“the voice of the poor themselves does not come to our ears” [1]

Contents.

Introduction

Setting the Rate

The Poor House

Fire

Poor People Travelling in Distress

Setting to work all persons having no means to support themselves.

The long term poor

The new poor law

Introduction

In fact it is not quite true that the stories of the poor remain silent. The Poor Law Amendment Act systematised the administration of poor relief and in so doing established a set of rules that bound the administrators as much as the inmates of the work house. As the ‘In their own write’ project has confirmed the poor took advantage of this and as a result their voice has become more widely heard. Before the 1834 act it is true that the experiences of the poor were rarely heard except when they were expressed through the writings of those who were most definitely not poor [see The State of Dorset Poor].

Oddly enough, at a local level, these experiences can sometimes be discovered from a surprising source – the accounts books of the Overseers of the Poor. At Evershot two sets of records have survived. The first, from the 18th century, covers a period of eighty four years between 1704 and 1788 whilst the second covers the seventeen years between April 1819 and May 1836. Only the latter of course cover the period of John Martin’s life and although the quality of the earlier records is poor [both technically and in content] they are of some interest and in what follows elements from all the records have been used.

The 18th century records appear to have been written in a simple notebook but the 19th century records were written in a book specifically printed from the purpose by ‘G Clark of Dorchester’. It was not a cheap purchase, we know how much it cost because an entry was made concerning it in the accounts. At 13s [£37 in today’s money] it was an expensive purchase. On the same page we learn that Sarah Pullman received 12s to support herself during her month’s ‘lying-in’ period and John Miller received 14s for a month’s worth of poor relief for his family.

At the beginning of the book were two pages devoted to the duties of the Overseer’s and then began the entries proper. These were arranged by the month in office of the Overseer’s in a complicated manner.

Until the 12th century the secular and religious new year began on Christmas Day. Sometime in the 12th century the Church, and for reasons that doubtless seemed like a good idea, moved it’s new year to the 25th March. Two centuries later the secular world adopted the same policy and so it remained until the reforms of George II in 1753. At that time the civil, ecclesiastical and legal years were all moved to the 1st of January. For dates arising in the first three months of the year, at least until 1753, there was an established custom of writing dates in the form 1st February 17001 indicating the civil and legal year was 1700 and the historical year was 1701.

The date of Easter, being dependent on the date of the spring equinox, meant that by the mid-18th century any calendar that calculated the date based on the Julian calendar was eleven days adrift. In 1754 reforms to the calender resulted in the famous ‘loss’ of eleven days with the result that the 25th March became the 6th April in subsequent years.

One of the ‘years’ that did not change however was the financial year. Prior to the reforms it too ended on the 25th March. After the reforms it too moved ending on the 5th April and commencing on the 6th exactly as it does today. For reasons that are completely unknown however the dates of the Overseers records stayed exactly the same as they had always been, starting on the 26th March and ending on the 25th. The result of this was that although the accounting period that they used was called a month it did not equate to a normal calendar month but rather oddly encompassed two calender months. For example the ‘13th Months Accounts’ in 1820 covered the period 19th February to 22nd March.

At the beginning of each financial year is a section devoted to setting the Poor’s rate, as they often called it, and then each month’s expenditure is recorded across two pages. On the left hand page are what are usually referred to as ‘extra payments’ by the Overseer’s. Emergency payments of one sort or another arose each month  and although expected were unpredictable although it is on this side of the accounts that payments for working on the roads of the parish were recorded.

For some people problems that had arisen urgently were clearly not going to be resolved. A wife, for example, suddenly widowed and without any other source of income needed long term support. After a period on the left hand side of the accounts they would be transferred to the right hand side where many of them remained for years on end. This system presumably allowed them a measure of forward planning that jumbling up the the entries would not have allowed.

Setting the Rate.

The Overseers had;

“to raise weekly or otherwise (by Taxation of every Inhabitant, Parson, Vicar and other, and of every Occupier of Lands, Houses, Tithes impropriate, Propriations of Tithes, Coal-Mines, or saleable Underwoods in the said Parish, in such competent Sum and Sums of Money as they shall think fit); And also competent Sums of Money for and towards the necessary Relief of the Lame, Impotent, Old, Blind, and such other among them being Poor, and not able to work”.

Today we are used to the rates [modern day council tax] as being a sum of money that is inflated annually by whatever amount the council wants. In the past setting a rate was somewhat different. In 1704 the Evershot poor rate was set at £1 5s 10 ½ d [approx £1.25p].This figure fluctuated slightly over the years reaching a peak of £1 6s 9 ¾ d in 1788 falling to £1 6s 7 ¾ d in 1819 where it stayed until the records ended in 1836.

By the time it is recorded for the first time, in 1704, this £1 5s 10 ½d  was divided between about 55 [the record is damaged] landowners  each of whom paid a small amount, mostly a 1d or 2d, whilst Mr Strangways paid 5s 6d. How the amount of the rate was decided upon is not known and in the majority of the 18^th century records all that is recorded is the total rate that each occupier paid. What we can be sure of is that this total relates to plots of land or houses. Very occassionally , as in 1708 for example some of the lands on which the rate was levied are listed and it is possible to compare them with the 19^th century records where the lands on which the rate was levied are invariably listed. Over a period of 128 years the rateable value of the lands that we can compare did not alter at all. As there is a slight difference in the value of the rate between 1704 and 1819 it is presumed that this was due to new land being brought into cultivation. By 1819 the number of rate payers contributing to the rate was reduced to 30 and we must alsopresume that this was due to the consolidation of land holdings amongst fewer landowners.

Even in 1704 £1 5s 10 ½d  would not have gone far and is clearly inadequate to support the poor. Today we are used to the total amount of our council or income tax being raised each year by a certain percentage but this was not the method used in the past. Instead they used a system whereby the base rate, was multiplied by a number of rates to be collected. This number varied from year to year so that the total amount of money raised could be adjusted. Thus in March 1819 the Overseers at Evershot collected two hundred rates totalling £266 9s 4d [2], whilst the following year they collected two hundred rates initially but felt it necessary to collect a further fifty during the year. What this meant in practice was that the rate payer simply multiplied his share of the rate by the number of rates to be collected to give him the amount he had to pay – far easier than trying to work out what 5% of a penny three farthings was for example. Thus in 1821 when 300 rates were raised John Martin, whose share of the base rate was 2 ½ d, had to pay 300 x 2.5 d = 750d =  £3 2s 6d.

Although the base rate of £1 6s 7 ¾ d had changed little in one hundred and twenty years, the number of rates collected increased considerably. In 1704 just twenty rates had been collected, by 1749 fifty rates, by 1786 120 rates and by 1819 two hundred rates. The cost of the poor rate rose accordingly;

It was this dramatic rise in the cost of poor provision [at a national level] that prompted the amendment of the old poor law in 1834. At first sight it might seem that the poor were not doing too badly. After all even allowing for the approximate halving of the value of the pound between 1749 and 1836 the amount spent had more than doubled. Logically they should have been better off but they weren’t, for the extra money was disbursed amongst a larger number of recipients. In 1749 there were just seven regular recipients of relief whereas in 1836 there were some  twenty eight. 

County rates were raised in a similar fashion and Henry Farr Yeatman, Rector at Stock Gaylard and an important figure in local politics objected to the rise in these. He noted that in many parishes the value of land had increased as a result of inclosure but as no revaluation of the land had been undertaken the rates remained the same. The consequence of this was that those who had not benefited from inclosure were in effect subsidising those who had. The same objection could be raised in relation to the Poor rate and was only resolved with the passage of the Parochial Assessment Act of 1836 which established a uniform system of valuation.

Spending the Rate.

Between 26^th March 1821 and 25^th March 1822 John Martin and John Chubb served as Overseers of the Poor and the day after the end of their term the vestry at Evershot met and approved the accounts. Over the course of the year they spent precisely £ £425 1s 2 ½ d [£24,407] ; how did they spend it?

The old Poor Law specified who was to receive relief and in what circumstances but aside from a section of the law requiring the parish to maintain a ‘stock,’ on which the poor would work, the law did not restrict how the money was to be spent or where. Indeed as the records show there was remarkable freedom in the way that the money was spent. Between 1819 and 1836 there was some variation in the pattern of expenditure and some expenses dropped out of the accounts that might be expected to recur, but in general there is no evidence that the Overseers at Evershot were parsimonious with their payments. In the next section I will look at the stories of the poor themselves but here I look at some of the general payments that were made.

Each month extends over two pages, on the right hand side are what are referred to in the records as ‘extra payments’. These were predictable in the sense that some extra payments were always expected – it’s just that nobody know what they were going to be.

Almost the first thing the overseers did each year was to travel to Dorchester to get the previous year’s books and the current year’s rate agreed. Such entries may seem trivial but the costs of administering the Poor Law were not trivial. The sum expended here was the equivalent to two weeks wages for an agricultural labourer. Nor were such costs infrequent; a journey to Dorchester in December 1823, on the appointment of a new constable, cost two weeks wages, another weeks wage was spent in 1835 on the County rate [which the poor did not pay], and almost two weeks in September 1831 went on,

Administrative costs were thus quite considerable albeit irregular in their occurrence and one of the peculiarities of the accounts is the way recurring payments come and go. In July 1831 the Overseers made a

This of course was the annual census and John Martin had made a note in his diary a decade earlier,

The first entries of the year relate to the payment of rent to the local landowners and repairs to the Poor House.

The Poor House

In John Martin’s time there were at least seven ‘poor houses’ [3] in Evershot; the tithe map shows them in Summer Lane but these were probably ‘new builds’ [see below]. Although they have the sound of the workhouse about them this was not the case ; they should be regarded instead as social housing, normal houses devoted to and occupied by the poor of the parish.

It is not certain when the first Poor House was built. There are occasional records prior to 1749 relating to house repairs, so for example 7s 6d was given in ‘Thatchers wages’ in 1717 but there is no specific reference to a poor house as such. In 1749 there is an entry, “Chargis [sic] on Building ye Poore House” which rather suggests that this was the first such house in the parish. The records then go on to detail various payments. Most are of the form “Pd to Mr X or Y or Z” but some are more specific.

It would appear then that more poor houses were built and the proved to be a constant problem.

Aside from the chimneys that needed sweeping the windows needed constant attention, sometimes years after they were broken and there appears to be have been only one toilet [privy] between them all.

Fire

There was a constant and justified fear of fire. When manorial courts still held sway there were often permanent rules to forbid the carriage of fire through the parish. With the decline of the manor it fell to the Overseers to remind people of the dangers. On the night before bonfire night in 1822 John Martin ordered,

Mr Fountain, who had been Overseer in 1819 must have had a loud voice as he also doubled as town crier.

Such precautions were very wise on Friday 8^th November 1833 during the small hours a fire broke out in one of the poor houses in Summer lane and spread to the whole row of seven dwellings which were destroyed. The Salisbury and Winchester Journal recounted that the Earl of Ilchester was “speedily on the spot” and “was to be seen repeatedly among the foremost, guiding, with his very own hands, the engine, and animating all to exertion by his own example.” Fortunately nobody was injured but it is likely that extensive rebuilding was necessary afterwards, the poor law records allude to this. The cause of the fire was never found.

On 23^rd August 1845, John Martin “Pd John Chubb for Beer when Mr Wardens Chimney was on Fire 3s 4d”. This must have caused some concern for Martin as his house was next door to Warden’s . He did not come out of it too badly though as a subsequent entry shows.

Crew Jennings was agent for the West of England insurance company who paid Martin handsomely for his efforts. In October 1865 another fire broke out and this was much more serious. Fourteen houses, two stables, two slaughter houses, a barn, cowshed and two linhays [open fronted barns] were destroyed and eighteen families became homeless although only one person was slightly injured. Another fire the following year was swiftly dealt with and records the risk of having a lighted candle near soft furnishings.

Another major expense relates to the enforcement of the Settlement acts. This is dealt with elsewhere

Poor People travelling in Distress

It was important that poor relief was not seen as an automatic right. Note the words ‘travelling’ and in ‘distress’ in the entries from April. They are not there by accident. These were keywords that had to be inserted in order to avoid questioning by the Justices. ‘Travelling’ reassured them that the parish was not ignoring the settlement acts when dispensing relief whilst ‘distress’ reassured them that the recipients were ‘deserving’ poor and not just beggars.

Poor people travelling in distress were very common. Until 1831 such entries were almost monthly and often involved several families. In 1831  there were nine such incidences but thereafter there was a sudden fall with just three cases in 1832, one in 1833 and just one between 1834 and the record’s end in 1836. The amounts allowed such travellers were never more than 6d and one wonders if the payments were made just to move them on and out of the parish. On the other hand they did not stint if occasion demanded.

Sailors and occasionally soldiers were given relief to get them to their next destinations. This was of course after the end of the Napoleonic wars; it’s difficult to believe that they would have been allowed to undertake their wanderings unsupervised in an earlier era.

They do seem rather mean in helping a Scottish soldier in 1828 however,

Next in the records are entries relating to health & bastardy and we will look at some of these cases in the next section. Suffice it to say that this was another potentially expensive area for the parish although at the end of the day the money for the upkeep of the children was recovered from the father.

Setting to work all persons having no means to maintain themselves

The Poor rates acted as an insurance against illness not unemployment. For this reason Edward Chubb was listed as ‘incapable’ of labor. In fact he was more severely ill than supposed for he died at the end of July.

The Poor rates acted as an insurance against illness not unemployment. Men and women out of employment had to be found work. In some years [but not others] we find an “Account of Labor distributed among the Occupiers”. This is a list of men who were out of permanent employment but were set to work for the farmers. There is only one list where the details are laid out in full but from this we learn for example that James Barret [sic] went to work for eight different farmers spread over sixty five days between March 21^st 1819 and March 25^th 1820. He will appear prominently in the next section of our story. In the same period Rich Groves was set to work amongst a further eight farmers for fifty four days. Why this record is found only occasionally is not known.

Most work was done on the roads,

Eventually this work would dry up. Between 1819 and 1829 John Minchenton [born 1801] worked on the roads of the parish for 24 days a month. Until December 1826 he received £1 4s when this suddenly and without explanation, was reduced to £1 for the same number of days. In July 1829 he was working with just one other person and equally suddenly the reference to the roads is omitted and from August he received an ‘allowance’. In December 1829 he received just one weeks ‘allowance’ and thereafter there are no references to the roads. He is next to be found in the 1841 census at Benville in the neighbouring parish of Corscombe where he is listed as a farmer. His regular appearance in the lists for such a long time suggests that this was in fact a permanent job and that he was chosen as foreman over the others.

There was one circumstance however where fit individuals were paid for not being able to work and that was the weather. The winter of 1819/1820 was particularly hard and there were several entries in this period

The long term poor

On the right hand side of the accounts were the regular payments made to the poor in the parish. They tell us little. At some time or other the people on this side of the accounts started off by receiving payments on the ‘extra payment’s’ or left hand side of the accounts [see above]. It is not known how the decision to move an individual from one side to the other was made. Some people receive ‘extra payments’ for months on end before moving to the left side. In cases of illness we must presume that the decision was made on the likelihood of their recovery.

The amounts paid varied according to the size of the family and the age of the person but were in most cases less than might have been earned if the individual had been in work. As the Dorset labourer was one of the poorest in the country the amounts received must have been inadequate unless supplemented in some other way.

The last six entries were payments to illegitimate children. Reference to them varied according to the Overseers sensibilities. In John Martin’s records they are simply referred to as ‘Mary Perratts boy’, whereas in later records the column to the left is labelled ‘BASTARDS’ and at other times references are made to the father as in e.g. ‘Ann Chamberlains girl by Frampton’.

At the end of the year one final duty remained to be done which was the reconciliation of the accounts. In John Martin’s year as Overseer he had paid out £425 1s 2 ½ d in various disbursements. On the other hand he had inherited a balance of £76 16s 10 ¾ d and had received income in the form of some rents and payments from the fathers of illegitimate children. At the end of 1821 for example they received £7 16s ,

Payments were received from others, for example John Lake, who paid rent on gravel grounds in the parish and various house rents. In total these payments amounted to nearly £20 but by far the biggest amount, £399 13s 9d, was raised by the 300 rates that had been set. In total then £496 12 10 ½ d had been raised , £425 1s 2 ½ d spent leaving a balance of £71 11s 8d – a balancing of the books which he almost certainly regarded with satisfaction.

These accounts were audited by the incoming Overseer’s and if approved by them were submitted to the Justices of the Peace at Dorchester.

The new poor law

John Martin did not serve another year as Overseer but as Churchwarden would have been intimately concerned with their activities. The final years of the accounts give some inkling of the major changes that were afoot.

John Martin was not however finished with the Poor Law. Under the terms of the Parochial Assessment Act he valued the parish.

Reference to him was thus the third last entry in the records of the poor under the old act. The last simply says

In April 1836 Evershot joined with 26 other parishes in the formation of the Beaminster Union under the Poor Law Amendment act. Relief of the poor was in theory moved out of the parish to the workhouse at Beaminster. The work of the Union was overseen by a board of Guardians and in May 1855 John Martin was elected as the Guardian for Evershot. He may have filled this role before but this appears to be the only occasion on which the names of the Guardians were published.

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