The Early History of English Poor Relief

by of Girton College E. M. Leonard

7 e. Emigration.

It was about this time, and partly in connection with Bridewell, that the remedy offered by emigration was adopted. It was the age in which several of our colonies were founded and first developed. The earliest vagrant emigrants were sent to Virginia. We hear of a payment of 12s. 3d. from a London parish "towards the transportacon of a hundred children to Virginia by the Lord Maior's appointment," in 1617 and in 1619[558]. Again, in 1622 and 1635, vagrants were detained in Bridewell for Virginia, who were usually paid for by municipal funds and collections, though in a few cases we are told that the parochial officials sent particular people and paid their expenses. A few years later some vagabonds were sent to sea, and others were put to work in the Barbadoes[559]. The emigrants did not come only from London; three boys of Barnstaple departed in 1633-4, and probably there were many more both from Barnstaple and other places. The emigrants thus sent out were bound apprentice for some years to some employer, and at the end of their term of years they were to have the opportunity of making plantations for themselves. There is a declaration made in 1647, by the Earl of Carlisle, who was Lord of the Caribee Islands, in which it is stated that there was not land enough in Barbados for all who had served their time[560], and that every freeman unprovided with land may have a grant in his other island of Antigua.

In the midst of all the abuse heaped upon the vagrant in his own time and in our own, it is interesting to remember that he sometimes did something useful when he got the chance. Even in the days of the Stuarts he and his descendants played a part in developing the British Empire and in founding the settlements which led to the existence of the United States.

7 f. Pressures on employers.

But work was also provided for the unemployed by means of pressure exercised on employers. We have already seen how both in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Privy Council endeavoured to compel cloth manufacturers to continue to carry on their trade, and how cloth merchants were called before the justices and judges and ordered not to dismiss their men[561]. Another instance of the same kind of interference occurred soon after the outbreak of the Civil War. After Bristol was captured by the Royalists, Prince Rupert endeavoured to relieve the distress of the time by ordering the clothiers to keep their workpeople employed for one month at least[562].

In another case we can see the justices exercising pressure on particular individuals not because of a fluctuation of trade, but in order to carry out the ordinary provisions of the poor law. Hitchen was the centre of an agricultural district, there was no manufacture in which men could be employed: wages were very low and many were out of work. The justices therefore ordered the "richer sort" to give employment, but they thereby only occasioned complaints, for in this part of the country there seems to have been a permanent difficulty in finding work for the poor[563].

At other times municipal rulers exerted their influence in favour of the inhabitants of a particular town. Thus in 1623 at Reading certain poor complained; the clothiers were warned to appear and thirty of them came to the Guildhall. It was arranged that two clothiers should be appointed to consult with the overseers and see that the poor were set to work. However the complaints still continued, and both at this time and in 1630 the difficulty was met by ordering the clothiers to have all their work done in the town and not to send it into the country. The distress at Reading was thus lessened at the expense of the surrounding district[564].

That the public authorities of state and town thought they had a right to exercise pressure of this kind is evident, and many incidental sayings show us that the employers considered they had a duty in the matter. Thus at Norwich the hosiers, finding that they cannot sell their stocks, tell the town rulers that though they have not yet dismissed their men their money is exhausted and they find it is impossible for them to go on much longer[565]. They thus intimate that it was their interest to have dismissed their men sooner but that they held on as long as they could. In another case an employer writes to Nicholas about some payment, and hopes he will be used well by the Council because during a bad time, when most men stopped work, he continued his manufacture and kept nearly one thousand people at work, although he lost heavily by so doing[566].

All this shows that the employers recognised some sort of responsibility for the men whom they usually employed. The continuance of business would save much hardship if the cause of distress was merely a temporary fluctuation in trade. In the cloth-manufacture this was often the case, and therefore the pressure brought to bear on employers in this direction must be considered a real method of helping the poor.

But there was another way in which pressure was put on employers. We occasionally find that the town, instead of providing a stock of materials to set the poor to work, reported that the inhabitants found employment for them or that the inhabitants provided hemp and tow and flax and set the poor to work themselves[567]. This not improbably points to some plan like that of the roundsman system of later days. A man in want of work, on applying to the parish authorities, was sent round to different employers and was set to work by each of them for a short period. This plan does not seem to have been much used, for in most cases the justices mention that the overseers had raised stocks of money in order to provide work for the ablebodied, and thus imply their intention of giving direct employment.