As to rent and taxes from cottage property, under such circumstances these too often had to be paid or remitted by the parishes. Thus the Royston Overseers state:—"We have omitted rating the cottages to the number of 99, occupied by labourers and low mechanics, owing to the difficulty of collecting the money and the ill-will it engendered amongst the cottagers towards the parish authorities."
"Order'd that Mr. Simons apply to the justices and inquire of them whether they can compel labourers who have decent earnings to pay their rent"!
The following incidents are mentioned from Over in Cambridgeshire:—
"A widow with two children had been in receipt of 3s. a week from the parish, and was able to live upon this. She afterwards married a butcher, and still the allowance of 3s. for the children was continued. But the butcher and his bride came to the Overseer and said 'they were not going to keep those children for 3s. a week, and if a further allowance was not made they should turn them out of doors and throw them on the parish altogether.' The Overseers resisted; the butcher appealed to the Magistrates, who recommended him to make the best arrangement he could as the parish was obliged to support the children"!
The law and its administration, on behalf of the parish, actually put a valuable premium on bastardy.
The Parish Beadle was tempted to bribe the young woman to lay an information against someone in another parish, "a compulsory marriage" was brought about and the woman and bastard, and all future liability, were sometimes got rid of at one stroke! A Parish Beadle, in addition to looking after little Oliver Twists, often had these delicate negotiations to manage, and whether Mr. Bumble was able to ingratiate himself with 'Mrs. Corney' or not, he often did a good stroke of business for his parish in the matrimonial market, when, as I have mentioned in an earlier chapter, a labourer could not even go into another parish to work without a certificate from the parish he belonged to. In the report of the Commission, to which I have referred, occurs this significant little item:—
"A Beadle in a small district assured me he had alone effected fifty marriages of this description in the course of a few years."
The labour market was the parish, and this was completely disorganised and demoralised. The old law of settlement made it practically impossible for labour to find the best market. Even if a young man had an offer of a situation in another part of the country at double wages he would often refuse to go lest he should "lose his parish," or it might be that the parish where he was asked to go was considered a "bad" parish compared with his own. Each parish was thus considered as a sort of freehold, with a family cupboard bound to provide for nil its children.
It was almost impossible for any individual farmer to stand out and follow an independent course, for if he paid his men full wages he would also, as a ratepayer, be paying part of the wages for the other farmers in the parish. In some cases the masters combined with the men and gave false certificates as to the amount of their wages in order to get more "make up" from their parish.