-6.
68
Williams, Poverty, 132-3, Baugh, ‘Poor Relief’, 55-63.
69
ERO D/P 299/8/4 Terling Vestry Minutes, 1815-27. The vestry recorded that men and women were ‘out of
employ’ in Feb., May and July 1816; Apr. 1817; Nov. 1818; Feb. 1819; Mar. 1822; Mar. & Dec. 1823, and Jan. &
Feb. 1824. In Feb. 1824 the new select vestry resolved to follow the model of the parish of Oundle, by
requiring householders contribute to labourers’ wages according the size of their rating assessments, with the
rates of those who took on unemployed labourers being reduced accordingly. Idem, 3 Feb. 1824.
70
K. Morgan & C. Ó Gráda, ‘The Poor Law of Old England: Institutional Innovation and Demographic Regimes’
Journal of Interdisciplinary History XLI, 3 (2011), 352.
71
Williams, Poverty, 135.
72
Williams gives figures of 3-25 per cent of the population in Bedfordshire in the 1830s. Ibid., 134-5.
73
C.f. Shepherd, ‘Income, Domestic Economy and the Distribution of Property’, 140-1.
28