Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Outline

Title
Abstract
Introduction
Conclusion
References
All Topics
History
Social History

CHARITY AND POVERTY IN BINFIELD BERKSHIRE 1775 1875

Profile image of Margaret EscottMargaret Escott

Abstract
sparkles

AI

The paper explores the complex relationship between charity and poverty in Binfield, Berkshire from 1775 to 1875. It critiques previous historical analyses that predominantly focused on poor relief management and instead emphasizes the social and cultural implications of poverty as reflected through case studies of families. Through examining local charities and the changing socio-economic dynamics, it illustrates how family strategies for survival evolved amidst shifts in formal charity systems.

Related papers

Pauperland: poverty and the poor in Britain
Jeremy Seabrook

Choice Reviews Online, 2014

This book reflects on poverty and poor people. It looks at constancy and change in how people experience want. It is not a history of poverty, nor is it part of an extensive academic literature on the poor. I have simply wondered how poverty has managed to survive both rigorous punishment of the poor and the accumulation of the most spectacular riches the world has ever seen. It consists of a series of questions, to which any answers I suggest are only tentative and provisional. How did sufficiency cease to represent enough? Why have distinctions between the 'bashful' poor and the 'aggressive' poor, the respectable and the rough, been so difficult to sustain? Why did the proportion of poor people increase with the growing wealth of Britain? Is the desire for more really an expression of human nature, or does it tell us more about the nature of capitalism? How did poverty cease to be a 'natural' condition and become a cause for shame? And when did wealth stop being a temptation to which it was foolish to succumb? What is the fate of limitless accumulation in a finite world? Far from the least of these questions is where do the attitudes which animate popular resentment of the poor come from? The utterances of contemporary politicians, commentators and observers are never without precedent. The remedies and policies advocated by today's government, think-tanks and policy reviews have all been rehearsed for centuries. It is a rarely remarked upon irony that, given the waste and extravagance of the contemporary world, the one thing that is perpetually recycled is our own history, nowhere more so than in the repetition of ancient strictures upon the poor. Ideas that are flourished as novelty by conservatives and radicals alike are usually found to have been slumbering within a torpid consciousness which cannot wait to forget the past, in order to rediscover it and propose its failed responses as the latest expedient for dealing with poverty. For this reason, a good proportion of this book is devoted to historical precedents, legislation and attitudes which illuminate, not so much how far we have come in the increase of wealth-for that is indisputable-but how short a road we have travelled in our reactions to the poor and excluded. 'Mankind, it seems, hates nothing so much as its own prosperity. Menaced with an access of riches that would lighten its toil, it makes haste to redouble its labours and to pour away the precious stuff, which might deprive of plausibility the complaint that it is poor.' These words of R. H. Tawney in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, referred to the increased wealth of Europe in the sixteenth century, wealth squandered on warfare. 1 Tawney's observation has not been invalidated by posterity. For the modern world has learned, with the help of wealth such as it had never seen, a poverty so profound and immitigable, that no one can foresee an end to it. A feeling of impoverishment gnaws away, not only at those surviving on the edge of subsistence, but also at people who, in a more innocent time, might have been called rich. How such a condition has come about is rarely debated; perhaps because of its central importance to what we commonly understand as 'our way of life'. An experience of insufficiency is natural when permanent economic growth takes priority over everything else. In the presence of limitless expansion, everyone feels under-rewarded, deprived or robbed of the recognition they think they deserve; none more so than the already wealthy, since they measure riches, not against what they have, but against the multitude of treasures, material and spiritual, they do not yet possess. Our 'worth' is assessed in relation, not to any known human satisfaction, but rather to the power of production of an economy which is, in theory, boundless. Who could expect to fulfil desires prompted by this profane version of the infinite? This is why it is vain to protest at greed, to rail at the super-rich, to censure the excesses of those who administer themselves exorbitant rewards, since their work is considered vital for the alleviation of a nearly universal sense of privation. The income of bankers is often described as 'compensation'; as though they were the victims of some terrible calamity, for which no reparation can ever suffice. If people feel diminished and powerless, pitifully remunerated, constantly unrecognised, this is because capitalism is the keeper of a dangerous, but highly profitable, secret-it knows how to promote a sense of universal neediness, to set up a wanting without end, a cult and culture of desire which must not be thwarted. Human longing, formerly expressed, sometimes contained, often held captive, by the consolations of religion, is now simply another business opportunity; and because even the wealthiest can gain only a fraction of the plenitude of a global market, they become frustrated by what they do not have. This does not, of course, prevent them from flourishing what they do have in the company of those who have less; but they persist in pining for all that remains, tantalisingly, just beyond the reach of their outstretched hands and overstretched means. So it has come about that no one can now define the meaning of 'enough'. Confronting this riddle, we are all poor. Great philanthropists are poor-imagine all the good works foregone for the want of a few billions more? Bankers are poor, since the solace of their millions still fails to satisfy their mysterious cravings. Russian oligarchs are poor, since, having appropriated the assets of the state, they must go into exile to protect themselves from the envious and vengeful. The great landowners of Britain are poor, under the responsibility of maintaining their estates and transmitting them to posterity. Chief executives are poor, for how can money cure the ulcers, heart conditions and health ruined in monastic dedication to the doctrines of wealth creationism? Showbusiness and sporting celebrities are poor, since noone fully acknowledges the extent of their talent or the burn-out of living and loving in the fast lane? Even footballers are poor, because the period of their agility is brief and their careers are soon abridged by time. Professional women and men are poor, overtaken, both in salary and social prestige, by more showy occupations. Bricklayers, carpenters and plumbers are poor, since they fight constantly to keep up the living standards to which their skills entitle them. Carers and service personnel are poor, because their contribution to society is undervalued. Domestic servants, cleaners and retail workers are poor, since their presence is scarcely acknowledged by those who employ them. Beggars are poor. The homeless are poor. Alcoholics and those enslaved to addictions are poor. Under the universal flail of poverty, governments are poor, compelled to cut public expenditure with heavy hearts, a course of action they can contemplate only in the superior light of the national interest. Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky in How Much is Enough? 2 , argue that capitalism was 'founded on a Faustian pact'. The devils of avarice and usury were given free rein, on the understanding that, having lifted humanity out of poverty, they would quit the scene for good. A paradise of plenty would ensue, with all men free to live as only the happy few had lived. The promise that all wants may be fulfilled by economic magic has robbed humanity of the very power that wealth was expected to bestow: an awareness of what would constitute a secure sustenance. The objective of almost everyone is to acquire a greater share of the wealth of the world. This is a relatively recent development, since the poor have traditionally scarcely dared even to dream of subsistence. It is also a major contributor to social peace, since what could be a greater source of unity between all classes and conditions of people than their unity in a shared desire to relieve their common affliction? The riots in England of August 2011 disturbed this carefully crafted equilibrium, for it strained the ideological harmony between rich and poor, who make common cause against a shared feeling of insufficiency. The rioters were presented by the government as examples of 'pure criminality', since to succumb to the proposition that they were caused by 'deprivation' would shatter the joint project of a people dedicated to a constant increase in their 'purchasing power', not in theory, but in the practice and experience of daily life. How easily whatever disposable income we have slips through our fingers, and what a pitiful shortage it represents of what is necessary for a half-decent life. When economic consciousness crowds out its social and moral equivalents, the consequences are unlikely to be benign. Individuals cannot be blamed for reflecting the dominant ideology of the age. Economic necessity has been assimilated and now appears as more or less identical with human needs. The people have adopted as their own the requirement of the economy for permanent growth: its impersonality has been 'humanised', and we tenderly articulate its iron compulsions, as though these were an expression of our deepest longings. The rehabilitation of the rich is a major consequence of these developments; and is the principal reason why bankers have gone largely unpunished for their role in the crisis of the early twenty-first century. Their lack of humility shows they are keenly aware of their indispensability to the sorcery of wealth generation. They are untouchable, and they live in a world of their own, which is not this one, for it is a place of myth; a fortress where billiondollar decisions are made, fortunes are created and rivals vanquished by a single stroke of the keyboard. They occupy the crystal spheres, a modern version of the Fates or Norns, engineers of human destiny, gods endowed with human jealousies: at the first hint of punitive measures against...

View PDFchevron_right
Peasant welfare in England
Abdullah Shakil
View PDFchevron_right
The Village Community before Enclosure
shirley wittering

When the gentry are missing, the middling sort become responsible for parish affairs, and by default become the chief inhabitants.' 1 Having looked at the type of land within which the people of south Cambridgeshire were living, and the resources available for exploitation, we can now turn our attention towards the social character of the parishes before enclosure, the dates of which stretch from 1799 to 1845.

View PDFchevron_right
Agrarian Capitalism and Poor Relief in England, 1500-1860 Rethinking the Origins of the Welfare State
Songyos Pongrojphaw
View PDFchevron_right
Chronicling poverty: the voices and strategies of the English poor, 1640-1840
Steve Hindle

1999

View PDFchevron_right
'In search of the poor', Leicestershire VCH News, 2016
Joseph Harley
View PDFchevron_right
How dependent were the ‘dependent poor’? Poor relief and the life-course in Terling, Essex, 1762-1834.
Henry French

Despite the volume of research on the Old Poor Law, only in the last two decades have detailed local studies have begun to assess the impact of relief payments across the life-courses of individuals. Their conclusions have been mixed. While many have found that the rural labouring poor of southern England were increasingly frequent recipients of poor relief after the 1780s, recent studies have indicated that ‘dependence’ on relief was generally intermittent, not permanent. Based on a new dataset for the Essex village of Terling, this study sets individual life-histories within the broader chronology of change to show how young, able-bodied men and women became relief recipients much more often after 1795 than they had before. Published in 'Continuity & Change', 30 (2), 2015, pp. 1-30.

View PDFchevron_right
Surviving Poverty in West Sussex, c.1780-1850
John Orbell

Poverty in West Sussex took on a myriad of forms, had multiple causes and depended on the generosity and understanding of parishioners and parish authorities for its relief.

View PDFchevron_right
Harvesters and Harvesting, 1840-1900: A Study of the Rural Proletariat
Stuart Macdonald

The Economic History Review, 1983

View PDFchevron_right
Archives and Records The Journal of the Archives and Records Association The first century of welfare: poverty and poor relief in Lancashire 1620–1730
Robert F W Smith
View PDFchevron_right

References (127)

  1. K. Williams, From Pauperism to Poverty (London, 1981), pp. 34-36, 346-56.
  2. K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660-1900 (Cambridge, 1985);
  3. T. Hitchcock, P. King and P. Sharpe, eds, Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640-1840 (Basingstoke, 1997);
  4. T. Sokoll, ed, Essex Pauper Letters, 1731-1837 (Oxford, 2001).
  5. R. Wall, J. Robin and P. Laslett, eds, Family Forms in Historic Europe (Cambridge, 1983), especially Chapters 1 and 17; M. Daunton, ed., Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare in the English Past (London, 1996);
  6. S. King and A. Tomkins, eds, The Poor in England 1700-1850: An Economy of Makeshifts (Manchester, 2003).
  7. N. Landau, The Justices of the Peace (Berkeley, 1984);
  8. N. Landau, 'Going Local: The Social History of Stuart and Hanoverian England', Journal of British Studies xxix (1985), pp. 273-281;
  9. N. Landau, 'Laws of Settlement and Surveillance of Immigration in Eighteenth Century Kent', Continuity and Change 3 (1988), pp.381- 420;
  10. F. Driver, Power and Pauperism: The Workhouse System, 1834-1884 (Cambridge, 1993). F. Prochaska, The Voluntary Impulse: Philanthropy in Modern Britain (London, 1988);
  11. E. Hopkins, Working-Class Self Help in Nineteenth Century England (London, 1995);
  12. S. Cordery, British Friendly Societies, 1750-1814 (Basingstoke, 2003);
  13. J. Innes, 'Parliament and the Shaping of Eighteenth Century Social Policy' Transactions of the Royal Historical Society xl (1990), pp. 63-92.
  14. G. R. Boyer, An Economic History of the English Poor Law, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1990);
  15. M. Daunton, Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain, 1700-1850 (Oxford, 1995);
  16. L. Hollen Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People 1700-1948 (Cambridge, 1998);
  17. A.
  18. Kidd, State, Society and the Poor in Nineteenth-Century England (Basingstoke, 1999);
  19. S. King, Poverty and Welfare in England, 1790-1850: A Regional Perspective (Manchester, 2000).
  20. Williams, From Pauperism, pp. 346-56.
  21. Snell, Annals, pp. 1-14;
  22. T. Wales, 'Poverty, Poor Relief and the Life-Cycle', Land Kinship and Lifecycle, ed. R. M. Smith (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 351-422;
  23. P. Thane, 'Women and the Poor Law in Victorian and Edwardian England', History Workshop Jnl. vi (1978), pp. 29-49;
  24. M. Pelling and R. M. Smith, eds, Life Death and the Elderly: Historical Perspectives (London, 1991);
  25. D. Thomson, 'Provision for the elderly in England, 1834-1908' (Unpublished PhD, University of Cambridge, 1980);
  26. D. Thomson, 'The Decline of Social Security: Falling State Support for the Elderly Since Early Victorian times', Ageing and Society iv (1984), pp. 451-82, qualified by R. M. Smith, 'The structured dependence of the elderly as a recent development: some sceptical thoughts', Ibid., pp. 415-25.
  27. 9 See Dictionary of National Biography [DNB];
  28. WCA HG/19.
  29. University College London Archives (Hereafter UCA), Brougham MSS, J. Randall to Lord Brougham, 3 Dec. 1830; R. Randall to James Brougham, 29 Nov., 2 Dec. 1830. 11 Dictionary of National Biography [DNB];
  30. UCA, Brougham MSS, R. Randall to Lord Brougham, 17 June 1859.
  31. DNB [William Wordsworth];
  32. Bodleian Library (Hereafter BL), Wilberforce MSS [don e 164-5 c 64, ff. 157-8] H. Cookson to R.J. Wilberforce, 25 Aug. 1833.
  33. See P. Horn, 'Child Workers in the Pillow-Lace and Straw-Plait Trades of Victorian Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire', Historical Journal xvii (1974), pp. 779-96;
  34. P. Sharpe, 'Literally Spinsters: A New Interpretation of the Local Economy and Demography in Colyton in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries' Economic History Review xliv (1991), pp. 46-65.
  35. Parliamentary Papers [PP] (1834) xxx Randall's replies to questions 1-3 of the rural queries; M. M. Escott, 'Residential Mobility in a Late Eighteenth Century Parish: Binfield, Berkshire, 1779-1801', Local Population Studies xl (1988), pp.20- 36.
  36. Berkshire Record Office [Hereafter BRO] D/P18/25/3 & 4; Abstract of Returns of Charitable Donations for benefit of Poor Persons vol. i, 26 Geo. III 1786 (London, 1816), pp. 18-19; First and Second Reports of the Charity Commissioners (London, 1819), pp. 15-16.
  37. Escott, 'Residential Mobility', pp. 26-27; National Library of Wales [Hereafter NLW] Ormathwaite Mss FG1/3, p. 263.
  38. Census Abstracts give the following totals: Year 1801 1811 1821 1831 1841 1851 1861 1871 1881 Persons 801 860 1057 1045 1242 1280 1371 1625 1685
  39. BRO D/P18/26b & c (1817 Inclosure Map and Terrier);
  40. D/P18/27a & b (1837
  41. Ordnance Survey Maps, 1899 (Berks. EE XXXVIII, 25.344 inch to the statute mile);
  42. PP (1834) xxxi, responses to questions 16-17; Public Record Office (Hereafter PRO), HO107/15; HO107/1694; RG9/755; RG10/1294 ['Binfield Census Enumerators' Books [CEBs] 1841-1871'.
  43. 'Binfield CEBs 1841-1871'. For the importance of brick-making in the parish see M. Dumbleton, Brickmaking: A Local Industry (Bracknell and District Historical Society, 1978).
  44. Also highlighted in T. Sokoll, Household and Family among the Poor (Bochum, 1993);
  45. D. Eastwood, 'The Republic in the Village: Parish and Poor in Bampton, 1780- 1834', Journal of Regional and Local Studies xii (1992), pp. 18-28; R. Wall 'Real Property, Marriage and Children', Land, Kinship and Lifecycle, Smith, pp. 443-80;
  46. L. Tranter, 'Social Structure in a Bedfordshire Parish', International Review of Social History xviii (1973), pp. 90-106;
  47. B. Stapleton, 'Inherited Poverty and Life-Cycle Poverty: Odiham, Hampshire, 1650-1850', Social History xviii (1993), pp. 339-55.
  48. Escott, 'Residential Mobility', pp. 20-36.
  49. British Parliamentary Papers vols. xxxi, lx; PP (1803-4), xiii.14-24; (1824), vi. 385; (1825), iv. 68, xix. 364-5; (1831), viii. 176; (1834), xxx. 10, xxix. 284, xxxi. 380c; (1835), xxxv. 352.
  50. PRO, MH12/201-7;
  51. For Berkshire sources generally see Guide to the records of the New Poor Law and its successors in Berkshire 1835-1948 (BRO, 1979);
  52. P. Durrant, ed., Berkshire Overseers' Papers 1654-1834, Berkshire Record Society vol. iii (Reading, 1997) and bibliographies and appendices to M. Neuman, The Speenhamland County: Poverty and the Poor Laws in Berkshire, 1782-1834 (New York, 1982) and S. W. Taylor 'Aspects of the socio-demographic history of seven Berkshire parishes in the eighteenth century' (Unpublished PhD, University of Reading, 1987).
  53. BRO D/P18/8/1-4, Binfield vestry minutes; D/P18/18/1-11, tax assessments listing owners, occupiers and persons eligible for relief.
  54. BRO D/P18/25/3 2 & 221, n.b. Symondson's Charity.
  55. D/P18/25/4 & 7 returns presented in the First and Second Reports of the Charity Commissioners, 1819 (London 1819), pp. 15-16.
  56. BRO D/P18/25/3, 106 (Birch's Bread Charity). BRO D/P18/25/3 3-4 et seq. Bowes's Legacy (1777) plus Batson's Legacy (1785) plus Wilson's Legacy (1808) together provided financial rewards for deserving labourers; From 1825 clothing and bedding were available via Herne's Charity.
  57. BRO D/P18/25/8, Account of Charities, School, Relief of Poor and Management of Roads, in the Parish of Binfield, Berks., 1872-73, (Wokingham, 1873).
  58. BRO D/P18/8/1; Neuman, The Speenhamland County, pp. 78-84.
  59. P. Dunkley, 'Paternalism, the Magistracy and Poor Relief in England, 1795-1814', International Review of Social History xxiv (1979), pp. 371-97;
  60. R. Wells, 'Migration, the Law and Parochial Policy in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Southern England', Southern History xv (1989), pp. 86-139.
  61. Binfield Parish Records 1774-1804 (mainly in Wilson's hand); PRO 30/8/67
  62. Part I, Wilson's letters to Hester, Lady Chatham; William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, William Pitt papers, especially Nos. 1-40 (Wilson's correspondence with members of the Pitt family);
  63. Windsor Records Church Commissioners No.120349 'Mr Wilson's Book'; Nuffield College Library, Oxford, Davies MSS Nos. 1-5 for the Wilson-Davies correspondence. P. Horn, A Georgian Parson and his Village: The Story of David Davies (1742-1819) (Abingdon, 1981), pp. 27-33 carries a brief resume of Wilson and Davies's differing views. Wilson was tutor to the Pitt family, 1766-73, Rector of Binfield 1767-1804, Prebendary of Gloucester 1769-1804, Cannon of Windsor 1784-1804, and a Berkshire Magistrate 1793-1804.
  64. M. Blaug, 'The Myth of the Old Poor Law and the Making of the New', Journal of Economic History xxiii (1963), pp. 151-184;
  65. D. Baugh, 'The Cost of Poor Relief in South-East England', Economic History Review xxviii (1975), pp. 50-68;
  66. Neuman, The Speenhamland County; Taylor 'Aspects'.
  67. Considered in detail in Escott, 'Residential Mobility', pp. 21, 23, 34.
  68. Wales, 'Poverty, Poor Relief', p. 352; J. Robin, 'Illegitimacy in Colyton', Continuity and Change ii (1987), pp. 307-42; P. Sharpe, 'Poor Children as Apprentices in Colyton, 1598-1830', Continuity and Change, vi. (1991), pp. 253-70;
  69. S. Hindle, 'Power, Poor Relief and Social Relations in Holland Fen c. 1600-1800', Historical Jnl. xli (1998), pp. 67-96.
  70. BRO D/P18/1/2; D/P18/25/3.
  71. Escott, 'Residential Mobility', pp. 20-35.
  72. BRO D/P18/18/2a;
  73. M. Mitford, Our Village (London, 1963), p. 136; M. M. Escott, 'Growing up in Binfield c.1801' Berkshire Local History Association Journal, iii (1986), 39-48.
  74. C. R. Strutt, The Strutt Family of Terling, 1650-1873 (London, 1939), pp.78-79. 28
  75. S. G. and E. O. Checkland, eds, The 1834 Poor Law Report (Harmondsworth, 1974);
  76. S. Rowntree and M. Kendall, How the Labourer Lives: A Study of the Rural Labour Problem (London, 1913).
  77. See P. Mandler, 'Tories and Paupers: Christian Political Economy and the Making of the New Poor Law', Historical Journal xxxiii (1990), pp. 81-103.
  78. William Cobbett, ed., Parliamentary History of England (Hansard, 1818), pp xxxii.795-7;
  79. J. R. Poynter, Society and Pauperism (London, 1969), p. 39.
  80. Escott, 'Residential Mobility', p. 21.
  81. BRO D/P18/25/3; A subscription in 1803 to raise funds for 'relief of those men who may be balloted for the Army of Reserve' expected from: Gentlemen, no less than 2 guineas; Gentlemen's servants, no less than 1 guinea; farmers occupying £60 p.a., no less than 1 guinea with an additional 3s 6d for each additional £10; Tradesmen or Master Mechanics, 1 guinea; Journeymen, 15s; Labourers or Servants in Husbandry, 10s 6d; BRO D/P18/18,2.
  82. S. J. Woolf, The Poor in Western Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1986), p. 27; S. Cavallo, 'Patterns of Poor Relief and Patterns of Poverty in Eighteenth Century Italy: The Evidence of the Turin Ospedale di Cartia', Continuity and Change v (1990), pp. 65-98.
  83. BRO D/P18/25/3 20.
  84. Loss in the sense of both material loss and personal loss for example bereavement or loss of the ability to work. 29
  85. 'This last Legacy not being confined to the Poor living in the Parish etc. enables us to relieve several deserving objects that we were before restrained from', A note by E Wilson in BRO D/P18/25/3 3. The underlining is Wilson's.
  86. Particularly in response to changes in the parish vestry's composition and powers, and overseers workloads post 1834. See Snell, Annals, pp. 104-138.
  87. He subsequently stole wheat and fled, BRO D/P18/18/1.
  88. Kinship networks calculated from reconstitution data linked to properties enumerated and mapped in 1780-1801, 1817, 1837, the 1851-81 CEBs and migration charts in Escott, 'Residential Mobility', pp. 28, 32.
  89. William Vickery's wife was typical in this respect. 62 BRO D/P18/18/1.
  90. BRO D/P18/25/3, p. 21. Joseph Boxall, servant of Richard Aldworth Neville of Billingbear, overseer in the 1790's, appointed Magistrate in 1804.
  91. BRO D/P18/18/2 entry for Thomas Aldrich.
  92. The rector responded sympathetically. Bolton subsequently occupied Binfield's place (bed) at St Luke's hospice in Wokingham. Payments to his family, who remained independent of poor relief continued. BRO D/P18/25/3. Wilson recorded that 'care was taken that the husbands shou'd not know of their (the wives of John Sargent and William Vickery) being in the list' BRO D/P18/25/3 20.
  93. BRO D/P18/25/3 (entry on the back cover).
  94. 67 Wilson, Observations, pp. 24-26; For Wilson's views in 1782, see BRO D/P18/25/3 8.
  95. A list on the inside cover of BRO D/P18/1/2 records the arrival in Binfield of individuals legally settled elsewhere and correspondence with neighbouring parishes (e.g. Warfield, BRO D/P144/13/1-3) shows that Binfield overseers adhered to standard removal and settlement practices.
  96. Payments in kind included clothing for George Morgan's children and 10s. to his landlord for Thomas Field's rent. Dr. Cookson was rector of Binfield 1804-20. Seven potential recipients were 'struck off' for being 'on the parish' in 1820.
  97. Parliamentary Papers (1825) iv, pp. 68; xix, pp. 364-5. A select vestry seems to have been in operation from 1824-8.
  98. UCA Brougham Mss, Rebe Randall to James Brougham, 2 Dec. 1830; PP (1834) xxxi, preamble to the return for Binfield.
  99. Parliamentary Papers (1834) xxxi, reponses to questions 6, 9-15.
  100. Ibid., question 24.
  101. Checkland and Checkland, The Poor Law, p. 452.
  102. Parliamentary Papers (1835) xxxv. 351-3; PRO MH12/335, Davies Gilbert to PLC, 19 July 1835. Binfield's experience has little in common with the three accounts in the debate on 'The Making of the New Poor Law Redivivius', Past and Present cxxvii (1990), pp. 117-201.
  103. PRO MH12/201, Charles Cave to PLC, 29 July, 17 August, 26 October 1835; E. Gulson to same, 29 July, 9 August, 5 December 1835; B. Townsend to same, 3
  104. August 1835, S. Hicks to same, 29 November 1835; PRO MH32/28, Edward Gulson to PLC, January-August 1835.
  105. PRO MH12/201, Resolutions of Binfield vestry meeting, 25 November 1835;
  106. Charles Cave to PLC, 9 January, 21 April 1836; MH12/362, GH Elliott to same, 12 August and reply 18 August 1835; NLW Ormathwaite mss FG 1/8, pp. 233-9, 270. Elliott had, almost single-handedly, prevented a 'Swing' incident in the parish escalating out of control in November 1830.
  107. PRO MH12/201, Charles Cave to PLC, 24 December 1836, 17 March, 7, 17 October 1837; Richard Hall to same, 14, 20 December 1837, 22 January, 3 February 1838; J. Randall to E. Chadwick, 20 December 1837; MH32/35, Richard Hall to PLC, 17
  108. PRO MH12/202, Charles Cave to PLC, 5 February 1841-4 October 1843; Problems incurred in the disposal of parish property were widespread and discussed in the December 1839 Report of the Poor Law Commission (London, 1840), pp. 97-100.
  109. PRO MH32/28, J. Randall to PLC, 29 May 1843. Randall, better known as private chaplain to Bishop Wilberforce and archdeacon of Berkshire (1855-69), remained active in the management of Binfield Charities until the 1870's. The 1871 Census lists him, aged 80, at Binfield rectory, as an inmate in the household of his son in law Edmund Savory.
  110. Poor Law Commissioners Reports 1845-1873, The poor rate returns include totals spent on institutions and outdoor relief. The parish's accounts and early taxation assessments do not offer a comparable breakdown of expenditure.
  111. BRO D/P18/25/3 101.
  112. The Times, 29 January 1872; Information from the 1871 CEBs for Binfield and Easthampstead [RG10/1294/121], Binfield Parish Registers and Charity books. 87 Four of the fifteen persons at the Vestry Meeting of 12 September 1824 -called with a view to establishing a Charity School -had longstanding family connections in the parish. All can be linked to Wilson's 'Poor Farmers and Traders' class. 88 BRO D/P18/25/7.
  113. D/P18/26a-c;
  114. D/P18/27a, and 1841-71 CEBs.
  115. BRO D/P18/25/3 (unnumbered pages) also BRO D/P18/18/2. Contrast with A. B. Atkinson, A. K. Maynard & T. Trinder, Parents and Children: Incomes in Two Generations (London, 1983).
  116. Observations based on BL ADD MSS 28,760-61; BRO Q/SR/180-275;
  117. G/E/3/1&2;
  118. G/E/4/1&2; D/P18/1/2-6;
  119. D/P18/26a-c;
  120. D/P18/27a and 1841-71 CEBs.
  121. B. Rodgers, Cloak of Charity: Studies in Eighteenth Century Philanthropy (London, 1949), p. 1.
  122. K. Wrightson, English Society, 1580-1650, (London, 1982), p. 181.
  123. See also Snell, Annals, p. 112; S. Ottaway, The Decline of Life: Old Age in Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 196-7; Peter King's assessment in Chronicling Poverty, pp. 10-12 and comments by Steve Hindle on the value of anecdotal information and the ambiguous relationship between parish relief and endowed charity in Steve Hindle, 'The Birthpangs of Welfare: Poor Relief and Parish Governance in Seventeenth-Century Warwickshire', Dugdale Society Occasional Papers xl (2000), pp. 15 and 22.
  124. Lees, Solidarities, p. 31; G. Oxley, Poor Relief in England and Wales, 1601-1834 (London, 1974), pp. 52-53
  125. Lees, Solidarities, pp. 59, 60, 106, 124-6, 143-4;
  126. Williams, From Pauperism, pp. 144, 151; Innes, 'The Mixed Economy of Welfare', p. 156; S. King, 'Reconstructing Lives: The Poor, the Poor Law and Welfare in Calverley 1650-1820', Social History xxii (1997), pp. 326-7.
  127. B. Harris, The Origins of the Welfare State: society, state and social welfare in England and Wales, 1800-1945 (Basingstoke, 2004), p. 61.

Related papers

An Irrevocable Shift: Detailing the Dynamics of Rural Poverty in Southern England, 1762-1834: a case study
Henry French

Nearly every conceivable aspect of the old poor law in England appears to have been studied.Yet some fundamental questions about parish-level provisioning remain hard to answer. These include the amount that people received from the parish, from all sources, each week; how the balance between types of payments shifted over the period, and (correspondingly) within the individual life-course; the range of services or supplements that such individuals received, from the parish, over the course of their lives; and how this spectrum of relief adjusted to the massive macro-level changes that we know occurred in the poor relief system between the 1760s and 1834. This study attempts to answer these questions in new depth, by employing a dataset that encompasses all payments to named individuals within the Essex parish of Terling between 1762 and 1834, totalling 143,801 payments to 1,508 recipients. Analysis of this dataset provides new insights into the size, scope, changes, and significance of poor relief in labouring families’ lives in southern England in this period. Forthcoming in Economic History Review 2015

View PDFchevron_right
The first poverty line? Davies' and Eden's investigation of rural poverty in the late 18th-century England
Ian Gazeley

Explorations in Economic History, 2014

The first poverty line? Davies and Eden's investigation of rural poverty in late 18 th-century England

View PDFchevron_right
2013: 21st May - ‘The material wealth of paupers in south west England, 1700-1834’, University of Leicester Postgraduate Conference
Joseph Harley

The study of consumption has expanded considerably over the past thirty years and has grown to become one of the key cornerstones of eighteenth and nineteenth century British history. Yet, very little research has been undertaken to find the extent to which the poor were active consumers, whilst the literature on the middling and upper classes has swiftly grown apace. Most of the literature on the poor's consumption is clouded in Marxist theorem and narrow economic and monetary methodologies, and very little has been conducted beyond East Anglia and clothing. Thus, through the use of pauper inventories which detail household possessions, this paper will address this major historiographical distortion by empirically chronicling the extent to which paupers in Dorset were able to acquire goods, from basic furniture to the new and expanding items of the time, such as timepieces, tea and mirrors. The paper will argue that, whilst the middling and upper classes were able to increasingly consume more and benefit from English commercial expansion, the lives of the poor did not change significantly and that they continued to struggle and live a basic and relatively destitute life. Through these findings the paper will offer fresh perspectives on how marginal counties and groups coped over the Industrial Revolution, and will ultimately get to the very heart of what it meant to be poor, through their material goods.

View PDFchevron_right
‘Poverty, mass unemployment and welfare’, in Chris Williams and Andy Croll (eds), The Gwent County History: Volume 5, The Twentieth Century (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2013), pp. 207-227.
Andy Croll
View PDFchevron_right
'Aged and Impotent: Parish Relief of the Aged Poor in Early Modern Suffolk' in M. Daunton, ed., Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare in the English Past (London, 1996), pp. 91=112.
Lynn Botelho
View PDFchevron_right

Related topics

  • British History
  • Local History
  • Regional and Local Governance
  • Welsh History
  • English Poor Law
  • Social History
  • Parliamentary History
  • History of Charity
  • Friendly Societies
    • 580 California St., Suite 400
    San Francisco, CA, 94104
    © 2025 Academia. All rights reserved