History of the Fylde of Lancashire

by John Porter

CHAPTER XVI.
PAUPERISM AND THE FYLDE UNION.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was not customary to recognise the pauper as a person whose misfortunes, however brought about, called for charitable aid, but all legislature was directed against his class under the common title of vagabonds. A statute of 1384 decreed that all vagrants should be arrested and either placed in the stocks, or imprisoned until the visit of the justices, who would do with them whatever seemed best by law; and in 1496 the punishment of incarceration was abolished, but the stocks were retained. The sixteenth century initiated a little more considerate state of things, and justices of the peace were authorised in 1531 to grant begging licenses to any necessitous persons in their districts unable to work for a livelihood. An act of 1547 ordained that any vagabond, not incapacitated by old age or illness, loitering and not seeking work for three days should be brought before a magistrate, who was directed to adjudge such vagrant to be, for two years, the slave of the person by whom he had been apprehended, in addition to which he had to be branded with the letter V on the breast. In case he ran away the law ordered that a further branding of the sign S should be inflicted, this time on his forehead or the ball of his cheek, and that slavery should be his perpetual portion. A third escape entailed death when re-captured. This enactment was never really enforced as popular indignation at its extreme severity was aroused at once, and after lingering two years it was repealed in favour of the stocks-legislature. In 1551 it was decreed that a register of destitute persons should be kept in each parish, and that alms should be collected in Whit-week, whilst on the Sunday following, during divine service at church, “the collectors should gently ask and demand of every man and woman what they of their charity would give weekly towards the relief of the poor.” The funds so obtained were to be distributed amongst the poor “after such sort that the more impotent might have the more help, and such as could get part of their living the less.” Eleven years later a statute ordained that if any person refused to contribute alms when called upon he should be summoned before a justice, who would determine the amount he had to pay, and commit him to gaol in case of further refusal. The legislative body of Queen Elizabeth passed “An Act for the punishment of vagabonds and the relief of the poor and impotent,” by which justices of the peace were instructed to register the names of all the impotent poor who had been born within their several districts, or been existing there on alms within the three preceding years; to assign to them convenient places for dwellings or lodgings, in case the parish had not already undertaken that duty of its own free will; to assess the inhabitants to a weekly charge; and to appoint overseers of the poor, having authority to exact a certain amount of work from those candidates for relief who were not entirely disabled from labour by age, sickness, or deformity. In 1575-6 it was ordered that a stock of wool or hemp should be provided in the different parishes for the purpose of “setting the poor at work,” and that “Houses of Correction” should be established, in which vagrants or tramps were to be detained, the able-bodied being furnished with employment until a service was found for them, and the infirm transferred to an alms-house as soon as practicable. The “Houses of Correction,” the origin of our workhouses, were directed to be built in large cities, or in the central towns of wide districts, thus the one for the Fylde was situated at Preston, an old college of Grey Friars lying to the south of Marsh Lane being converted to that use. Dr. Kuerden described this building more than two centuries ago as the “old Friary, now only reserved for the reforming of vagabonds, sturdy beggars, and petty larcenary thieves, and other people wanting good behaviour; it is the country prison to entertain such persons with hard work, spare diet, and whipping, and it is called the House of Correction.” The present gaol of Preston was not completed until 1789, and by force of habit the expressive title of its predecessor has clung to it.

In 39 Elizabeth, 1597, an act came into force by which all previous legislation on the subject under consideration was repealed, and which decreed that overseers of the poor should be appointed in every parish, whose duty it should be to levy a rate upon the inhabitants for the support of the indigent, under the direction and with the approval of the local magistrates; in addition there were special regulations for the treatment of rogues, vagrants, and able beggars, for whom whipping and the stocks were ordered, after undergoing which punishments these idlers were to be returned at once to their native parishes and placed under the guardianship of the local authorities there.

Four years later certain modifications were made in the early part of the last statute, but the main principle of individual taxation by overseers, under the superintendence of justices of the peace, was retained unaltered. The chief objects of the law as it stood at the end of 1601 were—to relieve the lame, sick, aged, impotent, and blind; to compel others of the poor to work, and to put out their children as apprentices.

At that time any one leaving his employment and wandering beyond the boundaries of his parish without any ostensible means of gaining a livelihood was liable to be arrested and punished as a vagabond, in addition he was compelled to return to his own district in disgrace; so that whether a law confining labourers to their own neighbourhoods existed then or not, it is certain that they had little inducement to venture forth amongst strangers.

In 1662, during the reign of Charles II., the Law of Settlement was passed, by which all members of such classes as were likely to become at some period or other chargeable to the parish rates, were compelled to settle themselves on the parochial district to which they were connected by birth, marriage, apprenticeship, or similar ties; and upon which parish alone they would subsequently have any claim. In this way the unfortunate peasantry and labouring population were more securely than ever imprisoned within their parishes, for if they escaped the fate of the rogue and vagabond, and obtained work in another part of the country, they were generally hunted out and driven home for fear they should become burdens on rates to which they had no title. Such a condition of things went on with little change for nearly two centuries, but the causes which finally brought about a material alteration in the arrangement of pauper relief will be noticed in the context. The erection of workhouses for the different parishes of the kingdom was sanctioned in 1723 by the legislature, and three years later, as learnt from the following extract out of the minute book of the bailiffs of Kirkham, the inhabitants of that town determined to establish one:—

“22 May, 1726:—Mem. That the town of Kirkham was summonsed from house to house, and the inhabitants unanimously agreed to the setting up of a workhouse.”

The act which decreed the building of workhouses for the employment of the poor, stated that if any one refused to enter those houses, or objected to perform his share of labour, no relief should be apportioned to him. There can be little doubt that workhouses sprang up at Poulton and in the other parishes of the Fylde about that date, as well as at Kirkham, but in their cases there are no bailiffs’ registers, or similar records, to fall back upon for proof as to the accuracy of the surmise, and consequently we are unable to speak with absolute certainty. In the twenty-second year of the reign of George III. (1782), it was enacted that the guardians of the poor should employ the paupers of their separate parishes in labour on the land at small remuneration, and that the poor rate should be used only to increase the payment to a sum large enough for the subsistence of each pauper thus employed. Country justices, desirous of standing well in the opinion of the peasantry, were not over scrupulous in the discharge of their supervisionary functions, and granted or sanctioned the granting of relief orders without any minute inquiry into the merits of the cases. Immorality was encouraged by an allowance from the poor-rate to the mother for each illegitimate child. Practical responsibility for the proper administration of the fund rested on no one, and about 1830 “the poor-rate had become public spoil, the ignorant believed it an inexhaustible source of wealth, which belonged to them; the brutal bullied the administrators to obtain their share; the profligate exhibited their bastards, which must be fed; the idle folded their arms and waited till they got it; ignorant boys and girls married upon it; country justices lavished it for popularity, and guardians for convenience.”[232]

In 1832 a Royal Commission was appointed to visit the different parishes, and investigate the abuses which were being universally carried on; and in 1834 a bill was brought in to amend the laws relative to the Relief of the Poor in England and Wales, and passed that year, some of the main clauses being—an acknowledgment of the claims to the relief of the really necessitous, the abolition of settlement by hiring and service, and of all out-door relief to the able-bodied. The enactment provided for the union of small and neighbouring parishes, the rating and expenditure of the rates remaining a distinct and separate matter; each union was to have a common workhouse for all its parishes, in which the men, women, children, able-bodied, and infirm must be separated, and where the able-bodied inmates should do a certain amount of work for each meal. The distribution of relief was left to the guardians and select vestries, and to the overseers in their absence. The whole system of unions and parish relief was placed under the control of a Central Board, by whom everything was arranged and settled, and to whom any appeals were to be directed.