¹ For the origin of the term and its history, see Neuman, Mark, “Speenhamland in Berkshire,” in Comparative Development in Social Welfare, ed. Martin, E. W. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1972), pp. 85–127Google Scholar.

² See Blaug, Mark, “The Myth of the Old Poor Law and the Making of the New,” Journal of Economic History 23 (1963): 151–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, James Stephen, “The Mythology of the Old Poor Law,” Journal of Economic History 29 (1969): 292–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Baugh, D. A., “The Cost of Poor Relief in South-East England, 1790–1834,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 28 (1975): 50–68Google Scholar.

³ It must be acknowledged forthwith that my use of the term “Speenhamland” in this context can be misleading, as K. D. M. Snell has cautioned me. I use the word in this essay only in its most general and evocative sense.

⁴ E. P. Thompson wrote: “Sometimes crippled by an excess of rich food, the magistrates from time to time put aside their industrious compilation of archives for the disciples of Sir Lewis Namier, and peered down from their parklands at the cornfields in which their labourers hungered” (“The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, no. 50 [February 1971], p. 136)Google Scholar. They then proceeded to write pamphlets for poor law historians.

⁵ This is not to deny that Speenhamland, other forms of outdoor relief, workhouses, and legislative reforms deserve considerable attention, then and now.

⁶ Marshall, Dorothy, “The Old Poor Law, 1662–1795,” Economic History Review, 1st ser., 8 (1937–1938): 47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Landau, Norma, “The Laws of Settlement and the Surveillance of Immigration in Eighteenth-Century Kent,” Continuity and Change 3, no. 3 (1988): 391–420CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Her essay appears to bear some relationship to a paper I presented at the Pacific Coast and North American Conference on British Studies in 1984, entitled “The Law of Pauper Settlement: A Mercantilist Contribution to British Economic and Social Development.” However, she does not cite this paper (although she requested and received a copy), and her approach and conclusions are significantly different from my own. Snell's, K. D. M.Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660–1900 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar is cited by Landau in a critical way, to which he is responding. Snell is currently engaged in a major study of pauper settlement that should clarify our understanding of what I have called elsewhere the mortar of the pre-1834 poor law. The fullest explication of settlement law and practice to appear in recent years is my Poverty, Migration and Settlement in the Industrial Revolution (Palo Alto, Calif.: Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship [SPOSS], 1989Google Scholar). That book is explanatory and suggestive and not by any means the last word on this complex topic.

⁸ The historical background is more fully explored in my article, “The Impact of Pauper Settlement, 1691–1834,” Past and Present, no. 73 (November 1976), pp. 42–74Google Scholar.

⁹ Statutes, 14 Charles II, c. 12 (1662). Section 21 gave townships in Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Northumberland, the Bishopric of Durham, Cumberland, and Westmorland jurisdiction in poor law matters.

¹⁰ This outline is based on both laws and judicial decisions. The best guides are Bott, Edmund, The Laws Relating to the Poor (London, 1771; and the 1827 6th ed., ed. Const., F., revised by Pratt, John Tidd)Google Scholar; Burn, Richard, The Justice of the Peace and Parish Officer (London, 1755Google Scholar; and the various editions of the thirty that appeared between 1755 and 1869; I cite the 1805 20th ed., ed. William Woodfall); and Nolan, Michael, A Treatise of the Laws for the Relief and Settlement of the Poor (London, 1804Google Scholar; and the 1825 4th ed., which was the last to appear in Nolan's life).

¹¹ See Taylor, , “Impact of Pauper Settlement,” pp. 51–52Google Scholar. In an analysis of the extraordinarily complete settlement examinations of Kenton in Devon, 1731–1850, 84 percent of the 564 examinees acquired settlement in one of the four major ways mentioned above. Devon Record Office (RO), Kenton, MSS 70A/PO6031–6323, and 6414–6763, passim.

¹² Burn, 3:623.

¹³ Casual relief was assistance for a specific purpose, such as purchasing new shoes, or tiding a family over illness or short-term unemployment. Regular relief, as the name implies, was ongoing relief, doled out weekly, which changed or ceased only when circumstances changed (the recipient achieved adulthood, found employment, married in the case of a female, or died). The distinction was important because regular relief could be prima facie evidence of a settlement while casual relief had no such consequence.

¹⁴ K. D. M. Snell estimates that the costs of examining could be as high as seven shillings, with the actual costs of removal often exceeding £8, and any legal expenses could go over £20. Snell, p. 18, n. 5. Costs clearly varied dramatically from case to case, but even short-distance and uncontested removals involved trouble and expense.

¹⁵ Abstract of Returns, Showing the Number of Persons Received into and Removed Out of Their Respective Parishes by Virtue of Any Order of Removal, Parliamentary Papers (PP), 1829 (78), 21:4–5Google Scholar. City of Manchester, Cultural Services, Central Library, Churchwardens' Accounts, 1809–48, MS M3/3/4/6A & B. I am grateful to J. M. Ayton, Archivist, for bringing these accounts to my attention, and to the City of Manchester Leisure Services Committee for permission to use them.

¹⁶ Charles Tilly writes: “European social history's central activity … concerns reconstructing ordinary people's experience of large structural changes.” Tilly, Charles, “Retrieving European Lives,” in Reliving the Past: The Worlds of Social History, ed. Zunz, Olivier (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), p. 15Google Scholar.

¹⁷ In Cheriton Bishop, Devon, there was an “Agreement made by ye Parishioners at a Vestry Meeting ye 6th Day of May in ye year 1798 that no overseer shall pay to any Poor Person living out of ye sd. Parish Without ye consent of ye Parishioners at a Vestry Meeting an if they do they shall stand to ye lost of such Money as they shall pay.” Devon RO, Cheriton Bishop, MS 132A/PO1. This admonition also suggests that nonresident relief was known in southwestern England.

¹⁸ Devon RO, East Budleigh, Settlement Papers, MS 1180A/PO315–16. This, and the case to follow, are discussed more fully in Taylor, , Poverty, Migration and Settlement (n. 7 above), pp. 103–5, and 127–28Google Scholar, respectively.

¹⁹ Statutes, 35 Geo. III, c. 101 (1795).

²⁰ Hanway, Jonas, Letters to the Guardians of the Infant Poor (London, 1767), p. 66Google Scholar.

²¹ London, Guildhall Library, St. Martin, Vintry, Examination of the Poor, 1815–29, MS 2847.

²² Ibid. Until 59 Geo. III, c. 12 (1819), Irish and Scottish sojourners were irremovable unless convicted as vagrants, which usually meant they had been begging. Vagrants were treated according to the vagrancy laws, which involved punishments and methods of conveyance (and meeting the costs thereof) distinct in many ways from the settlement of sojourners. The 1819 Act recognized the discretionary power of magistrates to remove those who were in need of relief. The Busby examination, dated September 1, 1830, is in the Devon RO, Totnes Borough, MS 1597/A/B/(7).

²³ Cumbria RO, Kendal, Kirkby Lonsdale, Township Letter, June 9, 1811, WPR/19/230. See Bott (n. 10 above), 2:83.

²⁴ Statutes, 59 Geo. III, c. 50 (1819).

²⁵ Snell has found that nonresident relief was also quite common in Midland industrial villages, in the south of England, most especially in and around London, and in rural districts as well. Clearly, the prevalence of nonresident relief requires further study, yet I suspect the northern counties may have made the greatest use of the system. Boyer's, George R. book, An Economic History of the English Poor Law, 1750–1850 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, considers nonresident relief in the industrial North (pp. 257–59), but he does not explore the complex interrelationships between the settlement practices of northern townships and labor migration. His archival work centered in southeastern counties, and he relies heavily on parliamentary papers and secondary sources. In fairness, his focus is on southern and rural England, but even so, settlement law is given relatively short shrift.

²⁶ Preston, Lancashire RO, Lancaster Overseers' Letter Book, 1809–19, ref. PR866.

²⁷ Lancaster, Lancaster District Library, Poor Rate, A Summary of Accounts … from March 1828 to March 1829, PT.8643. Figures are rounded to the nearest pound sterling.

²⁸ Lancaster District Library, Heaton with Oxcliffe, Overseers of the Poor Book, 1817–35, MS. 138.

²⁹ Leeds District Archives, St. Helen's Church, Sandal Magna, near Wakefield, Annual Statement of the Receipts and Payments of the Overseers of the Poor of the Township of Wakefield, April 1, 1829–April 1, 1830, in Correspondence, 22/1 (photocopy).

³⁰ Population: Comparative Account of the Population of Great Britain in the Years 1801, 1811, 1821 and 1831, PP. 1831 (348). 18:276Google Scholar.

³¹ Cumbria RO, Kendal, Kirkby Lonsdale, Township Letters, 1809–36, WPR/19. The precise number so assisted is difficult to determine. Brett Harrison, Senior Assistant Archivist. Leeds District Archives, West Yorkshire Archive Service, has studied the Kirkby Lonsdale records quite thoroughly. He found that of the 281 paupers identified in the overseers' accounts only 47 percent were in receipt of relief and living more than ten miles from the town. Of course, many of the above had families. My less reliable head count of the number of nonresident relief petitioners, including all identifiable family members, was 340. Not all who petitioned received, however. In addition, Harrison points out that township charity monies may have been used occasionally to provide relief to nonresident persons, and no record survives to identify who or how many there were. Brett Harrison and I are in the process of preparing an edited selection of the township letters, for they provide a remarkable perspective on the industrial North in the early nineteenth century. I am extremely grateful to Sheila MacPherson, Cumbria County archivist, for her assistance over many years, and to the Reverend Graham W. Bettridge, rector of Kirkby Lonsdale, for permission to use the township's records.

³² The letters are placed in bundles in rough chronological order, and the bundles are stored in boxes. However, these documents have not yet been fully sorted and classified.

³³ Ibid. Eight letters by or concerning the Johnsons are extant; the ones quoted here are dated June 23, 1812. and October 16, 1823 (Kirkby Lonsdale Township Letters, WPR/19).

³⁴ Ibid. The quotations are from letters dated March 25, 1824, and April 1, 1829, respectively.

³⁵ The doctrine of “less eligibility” was a Benthamite strategy to discourage pauperism by presenting poor relief as the least eligible alternative to any other means the incipient pauper might find to sustain life.

³⁶ I owe this observation to Brett Harrison. Poor relief information is derived from Cumbria RO, Kendal, Kirkby Lonsdale, Account Books of Overseers of the Poor, 1813–22 and 1823–35, WPR/19.

³⁷ Cumbria RO, Kendal, Kirby Lonsdale, Vagrants' Book, 1825–36, WPR/19.

³⁸ City of Manchester. Cultural Services, Central Library, Churchwardens' Accounts, 1809–48, M3/3/4/6A & B.

³⁹ Somewhat more attention to the Accounts is given in my article, “‘Set Down in a Large Manufacturing Town’: Sojourning Poor in Early Nineteenth-Century Manchester,” Manchester Region History Review 3 (Autumn/Winter 1989–1990): 3–8Google Scholar, but the accounts still await the careful study they deserve. I am grateful to Michael E. Rose for counsel and hospitality during my brief sojourn in Manchester in 1987.

⁴⁰ Statutes, 9 & 10 Vict., c. 66 (1846). This statute also protected sojourners from being removed in time of sickness or accident, even if resident for less than five years, unless magistrates stated that in their view the sojourner was permanently disabled. I wish to thank Ms.Tara Wood for her invaluable assistance in preparing the figures for the numbers and costs of the Manchester poor between 1809 and 1848.

⁴¹ Redford, Arthur, The History of Local Government in Manchester (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1939–1940), 1:182–87Google Scholar and 2:105–6.

⁴² Cobbett, William, Rural Rides (1832; reprint, London: Peter Davies, 1930), 2:692Google Scholar (letter dated July 28, 1832).

⁴³ West Yorkshire Archive Services, Bradford, Nathan Haley to Jere Haley, May 20, 1823, DB 39/36/5. Ashworth, David in “Settlement and Removal in Urban Areas: Bradford, 1834–71,” in The Poor and the City: The English Poor Law and Its Urban Context, 1834–1914, ed. Rose, Michael E. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), pp. 58–91Google Scholar, provides an excellent assessment of nonresident relief under the post-1834 poor law. He brings out the very real abuses that did occur in implementation.

⁴⁴ Eden, Frederic Morton, The State of the Poor (London, 1797), 3:772Google Scholar; A justice of the peace for the counties of Westmorland and Lancaster, The Names of Parishes and Other Divisions Maintaining Their Poor Separately in the County of Westmorland (Kendal, 1802), p. ivGoogle Scholar; Weyland, John, Observations on Mr. Whitbread's Poor Bill (London, 1807), p. 201Google Scholar. [Courtenay, Thomas Peregrine], Copy of a Letter to the Rt. Hon. Sturges Bourne (London, 1817), p. 37Google Scholar; Phillpotts, Henry, A Letter to the Rt. Hon. William Sturges Bourne (Durham, 1819), pp. 14–22Google Scholar; Nolan, Michael, The Speech of …, Delivered in the House of Commons (London, 1822), p. 60Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Bodkin, William Henry, Brief Observations on the Bill Now Pending in Parliament to Amend the Laws Relative to the Relief of the Poor (London, 1821), p. 35Google Scholar. Bodkin later became a Member of Parliament, and was instrumental in settlement reforms of the 1840s. Of course, as K. D. M. Snell has reminded me, many parishes did, in fact, have a policy of removing immediately.

⁴⁶ James, Patricia, Population Malthus: His Life and Times (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 450Google Scholar. [Smith, Sydney], “Poor Laws,” Edinburgh Review 33 (January 1820): 98Google Scholar. This was not an uncommon point of view, heard from Lincolnshire to St. Leonard, Shoreditch, for it fitted in with a common presumption that easy access to poor relief encouraged pauperism. Easy access and generous provision may indeed encourage welfare dependency, but it is not clear how many early nineteenth-century parishes and townships were either easy or generous.

⁴⁷ Reports from His Majesty's Commissioners: The Poor Laws, app. (B.2), Answers to Town Queries, PP, 1834 (44), pp. 35–36Google Scholar, query 42.

⁴⁸ Statutes, 4 & 5 Will. IV, c. 76 (1834), abolished hiring and service settlements, settlement by apprenticeships to sea, and settlements by serving a parish office; made more restrictive settlements by rental and estate possession; permitted unions of parishes for settlement purposes; and made removal a more complicated and therefore a more expensive process. For differing views of the 1834 act's impact on settlement, see Michael Rose, ed., p. 8, and also David Ashworth's essay in the same book, pp. 61–62.

⁴⁹ R. P. Hastings found nonresident relief used throughout the North Riding, except for Richmond and WhitbyHastings, R. P. Hastings, Poverty and the Poor Law in the North Riding of Yorkshire, 1780–1837 (York: Borthwick Institute, 1982), p. 28Google Scholar; Michael Rose found such relief in the West Riding was frequently given, the system working in general “to the benefit of all concerned.” Rose, Michael, “The Administration of the Poor Law in the West Riding of Yorkshire (1820–1855)” (Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 1965), p. 282Google Scholar. R. N. Thompson, though confining his attention to “The New Poor Law in Cumberland and Westmorland (1834–1871),” found unofficial arrangements “(a kind of gentleman's agreement),” all over the poor law unions of the area (p. 531), and elsewhere writes of the continuity of administrative practices between the old poor law and the new (p. 566). (Ph.D. diss., Newcastle upon Tyne University, 1976). The relevant statutes are Statutes, 9 & 10 Vict., c. 66 (1846), and 39 & 40 Vict., c. 61 (1876).

⁵⁰ Gash, Norman, Sir Robert Peel (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1972), p. 570Google Scholar. I am indebted to K. D. M. Snell for reminding me of this point.

⁵¹ Campbell, R. H. and Skinner, A. S., editors of Smith's, AdamAn Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976)Google Scholar, state that Smith could be less than critical when he saw a way to promote his general argument, and they call his treatment of the Law of Settlement a “serious failure” (p. 52). They point out that this “issue was one of contemporary importance and could have been investigated by a detailed examination of parochial administration, but of such investigation there is no evidence” (p. 54). As for the 1834 Poor Law Commissioners, one need only say here that the disparity between their Report and the volumes of evidence that accompanied it is remarkable. The quotation from Marshall, Dorothy is in her book, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1926), p. 248Google Scholar.

⁵² Bodkin, p. 29.

⁵³ Alcock, Thomas, Remarks on Two Bills for the Belter Maintenance of the Poor (Oxford, 1753), p. 22Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Malcolmson, Robert W., Life and Labour in England, 1700–1780 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), p. 74Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Snell (n. 7 above), pp. 334–39.

⁵⁶ Lis, Catherine and Soly, Hugo, Poverty and Capitalism in Pre-industrial Europe, 1350–1850 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979). p. 221Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ 1851 Census, PP 1852–53 (32.1), 88: 178, table 24; Walton, John K., Lancashire: A Social History, 1558–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987). p. 83Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ McNeill, William H., “Human Migration: Historical Overview,” in Human Migration: Patterns and Policies, ed. McNeill, William H. and Adams, Ruth S. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), p. 13Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ What was old has become new. Sidney Goldstein, writing of East Asian economies today, states “a growing body of research suggests that temporary population movement—circulation—may serve as an alternative means for populations to adjust to the changing economic situations.” This is what “Industrial Speenhamland” helped to promote. Goldstein quotes a Chinese proverb: “‘Water flows down to lower places, but people flow up to richer places.’” Goldstein, Sidney, “Forms of Mobility and Their Policy Implications: Thailand and China Compared,” Social Forces 65 (June 1987): 915CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Constructively channeling that flow is one of the many dilemmas of our time.