The number at present in the house is 40 men, 60 women, and 255 children: total 355.
The house is very roomy and convenient. The beds are chiefly of feathers: the dormitories and other rooms are kept very clean. More work is done now than formerly; but owing to lowness of wages, the receipts have decreased.
The number of deaths is very great, and, I presume, rather arises from the number of old persons admitted into the house than from any inattention towards the sick.
[376] Ibid., p. 368.
[377] Ibid., p. 440
[378] Ibid., p. 678.
7. Two Varieties of the Roundsman System of Relief [Eden, The State of the Poor, 1797, Vol. II, p. 29 and p. 384], 1797.
(a) Winslow (Buckinghamshire)
There seems to be a great want of employment: most of the labourers are (as it is termed), on the Rounds; that is, they go to work from one house to another round the parish. In winter sometimes 40 persons are on the rounds. They are wholly paid by the parish, unless the householders choose to employ them; and from these circumstances, labourers often become very lazy, and imperious. Children, above ten years old, are put on the rounds, and receive from the parish from 1s. 6d. to 3s. a week.
(b) Kibworth Beauchamp (Leicestershire)[379].