[166] The unborn were the special objects of parish officers’ dread. At Derby the persons sent out under orders of removal are chiefly pregnant girls. (Eden, vol. ii. p. 126.) Bastards (see above) with some exceptions gained a settlement in their birthplace, and Hodge’s legitimate children might gain one too if there was any doubt about the place of their parents’ settlements.
[167] Eden, vol. ii. p. 383.
[168] Vol. ix. p. 660.
[169] Eden, vol. ii. p. 288. In considering the accounts of the state of the commons, it must be remembered that the open parishes thus paid the penalty of enclosure elsewhere. Colluvies vicorum. But these open fields and commons were becoming rapidly more scarce.
[170] Ibid., p. 691.
[171] Eden, vol. iii. p. 743.
[172] Ibid.
[173] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 591.
[174] Ibid., p. 654, re Litchfield. ‘In two or three small parishes in this neighbourhood, which consist of large farms, there are very few poor: the farmers, in order to prevent the introduction of poor from other parishes, hire their servants for fifty-one weeks only. I conceive, however, that this practice would be considered, by a court of justice, as fraudulent, and a mere evasion in the master; and that a servant thus hired, if he remained the fifty-second week with his master, on a fresh contract, would acquire a settlement in the parish.’
[175] See Annual Register, 1817, p. 298.