Little Baddow History Centre

1 LITTLE BADDOW THE HISTORY OF AN ESSEX VILLAGE PART THREE by SHEILA V. ROWLEY CONTENTS Chapter one…….The poor……………….Page 1 Chapter two…….Education……………...Page 25 Chapter three…..The Victorian Village… And afterwards……….Page 41 Index……………………………….………Page 64 FORWARD In the concluding volume of my history of the village of Little Baddow, I would like to reiterate my gratitude to the staff of the Essex Record Office who made available to me all the hundreds of documents of all kinds which have gone to the making of this history. Especially I would mention Mr. R. Bond, who has been consistently helpful. I also acknowledge with thanks the permission of the County Archivist to reproduce the extracts from documents, the drawing of the memorial hall, and the photographs of the Rev. Ady, Rev. Tayler and Mr. And Mrs. Lindsell. My debt to many villagers, for this volume in particular, is very great. Most of the photographs reproduced have been donated to the Parish Chest by public-spirited inhabitants (following in the tradition set by their predecessors). So many of these inhabitants have been so kind and patient with my questions about the village in their young days that I have a mass of material, which would make a complete book in itself, all safely lodged in the Parish Chest. It may be invidious to mention names, but one I must – Mr. Roy Warsop, to whom I owe so much. Mrs. Janet Shave, daughter of Mr. H. Stracy, lent and allowed me to use the photograph of her father‟s bus and the one of Miss Langford. The photograph of the school children of the 1890s is a copy from the original lent me some years ago by Mrs. Norah Taylor. For reasons of space, I have omitted maps in this volume, but they may be found in Parts one and two. 2 copyright. Sheila V. Rowley, Little Baddow. 1979. Chapter one The Poor Poverty was less of a problem to mediaeval villagers than it became to later generations, but nevertheless, following the Black Death, increasing vagrancy forced the government to take action to maintain law and order. Regulations were made to try to stop able-bodied beggars from wandering about the country and to induce them to seek work, while at the same time it was recognised that the impotent poor had a right to assistance from their own parish. Perhaps Johanna, a pauper living in Little Baddow in 1381, was an aged widow being cared for in the parish in which she had spent her life. The Church recognised an obligation to care for the orphans, disabled and aged, allocating to the poor some of the fines imposed by the ecclesiastical courts and also part of the tithe. Almsgiving was regarded as a Christian duty, sometimes taking the form of bequests in wills, as is shown by some of the earliest local wills. Roger Hammond, for instance, in 15 12 provided money for “poore marieges” and Thomas Grome in 1538 money to be distributed “amonges the pore people”. Joan Radley (1518) instructed that if all her children should “fayle” then her property should be sold and “dysposyd in dedys of charyte wher most nedde ys”, and in any case the residue of her late husband‟s and her own apparel was to be given to poor people by her executors. Such bequests are exceddingly rare after the 1530s. A number of Statutes from 1531 aimed at the punishment of the many vagrants and “sturdy beggars” and the relief of the increasing multitude of impotent poor. Rural parishes were to elect two Collectors who were to “gentellie aske” of every man what he would give as a contribution after church every Sunday for the relief of the parish poor. Poor boxes were put into churches for donations. By 1572 it had become necessary to substitute for voluntary weekly collections a compulsory tax upon every householder except the indigent. An Act of 1589, aiming at the prevention of poverty, decreed that only one family might live in any house and that every cottage built must have four acres of land. Anticipating this Act, Bassetts manor court in 1572 ordered William Byrd to expel and remove from his house the stranger, William Shall, while Tofts manor court in 1573 passed a by-law against “inmates”, with a fine of 3s.4d. for anyone disregarding it. The parish was prepared to support its own poor, but not those from other places. The vicar, though, sometimes had to enter in the Register that he had baptised the child “of a poore woman that came by the waie” or buried “a poore man” whose name he did not know. Quarter Sessions dealt with a few Little Baddow cases of poverty in Elizabethan times. Richard Hammond als. Tyler was bound over to pay for the maintenance of his son (presumable illegitimate) so that “for want of sustenance and other necessary provision for him he perish not”. In 1592 Agnes Hopkynes told the magistrates that 3 since the death of her husband Little Baddow would not allow her to remain there because of her “charge of children” and she asked the Court that she might have an abiding place appointed for her, when she would labour for her living and not be burdensome to any place. Quarter Sessions decided to ask for contributions, from all the parishes where she had lived and her children had been born, with which to provide for her. Meanwhile Little Baddow was to allow her to remain in the village. Little Baddow also found itself having to maintain the many small children of John Harrys, the tanner who by his unthriftiness had become very poor and “nothing worth”. The justices managed a solution to his complicated financial affairs. Parliament was becoming ever more concerned about both the “great and horrible abuses of idle and vagrant persons” and the “extream and miserable estate of the Godly and honest sort of the poor subjects of this realm”. After much discussion an Act was passed in 1597 and re-enacted with slight alterations in 1601, which was to form the basis of the administration of poor relief until the twentieth century. Under this Act every parish was to appoint two “overseers of the Poor” who, with the Churchwardens and under the supervision of the local Justices of the Peace, were to collect the Poor Rate and be responsible for looking after the impotent poor, the punishment of vagrants and the setting to work of the able-bodied. A few incidents only show the working of the Act in Little Baddow in the first century of its operation. In 1657 Quarter Sessions received a petition from the inhabitants of the village stating that Mary Wood had been delivered of two base children who were chargeable to the parish. The suspected father, George Charles, some weeks since had departed, deserting his wife and lawful children. The wife had died and the churchwardens and overseers had thereupon seized his goods, house and lands, fearing that these children also would become chargeable. They were to authorised to retain the property for the maintenance of the lawful children until their father returned, upon which two justices were to examine him regarding the base children and “make such order as the law requires”. Among other cases reaching the courts, Nathaniel Sach in 1697 had disobeyed an order made by two justices to maintain a male bastard child by him begotten on Mary Tanner, while in 1702 Mary Beadle told the justices that she was with child and the child was likely to be born a bastard, chargeable to Little Baddow, and that the father was Edward Toby, miller, late of the parish. A few poor children were apprenticed, with the consent of two justices, the church wardens and the overseers, among them Phillip Somes to the miller at Huskards mill, John Wells to a yeoman and Nicholas Harris to a blacksmith, all until they were twenty-four years of age. The parishioners of Chatley hamlet in 1635 were annoyed because a poor child from Little Baddow had become a servant there – and so likely to become chargeable to them. This paucity of records fortunately ends in the next century, for a complete set of account books, kept by the Little Baddow Overseers of the Poor, survives for the years between 1722 and 1834. In the latter year the Poor Law Amendment Act took the care of the poor out of the hands of individual parishes. The vestry minute books survive from 1759 until 1835 and supplement the account books. These books show that every Easter saw the outgoing overseer balancing his accounts, submitting them to the vestry meeting and asking them to grant the imposition of a rate to meet the expenditure he had incurred. The meeting also 4 agreed on four names from whom the next two overseers should be chosen, to serve for six months each. The overseer then took his account book to two local justices for them to confirm both the accounts and the rate and to appoint the new overseers. Having done this, the outgoing overseer (as a note scribbled at the front of the second account book, commencing in 1748, adjured him) had to “Take care that notice be given in the parish Church on the Sunday next after every overseers rate is allowed him by two Justices otherwise his rate is null and void”. He could then go round the parish collecting the assessments from the inhabitants who were liable to pay. Meanwhile his successor was starting his period of office from Easter to Michaelmas and would collect his rate at the end of his term.

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