In the Rules for the government of the Poor in the hundreds of Loes and Wilford in Suffolk[170] very explicit directions are given about the granting of certificates. In the first place, before any certificate is granted the applicant must produce an examination taken before a Justice of the Peace, showing that he belongs to one of the parishes within the hundred. Granted that he has complied with this condition, then, (1) if he be a labourer or husbandman no certificate will be granted him out of the hundreds unless he belongs to the parish of Kenton, and even in that case it is ‘not to exceed the distance of three miles’; (2) if he be a tradesman, artificer, or manufacturer a certificate may be granted to him out of the hundreds, but in no case is it to exceed the distance of twenty miles from the parish to which he belongs. The extent of the hundreds was roughly fourteen miles by five and a half.
Eden, describing the neighbourhood of Coventry, says: ‘In a country parish on one side the city, chiefly consisting of cottages inhabited by ribbon-weavers, the Rates are as high as in Coventry; whilst, in another parish, on the opposite side, they do not exceed one-third of the City Rate: this is ascribed to the care that is taken to prevent manufacturers from settling in the parish.’[171] In the neighbourhood of Mollington (Warwickshire and Oxon) the poor rates varied from 2s. to 4s. in the pound. ‘The difference in the several parishes, it is said, arises, in a great measure, from the facility or difficulty of obtaining settlements: in several parishes, a fine is imposed on a parishioner, who settles a newcomer by hiring, or otherwise, so that a servant is very seldom hired for a year. Those parishes which have for a long time been in the habit of using these precautions, are now very lightly burthened with Poor. This is often the case, where farms are large, and of course in few hands; while other parishes, not politic enough to observe these rules, are generally burthened with an influx of poor neighbours.’[172] Another example of this is Deddington (Oxon) which like other parishes that possessed common fields suffered from an influx of small farmers who had been turned out elsewhere, whereas neighbouring parishes, possessed by a few individuals, were cautious in permitting newcomers to gain settlements.[173]
This practice of hiring servants for fifty-one weeks only was common: Eden thought it fraudulent and an evasion of the law that would not be upheld in a court of justice,[174] but he was wrong, for the 1817 Report on the Poor Law mentions among ‘the measures, justifiable undoubtedly in point of law, which are adopted very generally in many parts of the kingdom, to defeat the obtaining a settlement, that of hiring labourers for a less period than a year; from whence it naturally and necessarily follows, that a labourer may spend the season of his health and industry in one parish, and be transferred in the decline of life to a distant part of the kingdom.’[175] We hear little about the feelings of the unhappy labourers who were brought home by the overseers when they fell into want in a parish which had taken them in with their certificate, but it is not difficult to imagine the scene. It is significant that the Act of 1795 (to which we shall refer later), contained a provision that orders of removal were to be suspended in cases where the pauper was dangerously ill.
From the Rules for the Government of the Poor in the Hundreds of Loes and Wilford, already alluded to, we learn some particulars of the allowance made for the removal of paupers. Twenty miles was to be considered a day’s journey; 2d. was to be allowed for one horse, and so on in proportion per mile: but if the distance were over twenty miles, or the overseer were obliged to be out all night, then 2s. was to be allowed for him, 1s. for his horse, and 6d. for each pauper.[176] It is improbable that such a scale of payment would induce the overseer to look kindly on the causes of his trouble: much less would a pauper be a persona grata if litigation over his settlement had already cost the parish large sums.
It has been necessary to give these particulars of the Law of Settlement for two reasons. In the first place, the probability of expulsion, ‘exile by administrative order,’ as it has been called, threw a shadow over the lives of the poor. In the second place, the old Law of Settlement became an immensely more important social impediment when enclosure and the great industrial inventions began to redistribute population. When the normal labourer had common rights and a strip and a cow, he would not wish to change his home on account of temporary distress: after enclosure he was reduced to a position in which his distress, if he stayed on in his own village, was likely to be permanent.
The want and suffering revealed in Davies’ and Eden’s budgets came to a crisis in 1795, the year of what may be called the revolt of the housewives. That year, when exceptional scarcity sharpened the edge of the misery caused by the changes we have summarised, was marked by a series of food riots all over England, in which a conspicuous part was taken by women. These disturbances are particularly interesting from the discipline and good order which characterise the conduct of the rioters. The rioters when they found themselves masters of the situation did not use their strength to plunder the shops: they organised distribution, selling the food they seized at what they considered fair rates, and handing over the proceeds to the owners. They did not rob: they fixed prices, and when the owner of provisions was making for a dearer market they stopped his carts and made him sell on the spot. At Aylesbury in March ‘a numerous mob, consisting chiefly of women, seized on all the wheat that came to market, and compelled the farmers to whom it belonged to accept of such prices as they thought proper to name.’[177] In Devonshire the rioters scoured the country round Chudleigh, destroying two mills: ‘from the great number of petticoats, it is generally supposed that several men were dressed in female attire.’[178] At Carlisle a band of women accompanied by boys paraded the streets, and in spite of the remonstrances of a magistrate, entered various houses and shops, seized all the grain, deposited it in the public hall, and then formed a committee to regulate the price at which it should be sold.[179] At Ipswich there was a riot over the price of butter, and at Fordingbridge, a certain Sarah Rogers, in company with other women started a cheap butter campaign. Sarah took some butter from Hannah Dawson ‘with a determination of keeping it at a reduced price,’ an escapade for which she was afterwards sentenced to three months’ hard labour at the Winchester Assizes. ‘Nothing but the age of the prisoner (being very young) prevented the Court from passing a more severe sentence.’[180] At Bath the women actually boarded a vessel, laden with wheat and flour, which was lying in the river and refused to let her go. When the Riot Act was read they retorted that they were not rioting, but were resisting the sending of corn abroad, and sang God save the King. Although the owner took an oath that the corn was destined for Bristol, they were not satisfied, and ultimately soldiers were called in, and the corn was relanded and put into a warehouse.[181] In some places the soldiers helped the populace in their work of fixing prices: at Seaford, for example, they seized and sold meat and flour in the churchyard, and at Guildford they were the ringleaders in a movement to lower the price of meat to 4d. a pound, and were sent out of the town by the magistrates in consequence.[182] These spontaneous leagues of consumers sprang up in many different parts, for in addition to the places already mentioned there were disturbances of sufficient importance to be chronicled in the newspapers, in Wiltshire, Suffolk, and Norfolk, whilst Eden states that at Deddington the populace seized on a boat laden with flour, but restored it on the miller’s promising to sell it at a reduced price.[183]
These riots are interesting from many points of view. They are a rising of the poor against an increasing pressure of want, and the forces that were driving down their standard of life. They did not amount to a social rebellion, but they mark a stage in the history of the poor. To the rich they were a signal of danger. Davies declared that if the ruling classes learnt from his researches what was the condition of the poor, they would intervene to rescue the labourers from ‘the abject state into which they are sunk.’ Certainly the misery of which his budgets paint the plain surface could not be disregarded. If compassion was not a strong enough force to make the ruling classes attend to the danger that the poor might starve, fear would certainly have made them think of the danger that the poor might rebel. Some of them at any rate knew their Virgil well enough to remember that in the description of the threshold of Orcus, while ‘senectus’ is ‘tristis’ and ‘egestas’ is ‘turpis,’ ‘fames’ is linked with the more ominous epithet ‘malesuada.’ If a proletariat were left to starve despair might teach bad habits, and this impoverished race might begin to look with ravenous eyes on the lot of those who lived on the spoils and sinecures of the State. Thus fear and pity united to sharpen the wits of the rich, and to turn their minds to the distresses of the poor.
CHAPTER VII
THE REMEDIES OF 1795
The collapse of the economic position of the labourer was the result of many causes, and in examining the various remedies that were proposed we shall see that they touch in turn on the several deficiencies that produced this failure. The governing fact of the situation was that the labourer’s wages no longer sufficed to provide even a bare and comfortless existence. It was necessary then that his wages should be raised, or that the effects of the rise in prices should be counteracted by changes of diet and manner of life, or that the economic resources which formerly supplemented his earnings should in some way be restored, unless he was to be thrown headlong on to the Poor Law. We shall see what advice was given and what advice was taken in these momentous years.