[256] E.g. Oxford and Shrewsbury.
[257] There is a significant entry in the Abstracts of Returns to the 1775 Poor Relief Committee in reference to the building of that death-trap, the Bulcamp House of Industry. ‘In the Expences for Building is included £500 for building a Part which was pulled down by a Mob.’
[258] At Heckingham in Norfolk a putrid fever, in 1774, killed 126 out of 220 inmates (Eden, vol. ii. p. 473, quoting Howlett); cf. also Ruggles, History of the Poor, vol. ii. p. 266.
[259] ‘The Village,’ pp. 16 and 17.
[260] Eden, vol. iii. p. 694 ff.
[261] 36 George III. c. 23.
[262] The last of these systems had been included in a Bill introduced by Sir William Young in 1788. ‘In order to relieve agricultural labourers, who are often, during the winter, out of employment, the vestry in every parish is empowered, by notice affixed to the church door, to settle a rate of wages to be paid to labourers out of employ, from the 30th Nov. to the 28th of Feb.; and to distribute and send them round in rotation to the parishioners, proportionally as they pay to the Rates; to be paid by the person employing them two-thirds of the wages so settled, and one-third by the parish-officers out of the Rates.’—Eden, vol. i. p. 397.
[263] Parliamentary Register, February 12, 1796.
[264] Ibid., December 22, 1796.
[265] The Bill is printed in House of Commons Papers, 1796. The ‘Heads of the Bill’ as circulated appear in the Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxvi. pp. 260 ff. and 359 ff. Eden gives in the form of Appendices (1) the Heads of the Bill, (2) the Amendments introduced in Committee.