Introduction
It is impossible to do direct comparisons between money earned and the cost of goods over time as the relative values have changed dramatically. Some goods have got cheaper (many basic foodstuffs for example) whilst house prices have rocketed.
Rather more prosaically, a Reubens sold at Christies for nine guineas in 1850 would be worth, if the price was solely adjusted for general economic price inflation, about six hundred pounds today. Unfortunately the price you would have to pay now runs in to the millions.
The other major consideration is that people led much simpler lives. There was no TV to buy or foreign holidays to take.
All that we can say is that most people were poor by any standard but were able to live adequately on a daily basis unless, as did happen from time to time, there was general economic deprivation.
The very poor were sustained and assisted by the parish through the administration of poor relief until this method was reformed in 1834. Revenue was raised from the local taxes, supplemented by charities and donations.
After the Poor Laws were revised in 1834 parishes lost their ability to distribute money and they were grouped together into Poor Law Unions. Generally the rate of assistance was less than previously and this led to discontent. But the major force for change in the county (as elsewhere) was industrial. Working in the mills or on the land declined and workers found they could earn more by moving to the ever growing cities with more work opportunities and better standards of living.
The other key considerations are (a) that families had multiple wage earners, including the wife and children (b) labourers often lived in subsidized housing and received food and drink as supplemental to their wages and (c) men might have additional employment elsewhere.
So, for example, a harvest man in 1796 would earn around 1s a day plus full board: the breakfast would be cold meat; bread and cheese in the field for lunch with six or weight quarts of beverage. At night, on their return, a hot supper and a quart of strong liquor.
Master Index
 

Master Index

Some observations on the character of the classes
These observations are taken verbatim from Marshall's book on the 'Rural Economy of Glocestershire' published in 1796
*Husbandmen are much the same, in all districts: plain, frugal, pains-taking, close and unintelligible. The lower and middle classes of farmers, of the district under observation, mostly answer, in a remarkable manner, to this description: while some few, of the superior class, are as strongly marked by liberality and communicativeness.
*Farm laborers are sufficiently numerous. They are noticeable as being simple, inoffensive, unintelligent and apparently slow.
Their wages are very low, in money; being only 1s a day. But in drink shamefully exorbitant. Six quarts a day, the common allowance: frequently two gallons: sometimes nine or ten quarts; or an unlimited quantity...
Drinking a gallon-bottle-full, at a draught, is said to be no uncommon feat: a mere boyish trick which will not be bragged of. But to drain a two gallon bottle, without taking it from the lips is spoken of as an exploit.
*The lower classes here are less communicative, than they are, perhaps, in any other province: possessing a singular reservedness towards strangers; accompanied with a guarded expression, bordering almost on the duplicity.
*With respect to cleanliness, the Glocestershire dairywoman stand unpeachable...cleanliness implies industry. A Glocestershire dairywoman is at hard work, from four o'clock in the morning until bedtime.
In his history of Minchinhampton and Avening A.T Playne gives the following description of a typical mid nineteenth century hand-loom weaver:
'A middle-aged or elderly man, rather sad faced ( at least, looking as if he had never been young), and often quaintly dressed - sometimes in a blue frockcoat with copper buttons, once gilt, or in a swallow-tailed one, once black, but now grown green with age (presumably some gentleman's left-off garment)...
He wears an old battered beavers top hat.'
Master Index

The Labourer in 1795
The following extract on the life of an agricultural labourer is taken from an on-line copy of the book, 'The Village Labourer 1760-1832: A Study in the Government of England before the Reform Bill' (1920 Edition)  by J.L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond. The full edition can be found at:
http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/hammond/village.html

In an unenclosed village, as we have seen, the normal labourer did not depend on his wages
alone. His livelihood was made up from various sources. His firing he took from the waste,
he had a cow or a pig wandering on the common pasture, perhaps he raised a little crop on a
strip in the common fields. He was not merely a wage earner, receiving so much money a
week or a day for his labour, and buying all the necessaries of life at a shop: he received
wages as a labourer, but in part he maintained himself as a producer. Further, the actual
money revenue of the family was not limited to the labourer's earnings, for the domestic
industries that flourished in the village gave employment to his wife and children.

In an enclosed village at the end of the eighteenth century the position of the agricultural
labourer was very different. All his auxiliary resources had been taken from him, and he
was now a wage earner and nothing more. Enclosure had robbed him of the strip that he
tilled, of the cow that he kept on the village pasture, of the fuel that he picked up in the
woods, and of the turf that he tore from the common. And while a social revolution had
swept away his possessions, an industrial revolution had swept away his family's earnings.
To families living on the scale of the village poor, each of these losses was a crippling
blow, and the total effect of the changes was to destroy their economic independence.

Some of these auxiliary resources were not valued very highly by the upper classes, and
many champions of enclosure proved to their own satisfaction that the advantage, for
example, of the right of cutting fuel was quite illusory. Such writers had a very superficial
knowledge of the lot of the cottagers. They argued that it would be more economical for the
labourer to spend on his ordinary employment the time he devoted to cutting fuel and turf,
and to buy firing out of his wages: an argument from the theory of the division of labour that
assumed that employment was constant. Fortunately we have, thanks to Davies, a very
careful calculation that enables us to form rather a closer judgment. He estimates(1*) that a
man could cut nearly enough in a week to serve his family all the year, and as the farmers
will give the carriage of it in return for the ashes, he puts the total cost at 10s. a year, or a
little more than a week's wages.(2*) If we compare this with his accounts of the cost of fuel
elsewhere, we soon see how essential common fuel rights were to a labourer's economy. As
Sidlesham in Surrey, for instance,(3*) in the expenses of five families of labourers, the fuel
varies from £1, 15s. 0d. up to £4, 3s. 0d., with an average of £2, 8s. 0d. per family. It must
be remembered, too, that the sum of 10s. for fuel from the common is calculated on the
assumption that the man would otherwise be working; whereas, in reality, he could cut his
turf in slack times and in odd hours, when there was no money to be made by working for
some one else.

There was another respect in which the resources of a labouring family were diminished
towards the end of the century, and this too was a loss that the rich thought trifling. From
time immemorial the labourer had sent his wife and children into the fields to glean or leaze
after the harvest. The profits of gleaning, under the old, unimproved system of agriculture,
were very considerable. Eden says of Rode in Northamptonshire, where agriculture was in
a 'wretched state, from the land being in common-fields,' that 'several families will gather as
much wheat as will serve them for bread the whole year, and as many beans as will keep a
pig.'(4*) From this point of view enclosure, with its improved methods of agriculture, meant
a sensible loss to the poor of the parish, but even when there was less to be gleaned the
privilege was by no means unimportant. A correspondent in the Annals of Agriculture,(5*)
writing evidently of land under improved cultivation in Shropshire, estimates that a wife can
glean three or four bushels. The consumption of wheat, exclusive of other food, by a
labourer's family he puts at half a bushel a week at least; the price of wheat at 13s. 6d. a
bushel; the labourer's wages at 7s. or 8s. To such a family gleaning rights represented the
equivalent of some six or seven weeks' wages.

With the introduction of large farming these customary rights were in danger. It was a
nuisance for the farmer to have his fenced fields suddenly invaded by bands of women and
children. The ears to be picked up were now few and far between, and there was a risk that
the labourers, husbands and fathers of the gleaners, might wink at small thefts from the
sheaves. Thus it was that customary rights, which had never been questioned before, and
seemed to go back to the Bible itself, came to be the subject of dispute. On the whole
question of gleaning there is an animated controversy in the Annals of Agriculture(6*)
between Capel Lofft,(7*) a romantic Suffolk Liberal, who took the side of the gleaners, and
Ruggles,(8*) the historian, who argued against them. Capel Lofft was a humane and
chivalrous magistrate who, unfortunately for the Suffolk poor, was struck off the
Commission of the Peace a few years later, apparently at the instance of the Duke of
Portland, for persuading the Deputy-Sheriff to postpone the execution of a girl sentenced to
death for stealing, until he had presented a memorial to the Crown praying for clemency.
The chief arguments on the side of the gleaners were (1) that immemorial custom gave legal
right, according to the maxim, consuetudo angliae lex est angliae communis; (2) that
Blackstone had recognised the right in his Commentaries, basing his opinion upon Hale and
Gilbert, 'Also it hath been said, that by the common law and custom of England the poor are
allowed to enter and glean on another's ground after harvest without being guilty of trespass,
which humane provision seems borrowed from the Mosaic law, (iii. 212, 1st edition); (3)
that in Ireland the right was recognised by statutes of Henry VIII's reign, which modified it;
(4) that it was a custom that helped to keep the poor free from degrading dependence on
poor relief. It was argued, on the other hand, by those who denied the right to glean, that
though the custom had existed from time immemorial, it did not rest on any basis of actual
right, and that no legal sanction to it had ever been explicitly given, Blackstone and the
authorities on whom he relied being too vague to be considered final. Further, the custom
was demoralising to the poor; it led to idleness, 'how many days during the harvest are lost
by the mother of a family and all her children, in wandering about from field to field, to
glean what does not repay them the wear of their cloathes in seeking;' it led to pilfering from
the temptation to take handfuls from the swarth or shock; and it was deplorable that on a
good-humoured permission should be grafted 'a legal claim, in its use and exercise so nearly
approaching to licentiousness.'

Whilst this controversy was going on, the legal question was decided against the poor by a
majority of judges in the Court of Common Pleas in 1788. One judge, Sir Henry Gould,(9*)
dissented in a learned judgment; the majority based their decision partly on the mischievous
consequences of the practice to the poor. The poor never lost a right without being
congratulated by the rich on gaining something better. It did not, of course, follow from this
decision that the practice necessary ceased altogether, but from that time it was a privilege
given by the farmer at his own discretion, and he could warn off obnoxious or 'saucy'
persons from his fields. Moreover, the dearer the corn, and the more important the privilege
for the poor, the more the farmer was disinclined to largess the precious ears. Capel Lofft
had pleaded that with improved agriculture the gleaners could pick up so little that that little
should not be grudged, but the farmer found that under famine prices this little was worth
more to him than the careless scatterings of earlier times.(10*)

The loss of his cow and his produce and his common and traditional rights was rendered
particularly serious to the labourer by the general growth of prices. For enclosure which
had produced the agrarian proletariat, had raised the cost of living for him. The accepted
opinion that under enclosure England became immensely more productive tends to obscure
the truth that the agricultural labourer suffered in his character of consumer, as well as in his
character of producer, when the small farms and the commons disappeared. Not only had he
to buy the food that formerly he had produced himself, but he had to buy it in a rising market.
Adam Smith admitted that the rise of price of poultry and pork had been accelerated by
enclosure, and Nathaniel Kent laid stress on the diminution in the supply of these and other
small provisions. Kent has described the change in the position of the labourers in this
respect: 'Formerly they could buy milk, butter, and many other small articles in every parish,
in whatever quantity they are wanted. But since small farms have decreased in number, no
such articles are to be had; for the great farmers have no idea of retailing such small
commodities, and those who do retail them carry them all to town. A farmer is even
unwilling to sell the labourer who works for him a bushel of wheat, which he might get
ground for three or four pence a bushel. For want of this advantage he is driven to the
mealman or baker, who, in the ordinary course of their profit, get at least ten per cent. of
them, upon this principal article of their consumption.'(11*) Davies, the author of The Case
of Labourers in Husbandry, thus describes the new method of distribution. 'The great
farmer deals in a wholesale way with the miller: the miller with the mealman: the mealman
with the shopkeeper, of which last the poor man buys his flour by the bushel. For neither the
miller nor the mealman will sell the labourer a less quantity than a sack of flour, under the
retail price of shops, and the poor man's pocket will seldom allow of his buying a whole
sack at once.'(12*)

It is clear from these facts that it would have needed a very large increase of wages to
compensate the labourer for his losses under enclosure. But real wages, instead of rising,
had fallen, and fallen far. The writer of the Bedfordshire Report (p. 67), comparing the
period of 1730-50 with that of 1802-6 in respect of prices of wheat and labour, points out
that to enable him to purchase equal quantities of bread in the second period and in the first,
the pay of the day labourer in the second period should have been 2s. a day, whereas it was
1s. 6d. Nathaniel Kent, writing in 1796,(13*) says that in the last forty or fifty years the
price of provisions had gone up by 60 per cent, and wages by 25 per cent, 'but this is not all,
for the sources of the market which used to feed him are in a great measure cut off since the
system of large farms has been so much encouraged.' Professor Levy estimates that wages
rose between 1760 and 1813 by 60 per cent, and the price of wheat by 130 per cent.(14*)
Thus the labourer who now lived on wages alone earned wages of a lower purchasing
power than the wages which he had formerly supplemented by his own produce. Whereas
his condition earlier in the century had been contrasted with that of Continental peasants
greatly to his advantage in respect of quantity and variety of food, he was suddenly brought
down to the barest necessities of life. Arthur Young had said a generation earlier that in
France bread formed nineteen parts in twenty of the food of the people, but that in England
all ranks consumed an immense quantity of meat, butter and cheese.(15*) We know
something of the manner of life of the poor in 1789 and 1795 from the family budgets
collected by Eden and Davies from different parts of the country.(16*) These budgets show
that the labourers were rapidly sinking in this respect to the condition that Young had
described as the condition of the poor in France. 'Bacon and other kinds of meat form a very
small part of their diet, and cheese becomes a luxury.' But even on the meagre food that now
became the ordinary fare of the cottage, the labourers could not make ends meet. All the
budgets tell the same tale of impoverished diet accompanied by an overwhelming strain and
an actual deficit. The normal labourer, even with constant employment, was no longer
solvent.

If we wish to understand fully the predicament of the labourer, we must remember that he
was not free to roam over England, and try his luck in some strange village or town when
his circumstances became desperate at home. He lived under the capricious tyranny of the
old law of settlement, and enclosure had made that net a much more serious fact for the
poor. The destruction of the commons had deprived him of any career within his own
village; the Settlement Laws barred his escape out of it. It is worth while to consider what
the Settlement Laws were, and how they acted, and as the subject is not uncontroversial it
will be necessary to discuss it in some detail.

Theoretically every person had one parish, and one only, in which he or she had a settlement
and a right to parish relief. In practice it was often difficult to decide which parish had the
duty of relief, and disputes gave rise to endless litigation. From this point of view
eighteenth-century England was like a chessboard of parishes, on which the poor were
moved about like pawns. The foundation of the various laws on the subject was an Act
passed in Charles II's reign (13 and 14 Charles II. c. 12) in 1662. Before this Act each
parish had, it is true, the duty of relieving its own impotent poor and of policing its own
vagrants, and the infirm and aged were enjoined by law to betake themselves to their place
of settlement, which might be their birthplace, or the place where they had lived for three
years, but, as a rule, 'a poor family might, without the fear of being sent back by the parish
officers, go where they choose, for better wages, or more certain employment.'(17*) This
Act of 1662 abridged their liberty, and, in place of the old vagueness, established a new and
elaborate system. The Act was declared to be necessary in the preamble, because 'by reason
of some defects in the law, poor people are not restrained from going from one parish to
another, and therefore do endeavour to settle themselves in those parishes where there is the
best stock, the largest commons or wastes to build cottages, and the most woods for them to
burn and destroy; and when they have consumed it, then to another parish; and at last
become rogues and vagabonds; to the great discouragement of parishes to provide stock,
when it is liable to be devoured by strangers.' By the Act any new-comer, within forty days
of arrival, could be ejected from a parish by an order from the magistrates, upon complaint
from the parish officers, and removed to the parish where he or she was last legally settled.
If, however, the new-comer settled in a tenement of the yearly value of £10, or could give
security for the discharge of the parish to the magistrates' satisfaction, he was exempt from
this provision.

As this Act carried with it the consequence that forty days' residence without complaint
from the parish officers gained the new-comer a settlement, it was an inevitable temptation
to Parish A to smuggle its poor into Parish B, where forty days' residence without the
knowledge of the parish officers would gain them a settlement. Fierce quarrels broke out
between the parishes in consequence. To compose these it was enacted (1 James II. c. 17)
that the forty days' residence were to be reckoned only after a written notice had been given
to a parish officer. Even this was not enough to protect Parish B, and by 3 William and
Mary, c. 11 (1691) it was provided that this notice must be read in church, immediately
after divine service, and then registered in the book kept for poor's accounts. Such a
condition made it practically impossible for any poor man to gain a settlement by forty days'
residence, unless his tenement were of the value of £10 a year, but the Act allowed an
immigrant to obtain a settlement in any one of four ways; (1) by paying the parish taxes; (2)
by executing a public annual office in the parish; (3) by serving an apprenticeship in the
parish; (4) by being hired for a year's service in the parish. (This, however, only applied to
the unmarried.) In 1697 (8 and 9 William III. e. 30) a further important modification of the
settlement laws was made. To prevent the arbitrary ejection of new-comers by parish
officers, who feared that the fresh arrival or his children might somehow or other gain a
settlement, it was enacted that if the new-comer brought with him to Parish B a certificate
from the parish officers of Parish A taking responsibility for him, then he could not be
removed till be became actually chargeable. It was further decided by this and subsequent
Acts and by legal decisions, that the granting of a certificate was to be left to the discretion
of the parish officers and magistrates, that the cost of removal fell on the certificating parish,
and that a certificate holder could only gain a settlement in a new parish by renting a
tenement of £10 annual value, or by executing a parish office, and that his apprentice or
hired servant could not gain a settlement.

In addition to these methods of gaining a settlement there were four other ways, 'through
which,' according to Eden, 'it is probable that by far the greater part of the labouring Poor...
are actually settled.'(18*) (1) Bastards, with some exceptions, acquired a settlement by
birth;(19*) (2) legitimate children also acquired a settlement by birth if their father's, or
failing that, their mother's legal settlement was not known; (3) women gained a settlement by
marriage; (4) persons with an estate of their own were irremovable, if residing on it,
however small it might be.

Very few important modifications had been made in the laws of Settlement during the
century after 1697. In 1722 (9 George I. c. 7) it was provided that no person was to obtain a
settlement in any parish by the purchase of any estate or interest of less value than £30, to be
'bona fide paid,' a provision which suggests that parishes had connived at gifts of money for
the purchase of estates in order to discard their paupers: by the same Act the payment of the
scavenger or highway rate was declared not to confer a settlement. In 1784 (24 George III.
c. 6) soldiers, sailors and their families were allowed to exercise trades where they liked,
and were not to be removable till they became actually chargeable; and in 1793 (33 George
III. c. 54) this latter concession was extended to members of Friendly Societies. None of
these concessions affected the normal labourer, and down to 1795 a labourer could only
make his way to a new village if his own village would give him a certificate, or if the other
village invited him. His liberty was entirely controlled by the parish officers.

How far did the Settlement Acts operate? How far did this body of law really affect the
comfort and liberty of the poor? The fiercest criticism comes from Adam Smith, whose
fundamental instincts rebelled against so crude and brutal an interference with human
freedom. 'To remove a man who has committed no misdemeanour, from a parish where he
chuses to reside, is an evident violation of natural liberty and justice. The common people
of England, however, so jealous of their liberty, but, like the common people of most other
countries, never rightly understanding wherein it consists, have now, for more than a century
together, suffered themselves to be exposed to this oppression without a remedy. Though
men of reflexion, too, have sometimes complained of the law of settlements as a public
grievance; yet it has never been the object of any general popular clamour, such as that
against general warrants, an abusive practice undoubtedly, but such a one as was not likely
to occasion any general oppression. There is scarce a poor man in England, of forty years of
age, I will venture to say, who has not, in some part of his life, felt himself most cruelly
oppressed by this ill-contrived law of settlements.'(20*)

Adam Smith's view is supported by two contemporary writers on the Poor Law, Dr. Burn
and Mr. Hay. Dr. Burn, who published a history of the Poor Law in 1764, gives this picture
of the overseer: 'The office of an Overseer of the Poor seems to be understood to be this, to
keep an extraordinary look-out to prevent persons coming to inhabit without certificates, and
to fly to the Justices to remove them: and if a man brings a certificate, then to caution the
inhabitants not to let him a farm of £10 a year, and to take care to keep him out of all parish
offices.'(21*) He further says that the parish officers will assist a poor man in taking a farm
in a neighboring parish, and give him £10 for the rent. Mr. Hay, M.P., protested in his
remarks on the Poor Laws against the hardships inflicted on the poor by the Laws of
Settlement. 'It leaves it in the breast of the parish officers whether they will grant a poor
person a certificate or no.'(22*) Eden, on the other hand, thought Adam Smith's picture
overdrawn, and he contended that though there were no doubt cases of vexatious removal,
the Laws of Settlement were not administered in this way everywhere. Howlett also
considered the operation of the Laws of Settlement to be 'trifling,' and instanced the growth
of Sheffield, Birmingham, and Manchester as proof that there was little interference with the
mobility of labour.

A careful study of the evidence seems to lead to the conclusion that the Laws of Settlement
were in practice, as they were on paper, a violation of natural liberty; that they did not stop
the flow of labour, but that they related it in the interest of the employing class. The answer
to Howlett is given by Ruggles in the Annals of Agriculture.(23*) He begins by saying that
the Law of Settlement has made a poor family 'of necessity stationary; and obliged them to
rest satisfied with those wages they can obtain where their legal settlement happens to be; a
restraint on them which ought to insure to them wages in the parish where they must remain,
more adequate to their necessities, because it precludes them in a manner from bringing
their labour, the only marketable produce they possess, to the best market; it is this restraint
which has, in all manufacturing towns, been one cause of reducing the poor to such a state of
miserable poverty; for, among the manufacturers, they have too frequently found masters
who have taken, and continue to take every advantage, which strict law will give; of
consequence, the prices of labour have been, in manufacturing towns, in an inverse ratio of
the number of poor settled in the place; and the same cause has increased that number, by
inviting foreigners, in times when large orders required many workmen; the masters
themselves being the overseers, whose duty as parish officers has been opposed by their
interest in supplying the demand.' In other words, when it suited an employer to let fresh
workers in, he would, qua overseer, encourage them to come with or without certificates;
but when they were once in and 'settled' he would refuse them certificates to enable them to
go and try their fortunes elsewhere, in parishes where a certificate was demanded with each
poor new-comer.(24*) Thus it is not surprising to find, from Eden's Reports, that
certificates are never granted at Leeds and Skipton; seldom granted at Sheffield; not
willingly granted at Nottingham, and that at Halifax certificates are not granted at present,
and only three have been granted in the last eighteen years.

It has been argued that the figures about removals in different parishes given by Eden in his
second and third volumes show that the Law of Settlement was 'not so black as it has been
painted.'(25*) But in considering the small number of removals, we must also consider the
large number of places where there is this entry, 'certificates are never granted.' It needed
considerable courage to go to a new parish without a certificate and run the risk of an
ignominious expulsion, and though all overseers were not so strict as the one described by
Dr. Burn, yet the fame of one vexatious removal would have a far-reaching effect in
checking migration. It is clear that the law must have operated in this way in districts where
enclosures took away employment within the parish. Suppose Hodge to have lived at
Kibworth-Beauchamp in Leicestershire. About 1780, 3600 acres were enclosed and turned
from arable to pasture; before enclosure the fields 'were solely applied to the production of
corn,' and 'the Poor had then plenty of employment in weeding, reaping, threshing, etc., and
could also collect a great deal of corn by gleaning.'(26*) After the change, as Eden admits, a
third or perhaps a fourth of the number of hands would be sufficient to do all the farming
work required. Let us say that Hodge was one of the superfluous two-thirds, and that the
parish authorities refused him a certificate. What did he do? He applied to the overseer,
who sent him out as a roundsman.(27*) He would prefer to bear the ills he knew rather than
face the unknown in the shape of a new parish officer, who might demand a certificate, and
send him back with ignominy if he failed to produce one. If he took his wife and family with
him there was even less chance of the demand for a certificate being waived.(28*) So at
Kibworth-Beauchamp Hodge and his companions remained, in a state of chronic discontent.
'The Poor complain of hard treatment from the overseers, and the overseers accuse the Poor
of being saucy.'(29*)

Now, at first sight, it seems obvious that it would be to the interest of a parish to give a poor
man a certificate, if there were no market for his labour at home, in order to enable him to
go elsewhere and make an independent living. This seems the reasonable view, but it is
incorrect. In the same way, it would seem obvious that a parish would give slight relief to a
person whose claim was in doubt rather than spend ten times the amount in contesting that
claim at law. In point of fact, in neither case do we find what seems the reasonable course
adopted. Parishes spent fortunes in lawsuits. And to the parish authorities it would seem that
they risked more in giving Hodge a certificate than in obliging him to stay at home, even if
he could not make a living in his native place; for he might, with his certificate, wander a
long way off, and then fall into difficulties, and have to be fetched back at great expense,
and the cost of removing him would fall on the certificating parish. There is a significant
passage in the Annals of Agriculture(30*) about the wool trade in 1788. 'We have lately
had some hand-bills scattered about Bocking, I am told, promising full employ to combers
and weavers, that would migrate to Nottingham. Even if they chose to try this offer; as
probably a parish certificate for such a distance would be refused; it cannot be attempted.'
Where parishes saw an immediate prospect of getting rid of their superfluous poor into a
neighboring parish with open fields or a common, they were indeed not chary of granting
certificates. At Hothfield in Kent, for example, 'full half of the labouring poor are
certificated persons from other parishes: the above-mentioned common, which affords them
the means of keeping a cow, or poultry, is supposed to draw many Poor into the parish;
certificated persons are allowed to dig peat.'(31*)

In the Rules for the government of the Poor in the hundreds of Loes and Wilford in
Suffolk(32*) very explicit directions are given about the granting of certificates. In the first
place, before any certificate is granted the applicant must produce an examination taken
before a Justice of the Peace, showing that he belongs to one of the parishes within the
hundred. Granted that he has complied with this condition, then, (1) if he be a labourer or
husbandman no certificate will be granted him out of the hundreds unless he belongs to the
parish of Kenton, and even in that case it is 'not to exceed the distance of three miles;' (2) if
he be a tradesman, artificer, or manufacturer a certificate may be granted to him out of the
hundreds, but in no case is it to exceed the distance of twenty miles from the parish to which
he belongs. The extent of the hundreds was roughly fourteen miles by five and a half.

Eden, describing the neighbourhood of Coventry, says: 'In a country parish on one side the
city, chiefly consisting of cottages inhabited by ribbon-weavers, the Rates are as high as in
Coventry; whilst, in another parish, on the opposite side, they do not exceed one-third of the
City Rate: this is ascribed to the care that is taken to prevent manufacturers from settling in
the parish.'(33*) In the neighbourhood of Mollington (Warwickshire and Oxon) the poor
rates varied from 2s. to 4s. in the pound. 'The difference in the several parishes, it is said,
arises, in a great measure, from the facility or difficulty of obtaining settlements: in several
parishes, a fine is imposed on a parishoner, who settles a newcomer by hiring, or otherwise,
so that a servant is very seldom hired for a year. Those parishes which have for a long time
been in the habit of using these precautions, are now very lightly burthened with Poor. This
is often the case, where farms are large, and of course in few hands; while other parishes,
not politic enough to observe these rules, are generally burthened with an influx of poor
neighbours.'(34*) Another example of this is Deddington (Oxon) which like other parishes
that possessed common fields suffered from an influx of small farmers who had been turned
out elsewhere, whereas neighbouring parishes, possessed by a few individuals, were
cautious in permitting newcomers to gain settlements.(35*) This practice of hiring servants
for fifty-one weeks only was common: Eden thought it fraudulent and an evasion of the law
that would not be upheld in a court of justice,(36*) but he was wrong, for the 1817 Report
on the Poor Law mentions among 'the measures, justifiable undoubtedly in point of law,
which are adopted very generally in many parts of the kingdom, to defeat the obtaining a
settlement, that of hiring labourers for a less period than a year; from whence it naturally
and necessarily follows, that a labourer may spend the season of his health and industry in
one parish, and be transferred in the decline of life to a distant Part of the kingdom.'(37*)
We hear little about the feelings of the unhappy labourers who were brought home by the
overseers when they fell into want in a parish which had taken them in with their certificate,
but it is not difficult to imagine the scene. It is significant that the Act of 1795 (to which we
shall refer later), contained a provision that orders of removal were to be suspended in
cases where the pauper was dangerously ill.

From the Rules for the Government of the Poor in the Hundreds of Loes and Wilford,
already alluded to, we learn some particulars of the allowance made for the removal of
paupers. Twenty miles was to be considered a day's journey; 2d. was to be allowed for one
horse, and so on in proportion per mile: but if the distance were over twenty miles, or the
overseer were obliged to be out all night, then 2s. was to be allowed for him, 1s. for his
horse, and 6d. for each pauper.(38*) It is improbable that such a scale of payment would
induce the overseer to look kindly on the causes of his trouble: much less would a pauper be
a persona grata if litigation over his settlement had already cost the parish large sums.

It has been necessary to give these particulars of the Law of Settlement for two reasons. In
the first place, the probability of expulsion, 'exile by administrative order,' as it has been
called, threw a shadow over the lives of the poor. In the second place, the old Law of
Settlement became an immensely more important social impediment when enclosure and the
great industrial inventions began to redistribute population. When the normal labourer had
common rights and a strip and a cow, he would not wish to change his home on account of
temporary distress: after enclosure he was reduced to a position in which his distress, if he
stayed on in his own village, was likely to be permanent.

The want and suffering revealed in Davies' and Eden's budgets came to a crisis in 1795, the
year of what may be called the revolt of the housewives. That year, when exceptional
scarcity sharpened the edge of the misery caused by the changes we have summarised, was
marked by a series of food riots all over England, in which a conspicuous part was taken by
women. These disturbances are particularly interesting from the discipline and good order
which characterise the conduct of the rioters. The rioters when they found themselves
masters of the situation did not use their strength to plunder the shops: they organised
distribution, selling the food they seized at what they considered fair rates, and handing over
the proceeds to the owners. They did not rob: they fixed prices, and when the owner of
provisions was making for a dearer market they stopped his carts and made him sell on the
spot. At Aylesbury in March 'a numerous mob, consisting chiefly of women, seized on all
the wheat that came to market, and compelled the farmers to whom it belonged to accept of
such prices as they thought proper to name.'(39*) In Devonshire the rioters scoured the
country round Chudleigh, destroying two mills: 'from the great number of petticoats, it is
generally supposed that several men were dressed in female attire.'(40*) At Carlisle a band
of women accompanied by boys paraded the streets, and in spite of the remonstrances of a
magistrate, entered various houses and shops, seized all the grain, deposited it in the public
hall, and then formed a committee to regulate the price at which it should be sold.(41*) As
Ipswich there was a riot over the price of butter, and at Fordingbridge, a certain Sarah
Rogers, in company with other women started a cheap butter campaign. Sarah took some
butter from Hannah Dawson 'with a determination of keeping it at a reduced price,' an
escapade for which she was afterwards sentenced to three months' hard labour at the
Winchester Assizes.' Nothing but the age of the prisoner (being very young) prevented the
Court from passing a more severe sentence.(42*) At Bath the women actually boarded a
vessel, laden with wheat and flour. which was lying in the river and refused to let her go.
When the Riot Act was read they retorted that they were not rioting, but were resisting the
sending of corn abroad, and sang God save the King. Although the owner took an oath that
the corn was destined for Bristol, they were not satisfied, and ultimately soldiers were
called in, and the corn was relanded and put into a warehouse.(43*) In some places the
soldiers helped the populace in their work of fixing prices: at Seaford, for example, they
seized and sold meat and flour in the churchyard, and at Guildford they were the ringleaders
in a movement to lower the price of meat to 4d. a pound, and were sent out of the town by
the magistrates in consequence.(44*) These spontaneous leagues of consumers sprang up in
many different parts, for in addition to the places already mentioned there were disturbances
of sufficient importance to be chronicled in the newspapers, in Wiltshire, Suffolk, and
Norfolk, whist Eden states that at Deddington the populace seized on a boat laden with
flour, but restored it on the miller's promising to sell it at a reduced price.(45*)

These riots are interesting from many points of view. They are a rising of the poor against
an increasing pressure of want, and the forces that were driving down their standard of life.
They did not amount to a social rebellion, but they mark a stage in the history of the poor. To
the rich they were a signal of danger. Davies declared that if the ruling classes learnt from
his researches what was the condition of the poor, they would intervene to rescue the
labourers from 'the abject state into which they are sunk.' Certainly the misery of which his
budgets paint the plain surface could not be disregarded. If compassion was not a strong
enough force to make the ruling classes attend to the danger that the poor might starve, fear
would certainly have made them think of the danger that the poor might rebel. Some of them
at any rate knew their Virgil well enough to remember that in the description of the threshold
of Orcus, while 'senectus' is 'tristis' and 'egestas' is 'turpis,' 'fames' is linked with the more
ominous epithet 'malesuada.' If a proletariat were left to starve despair might teach bad
habits, and this impoverished race might begin to look with ravenous eyes on the lot of those
who lived on the spoils and sinecures of the State. Thus fear and pity united to sharpen the
wits of the rich, and to turn their minds to the distresses of the poor.

NOTES:

1. Davies, The Case of Labourers in Husbandry, p. 15.

2. In some instance it is reckoned as costing only 7s. Ibid., see p. 185.

3. Davies, p. 181.

4. Eden, vol. ii, p. 547.

5. Vol. xxv, p. 488.

6. See Annuals of Agriculture, vol. ix, pp. 13, 14, 165-167, 636-646, and vol. x, pp.
218-227.

7. Capel Lofft (1751-1824); follower of Fox; writer of poems and translations from Virgil
and Petrarch; patron of Robert Bloomfield, author of Farmer's Boy. Called by Boswell
'This little David of popular spirit.'

8. Thomas Ruggles (1737-1813), author of History of the Poor, published in 1793,
Deputy-Lieutenant of Essex and Suffolk.

9. Sir Henry Gould, 1710-1794.

10. The Annuals of Agriculture (vol. xvii, p. 293) contains a curious apology by a gleaner
in 1791 to the owner of some fields, who had begun legal proceedings against her and her
husband. 'Whereas I, Margaret Abree, with of Thomas Abree, of the city of New Sarum,
blacksmith, did, during the barley harvest, in the mouth of September las, many times
wilfully and maliciously go into the fields of, and belonging to, Mr Edward Perry, at
Clarendon Park, and take with me my children, and did there leaze, collect, and carry away
a quantity of barley... Now we do hereby declare, that we are fully convinced of the
illegality of such proceedings, and that no person has a right to leaze any sort of grain, or to
come on any field whatsoever, without the consent of the owner; and are also truly sensible
of the obligation we are under to the said Edward Perry for his lenity towards us, inasmuch
as the damages given, together with the heavy cost incurred, would have been much greater
than we could possibly have discharged, and must have amounted to perpetual
imprisonment, as even those who have least disapproved of our conduct, would certainly
not have contributed so large a sum to deliver us from the legal consequences of it. And we
do hereby faithfully promise never to be guilty of the same, or any like offence in future.
Thomas Abree, Margaret Abree. Her + Mark.' It is interesting to compare with this
judge-made law of England the Mosaic precept: 'And when ye reap the harvest of your land,
thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of they field when thou reapest, neither
shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them unto the poor, and to the
stranger.' (Leviticus xxiii, 22).

11. Kent, Hints. p. 238.

12. p. 34; cf. Marshall on the Southern Department, p. 9, 'Yorkshire bacon, generally of the
worst sort, is retailed to the poor from little chandlers' shops at an advanced price, bread in
the same way.'

13. Notes on the Agriculture of Norfolk, p. 165.

14. Large and Small Holdings, p. 11.

15. Young's Political Arithmetic, quoted by Lecky, vol. vii, p. 263 note.

16. See Appendix B for six of these budgets.

17. Ruggles, Annals of Agriculture, vol. xiv, p. 205.

18. Eden, vol. i, p. 180.

19. The parish might have the satisfaction of punishing the mother by a year's hard labour (7
James I, c. 4, altered in 1810), but could not get rid of the child.

20. Wealth of Nations, vol. i, p. 194.

21. Quoted by Eden, vol. i, p. 347.

22. See Ibid., p. 296.

23. Vol. xiv, pp. 205, 206.

24. An example of a parish where the interests of the employer and of the parish officers
differed is given in the House of Commons Journal for February 4, 1788, when a petition
was presented from Mr John Wilkinson, a master iron founder at Bradley, near Bilston, in
the parish of Wolverhampton. The petitioner states 'that the present Demand for the Iron of
his Manufacture and the Improvement of which is capable, naturally encourage a very
considerable Extension of his Works, but that the Experience he has had of the vexation
Effect, as well as of the constantly increasing Amount of Poor Rates to which he is subject,
has filled him with Apprehensions of final Ruin to his Establishment; and that the Parish
Officers... are constantly alarming his Workmen with Threats of Removal to the various
Parishes from which the Necessity of employing skilful Manufacturers has obliged him to
collect them.' He goes on to ask that his district shall be made extra-parochial to the poor
rates.

25. Hasbach, pp. 172-3.

26. Eden, vol. ii, p. 384.

27. See p. 148.

28. The unborn were the special objects of parish officers' dread. At Derby the persons sent
out under orders of removal are chiefly pregnant girls. (Eden vol. ii, p. 126). Bastards (see
above) with some exceptions gained a settlement in their birthplace, and Hodge's legitimate
children might gain one too if there was any doubt about the place of their parents'
settlements.

29. Eden, vol. ii, p. 383.

30. vol. ix, p. 660.

31. Eden, vol. ii, p. 288. 'In considering the accounts of the state of the commons, it must be
remember that the open parishes thus paid the penalty of enclosure elsewhere. Colluvies
vicorum. But these open fields and commons were becoming rapidly more scarce.

32. Ibid., p. 691.

33. Eden, vol. ii, p. 743.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid., vol. ii, p. 591.

36. Ibid., p. 654, re Litchfield. 'In two or three small parishes in this neighbourhood, which
consist of large farms, there are very few poor: the farmers, in order to prevent the
introduction of poor from other parishes, hire their servants for fifty-one weeks only. I
conceive, however, that this practice would be considered, by a court of justice, as
fraudulent, and a mere evasion in the master; and that a servant thus hired, if he remained the
fifty-second week with his master, on a fresh contract, would acquire a settlement in the
parish.'

37. See Annual Register, 1817, p. 298.

38. Eden, vol. ii, p. 689.

39. Reading Mercury, April 20, 1795; also Ipswich Journal, March 28.

40. Ipswich Journal, April 18.

41. Ibid., August 8.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

44. Reading Mercury, April 27, 1795.

45. Eden, vol. ii, p. 591

Master Index

The Conditions of a Pauper
Copy of a Letter from the Paupers of Bledlow
Parish,Buckinghamshire, England, 1834.
The following letter was originally published in the times, and republished in the Sydney
paper titled the Sydney Herald. It gives an account of the conditions in parts of England in
the year 1834, and can serve as an example of reason to emigrate.
Free Labour
Copy of a Letter from the Paupers of Bledlow Parish
to the Poor Law Commissioner,Dec 4 [1834]
 
    Bledlow. Dec 4.
   Gentleman - we who sign this letter are paupers of the
   parish of Bledlow, in Buckinghamshire.  Finding ourselves
   in great distress, we applied today to the bench of
   magistrates, at West Wycombe; to order the overssers to
   give us further relief.  They told us they had not the
   power to do so, and advised us to state our case to you,
   for the overseers said the same thing - that they have
   not the means of relief, and cannot find work for us,
   to enable us to earn better pay.
   We have therefore asked a neighbour to put our case in
   writing, and to lay it before you, and also before the
   Government. We are,many of us, married men with large
   families; we are all able bodied men, most willing to
   work, and very unwilling to live in idleness or on charity.
   There is not one among us that has ever been convicted of
   any crime, or even accused of any, except of the most
   trifling description.  Some of us have lived for many
   years in one service, and given satisfaction to those
   who employed us. Now, we respectfully and earnestly
   entreat your attention to the following facts.
   They cannot be understood without close attention, for
   they must be new to gentlemen who do not know what it
   is to live from hand to mouth.
   The married men among us are paid 7s a week: in harvest
   they may earn for four, or perhaps five weeks, as much
   as 13s a week; but this is the extent of our earnings
   during the year.
   The 7s are spent as follows - we pay 4s a week for bread:
   this will buy a little more than eight quarter loaves. We
   pay 1s,9d. more for bacon, and the remaining 15d. is laid
   out in soap, candles, sugar,tea , thread and worsted, and
   such necessaries.
   We have nothing left. We have no money remaining to buy
   clothing or fuel, or to pay for our rent, which may be
   taken on the average at 60s. a year.  We must depend on
   accident for these supplies, and of course, therefore,we
   generally go without them.  If we manage to save a guinea
   out of our earnings in harvest, it is nearly all expended
   in paying for our shoes, which cost 15s. or 16s. a pair.
   We have no rich neighbours amongs us to help out our scanty
   means by their benevolence.  Those among us who are single
   are paid only half-a-crown a week. This is spent as follows:
   13d are laid out in buying two quartern loaves, 1s in
   buying bacon, 2d. in lard, and the rest in suugar, which we
   mix with water without tea.We have nothing left to pay for
   lodging and washing, yet these cost us 10d. a week, for
   which we are obliged to run in debt till chance enables us
   to pay.
   None of us, whether married or single, can buy beer; it is
   often that we spend weeks without paying for it.  Yet we
   work from 7 o'oclock in the morning till 4 in the afternoon.
   Gentlemen, the distress which we sometimes suffer cannot be
   conceived by you. Several of us, when we attended the
   magistrates this morning a 2 o'clock, had been without food
   since yesterday evening.  When the week is nearly at an end
   we are very much pinched. On Fridays and Saturdays we have
   scarcely any bread remainng in the house, and no money to
   buy more.  If any of you would enter our houses, and see
   how destitute we are, with wives and children almost starving
   but wanting the means to satisfy them, wanting every comfort,
   and unable to buy even the fuel to warm them, or clothes to
   cover them, you would not charge us with impatience or
   rudeness in making our wants known, and urging you with
   importunity to relieve them.  When we married matters were
   better; we could,even as children, earn 5s.a week: we saved
   a little out of our wages; we bought furniture, and married,
   not dreaming how the world would turn.  Now that we have
   families about us, we can earn but little more as men, than
   we used to gain as children.
   Gentlemen, we have looked out for work in vain: we have gone
   here and there, and can find none; and when we leave our parish
   in fruitless search, we are deprived of the little allowance
   which the parish gives us; the allowance is stopped from the
   day we leave it in search of employment.
   Gentlemen, we do not presume to impute blame to any persons.
   The magistrates tell us that they can do nothing; the overseers
   tell us that they can do nothing, and we believe them; we know
   not where to appy for relief, but all send us to you.
   We most earnestly implore it at your hands. Times used to be
   better; before Bledlow was enclosed, the extensive commons
   found many of us in little comforts; now we have no resource
   but the parish, and ready as we are to work, the parish cannot
   give us work, and can only afford very scanty relief.
   We should rejoice to occupy a rood of land, and pay full rent
   for it; but we have nobody to ask that can let us land.  If we
   would plant a few potatoes it would relieve us greatly. An
   allotment,however small, would afford us the means of profitable
   employment, and still enables us to pay rent for it.  We do not
   presume to point out this, or any other as the proper mode of
   administering relief; we leave that to you; but we must live.
   If we could consent to be starved ourselves, we must not let
   our wives and children starve, this would not be right.
   We therefore, humbly entreat that you will visit our parish,
   and that without delay, for hunger and cold and want will
   not admit of delay; and when you come, we implore you to examine
   us as labourers, and to hear from our mouths the whole case,
   and judge as between man and man, as as between yourselves and
   God; whether we do not require and deserve relief.
   We are,Gentlemen, most respectfully and obediently,
   William Chitch
   William Steves  [x] his mark
   Thomas Smith    [x]
   Thomas Harris   [x]
   Richard Osborne [x]
   James Williams  [x]
   Joseph Shephard [x]
   Daniel Butler,   wife and 5 children, four under 10
   Thomas Pratt, X, with a wife and 4 children under 6,the youngest
                    not a month old.
   Levi Stevens, x, with a wife and 5 children under 11.
   Thomas Cherry,x, with a wife and 3 children under 1o.
   Joseph Shepard,x,with 9 children,5 under 11,has lived 35 years
                    in the one house.
   John Prentis, x, with a wife and 3 children, all under 13.
   William Price,x, with a wife and 3 children,1 under 10.
                    worked 10 years with one master.
   William Chester,x,in his 65th year.
   Thomas Tombs, x, with a wife and 6 children.2 under 10.
   James Grimsdull,x,
   Francis Oliver, x, with a wife and 2 children under 5.
   Thomas Eustace, x,with a wife and 2 children under 3.
   William Gridell,x, with wife and 3 children under 9.
   George Pratt, x, with a wife and 2 children, one 14 & one 7.
   John Stevens, x, with a wife and 7 children, 4 under 10,
                    four years in the one place.
   James Stevens, x, in his 65th year, with several children,
                     one under 12.
   John Cherry, x,  with a wife and 2 children under 2.
   Thomas Gomme, x, with 2 children, 1 under 10.
   Samuel Mead,     with a wife and 3 children under 4.
   William Mead, x, with wife and one child aged four months.
   Thomas Eustace, x,in his 71st year
   William Osborne,x, with a wife and 5 children, youngest age 15.
   David Brown, x,  with a wife and 3 children under 4 years.
   John White, x,   in his 63rd year.
   James Shephard, x,

   There are about 60 more labourers in our parish who are
   as badly off as ourselves, but, at the time this letter is
   written, they are not actually paupers, and therefore they
   have not been asked to sign it, they are, however, liable
   to be thrown on the parish any day in the week, and,though
   at present employed by the farmers, they receive no better
   pay than we do.  Their case is just the same as ours, and
   their sufferings just as great.
                           John Stevens x
                           William Mead x
           To the Commissioners of the Poor Law & Etc.
 

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