The Poor in England Steven King Is Reader in History at Contribution to the Historiography of Poverty, Combining As It Oxford Brookes University
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king&t jkt 6/2/03 2:57 PM Page 1 Alannah Tomkins is Lecturer in History at ‘Each chapter is fluently written and deeply immersed in the University of Keele. primary sources. The work as a whole makes an original The poor in England Steven King is Reader in History at contribution to the historiography of poverty, combining as it Oxford Brookes University. does a high degree of scholarship with intellectual innovation.’ The poor Professor Anne Borsay, University of Wales, Swansea This fascinating collection of studies investigates English poverty in England between 1700 and 1850 and the ways in which the poor made ends meet. The phrase ‘economy of makeshifts’ has often been used to summarise the patchy, disparate and sometimes failing 1700–1850 strategies of the poor for material survival. Incomes or benefits derived through the ‘economy’ ranged from wages supported by under-employment via petty crime through to charity; however, An economy of makeshifts until now, discussions of this array of makeshifts usually fall short of answering vital questions about how and when the poor secured access to them. This book represents the single most significant attempt in print to supply the English ‘economy of makeshifts’ with a solid, empirical basis and to advance the concept of makeshifts from a vague but convenient label to a more precise yet inclusive definition. 1700–1850 Individual chapters written by some of the leading, emerging historians of welfare examine how advantages gained from access to common land, mobilisation of kinship support, crime, and other marginal resources could prop up struggling households. They consider how the balance of these strategies might change over time or be modified by gender, life-cycle and geography. A comprehensive introduction summarises the state of research on English poverty, and a thought-provoking conclusion makes valuable suggestions for the direction of future research. This book will be crucial for historians of social life and welfare, King of interest to researchers working on eighteenth and nineteenth and century England and will be useful to undergraduates seeking Tomkins guidance on the historiography of poverty. Eds Edited by Stephen King and Alannah Tomkins Cover illustration: A Charity Ball – Dancing for the Million by George Cruickshank. From The Comic Almanack (1838). Reproduced by courtesy of the Director and Librarian, the John Rylands University Library of Manchester (R47504). The poor in England 1700–1850 The poor in England 1700–1850 An economy of makeshifts edited by Steven King and Alannah Tomkins Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Copyright © Manchester University Press 2003 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors. This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) licence, which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s) and Manchester University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 0 7190 6159 8 hardback First published 2003 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Typeset in Baskerville and Stone Sans by Carnegie Publishing Ltd, Lancaster Printed in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and Kings Lynn Steven King: for L. and a Baldon picnic Alannah Tomkins: for Liam and Edward Contents Contents Contents List of tables page viii List of figures ix Acknowledgements x 1 Introduction Alannah Tomkins and Steven King 1 2 ‘Not by bread only’? Common right, parish relief and endowed charity in a forest economy, c. 1600–1800 Steve Hindle 39 3 The economy of makeshifts and the poor law: a game of chance? Margaret Hanly 76 4 ‘Agents in their own concerns’? Charity and the economy of makeshifts in eighteenth-century Britain Sarah Lloyd 100 5 Crime, criminal networks and the survival strategies of the poor in early eighteenth-century London Heather Shore 137 6 Pawnbroking and the survival strategies of the urban poor in 1770s York Alannah Tomkins 166 7 Kinship, poor relief and the welfare process in early modern England Sam Barrett 199 8 Making the most of opportunity: the economy of makeshifts in the early modern north Steven King 228 9Conclusion Steven King and Alannah Tomkins 258 Index 281 vii List of tables List of tables List of tables 2.1 Population and hearth tax exemption in three Northamptonshire parishes 43 7.1 Kinship density in six West Riding towns 206 7.2 Kinship density over time in six West Riding towns 207 7.3 Bequests in West Riding wills 209 7.4 Kinship density and poor relief spending 210 7.5 Kinship density, pensions and receipt of relief 211 7.6 Poor relief recipients and kinship links 212 7.7 Kinship typologies amongst those on relief 215 7.8 Kinship characteristics of non-ratepayers 217 7.9 Kinship connections of charity recipients 218 viii List of figures List of figures List of figures 2.1 Annual poor relief expenditure in three Geddington Chase parishes 56 3.1 Map of Lancashire 81 6.1 Map of York 174 6.2 Pledges accepted by George Fettes 179 6.3 Pledges and redemptions by the Beeforth family 189 7.1 Length of time on relief and kinship depth 213 7.2 Payment type and kinship links in Bramley 214 8.1 Monthly pension payments in seven north-west townships 232 8.2 Vestry decision-making in three north-western townships 233 8.3 Charity and poor law expenditure in four north-western communities 238 8.4 Pension payments in early nineteenth-century Cowpe 246 8.5 Community-level economy of makeshifts in Cowpe 247 ix Acknowledgements Acknowledgements Acknowledgements This book has been a number of years in the making. Its origins lie in a conference entitled ‘Making shift’, organised by Steve Hindle at Warwick amd attended by both editors, which brought us together for the first time. A subsequent meeting in a coffee shop in Stafford in 1997 ended with a realisation that, despite its obvious importance, relatively little had been published on the detailed economy of makeshifts in England. So the idea for this edited volume was born. We have been blessed with excellent and very punctual contributors, and to them our thanks for making the editorial process so easy. Collectively, we feel that this volume will help to set a new theoretical and empirical framework for advancing our understanding of the economy of makeshifts. Alannah Tomkins owes particular thanks to Mrs Rita Freedman of the York City Archives for her generous assistance in micro- filming the pawnbroker’s pledgebook, and to colleagues, students and friends at both Keele University and Oxford Brookes Univer- sity for their comments and questions about earlier drafts of the chapter. Steven King owes thanks to archivists at Rawtenstall, Kendal, Bolton and Manchester, who responded with good humour and generosity to a multitude of requests for help. He also owes thanks to Professor Dr Dietrich Ebeling, who arranged a Visiting Professorship in Germany, where some of this volume was written. Finally, we would both like to thank Alison Whittle at Manchester University Press for running with this book right from the start, despite the growing resistance to edited volumes. x 1 Introduction Alannah Tomkins and Steven King The poor in England Introduction Historiography of parish poor relief Olwen Hufton could hardly have realised her future impact on the history of welfare when in 1974 she titled two of her chapters on the poor in France ‘The economy of makeshifts’.1 It is a phrase which neatly sums up the patchy, desperate and sometimes failing strategies of the poor for material survival and has been much repeated since 1974. Other phrases (discussed below) may try to represent the same essential idea but none have been so successful in capturing the imaginations of historians. Furthermore ‘the economy of makeshifts’ has become the organising concept for a number of historians of English welfare who wish to stress the disparate nature of income for poor households, in contrast to a concurrent research trend which would allow parish poor relief a predominant role. This is important given the past preoccupa- tion with particular places and single forms of income. Such approaches have been successful in their own terms but now seem rather insular or parochial in the context of the recognisably varied and integrated reality of poor incomes. The success of ‘the economy of makeshifts’ during the last twenty-five years is partly explained by the increasing interest shown by historians in the experiences of poor people rather than accounts which deal exclusively with government policy, elite or at least literate opinions of poverty, or the administrative machin- ery built up to deliver welfare. Histories of poverty initially (and understandably) tended to address the welfare measures and or- ganisations which left the largest paper trail. For England, this has meant repeated, detailed studies of parish poor relief. In the first instance, parish papers were annexed for information relating to local policy and the power of individuals or governing groups, 1 2 The poor in England treating the recipients of relief en masse. Thus the monumental histories compiled by Sidney and Beatrice Webb 2 (significantly as part of a larger project on the history of many aspects of local government) and by Dorothy Marshall 3 set the pattern for multiple, shorter, works on the intricacies of local parish manage- ment.4 Paupers made regular appearances in these works, but as illustrations of policy in practice rather than as individual people with an existence outside the framework of parochial relief.