In 1597, the Elizabethan Parliament passed an Act that laid the foundations of what became known, subsequently, as the Old Poor Law in England and Wales. The Act entitled the overseers and churchwardens of each parish to levy a local tax, or rate, for the purposes of “setting the poor on work”, maintaining those who were unable to work, and boarding out pauper children as apprentices. The Act established the basic framework for the provision of poor relief until the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act and the inauguration of the “New Poor Law” in 1834.
Over the last four decades, historians have become increasingly interested in the lives that lay behind the operation of the Old Poor Law. As Alannah Tomkins notes, much of this work has focused on the records generated by investigations into the question of whether or not particular individuals had a “settlement” in the parish where they were seeking relief, and on the letters they wrote in pursuit of their claims (p. 219). This innovative and richly detailed volume builds on these foundations by using a new source – the vouchers or “small bills” that were used to record everyday poor law transactions – to shed new light on the role that the Poor Law played in supporting both claimants and the communities in which they lived.
As Collinge and Falcini explain, the Poor Law was not simply a mechanism for relieving destitute claimants, it was also an integral part of the local economy. The small bills record the payments that were made to claimants for the purchase of specific items, together with payments made to local tradespeople, for the provisioning of workhouses, and to Poor Law officials, either in the form of salaries or for expenses. As a result, they provide rich and detailed information about the experiences of all those who came into contact with the Poor Law, whether as suppliers, claimants, or employees. They also provide a kind of test case for the potentialities of “public history”, since most of the information that has been obtained from the small bills was transcribed by a small army of volunteers.
The book itself begins with a short preface, in which the editors explain the background to the project on which the book is based. This is followed by a more substantial introduction, which summarises the history of the Old Poor Law, and six individual chapters, each focusing on a different aspect of the Poor Law “system”. Each of these chapters is followed by a short “interlude” in which one of the project's volunteers presents new information on the lives of some of the people whose experiences the vouchers record. The first three chapters are primarily concerned with the experiences of Poor Law claimants, while the next three focus on the wider community. The book's final section includes a more reflective chapter on the experience of writing “public history”, followed by an overall conclusion.
One of the most contentious aspects of the Old Poor Law was the treatment of illegitimacy, or bastardy. This was regarded as both a moral and a financial issue, but its financial dimensions were closely associated with the concept of settlement, which was introduced under the Settlement Act of 1662. Under the Settlement Laws, a person could only claim relief in a parish if they had either been born or married there, or served an apprenticeship there, or been employed there for more than one year. These arrangements gave parishes a strong incentive to minimise their responsibility for illegitimate children. One of the ways in which they sought to do this was by encouraging the mother to reveal the identity of the father and, ideally, by encouraging them to marry.
As a result of these concerns, issues concerning the care of illegitimate children played a key role in many of the small bills and documents associated with them. In Chapter One, Falcini describes a series of cases in the East Sussex parish of East Hoathly. In addition to describing the strategies used by parish officials to minimise parochial responsibility, the chapter also shows how the parents themselves “used” the system to help them achieve a greater degree of financial security. It also casts an entertaining light on the sometimes chaotic nature of parochial administration and the assiduous way in which some officials recorded their expense claims.
In Chapter Two, Elizabeth Spencer uses the small bills to investigate the provision of clothing under the Old Poor Law, with particular reference to the historic counties of Cumberland (now part of Cumbria) and Staffordshire. The chapter shows how the fabrics used in the manufacture of the clothes supplied by the Poor Law changed over time, with an increasing use of cotton after 1800. It also raises intriguing questions about the symbolic aspects of Poor Law clothing. Spencer argues that “the repeated purchase of blue duffel in Cumberland suggests that pauper clothing could certainly be uniform in some respects and may have marked out recipients of relief within or even beyond their home parish” (p. 77). However, she also cautions that “the meanings of clothing provided by the parish were probably ambiguous rather than straightforwardly reflective of shame or dependency” (ibid.).
In contrast to Spencer, whose chapter focused largely on the settled poor, Tim Hitchcock directs his attention to the question of vagrancy. The first part of the chapter highlights the extent and importance of migration in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, even though migrants played an integral part in the growing industrial economy, their presence was not always welcomed by local Poor Law authorities, and the small bills demonstrate just how much effort and expense was devoted to their removal. The chapter also highlights some uncomfortable continuities in the long-term history of British social policy. As Hitchcock explains, the Vagrancy Act of 1824, which built on the earlier Acts of 1819 and 1822, is still in force today and continues to provide the legal basis for “stop and search” (the powers under which a police officer can stop and question a person at any time) and the arrest and criminalization of beggars and rough sleepers (see p. 102).
The second part of the book shifts attention from the recipients of poor relief to the wider community. In Chapter Four, Collinge examines the role that women played in provisioning the Poor Law, with particular reference to the market town of Brampton, in northeast England, and the cathedral city of Lichfield, in the East Midlands. The chapter suggests that women played a particularly important role in the supply of footwear, groceries, and other household goods, such as candles, soap, starch, barley, and flour, although they also featured as hairdressers, straw-hatters, nurserymen (sic), midwives, carriers, coffin-makers, dressmakers, drapers, staymakers, washerwomen, braziers, innkeepers, beer-retailers, and spirit merchants (p. 115). The chapter therefore also highlights the impact of the Poor Law on the local economy and the role it played in helping both men and women to maintain financial independence.
As the Poor Law developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it became increasingly bureaucratic. One consequence of this was an increasing trend in favour of the appointment of overseers’ assistants. In Chapter Five, Alannah Tomkins discusses the development of this role in the three counties of East Sussex, Cumberland, and Staffordshire. She challenges David Eastwood's “rather grand” assertion that the appointment of overseers’ assistants marked the beginnings of a “Poor Law civil service”, but also suggests that their appointment was seen as a way of creating employment opportunities for people who might otherwise have been candidates for poor relief themselves.
In the closing chapter of this section, Samantha Shave looks at the response of the wider community to the operation of the Old Poor Law. The chapter focuses on the efforts made by two clergymen – Philip Henvill and John Rutter – to expose cases of neglect and abuse in the two parishes of South Damerham and Shaftesbury, respectively. Both Henvill and Rutter articulated a growing – if not always fully acknowledged – concern about the possible effects of “deterrent workhouses” in the run-up to 1834. Shave suggests that more attention should be paid to the role of these “critical voices” in representing the poor in moments “when [they] […] could not negotiate poor relief or seek redress within the welfare process alone” (p. 193).
As already noted, this book is largely based on an extensive collaboration between professional historians and volunteer researchers. In the book's final section, Falcini and Collinge reflect on the ways in which this collaboration has not only generated a rich treasure trove of accessible data, but also created new opportunities for volunteers to immerse themselves in the pursuit of “public history”. In restoring voice and agency to the lives of historical actors, the Small Bills project has also sought to democratise the practice of history itself.
