The editors of this collection herald overseers’ vouchers as a ‘new evidential pathway’ into an ‘entire social world converging on the page’ (xvi; 15). This is a bold claim for what is effectively a history of welfare receipts, that can appear at first glance as little more than ‘indecipherable scrawl’ (15). However, the contributors of this book convincingly and innovatively explore how these sources can allow new assessments of the Old Poor Law.
This research builds on work by Keith Snell on settlement and Steve King on pauper letters but expands its focus beyond the poor to consider those who administered relief and the wider community who provided services. It uses vouchers to get to the heart of what was happening, what was spent, and by whom, in order to demystify poor law expenditure. Drawing on a data set which covers 30 parishes and townships across three counties, this volume takes an impressive quantitative approach which allows it to engage with existing historical debates. For example, Elizabeth Spencer's chapter on clothing the poor explores how vouchers can be used to test debates surrounding the question of whether the parish purchased good clothing for the poor and for how long.
There are limitations to the source base, particularly the patchy survival rate of vouchers; and, even where the retention of records is good, parishes often used multiple relief strategies. However, these shortcomings are acknowledged and innovatively overcome. For example, the absence of vouchers supporting vagrants has been effectively utilised to highlighting gaps in the historical record. For instance, Tim Hitchcock uses this absence to point to the existence of unrecorded poverty, demonstrating that the Old Poor Law focused on the settled poor and yet points to the widespread mobility in England. In other cases where the existence of vouchers accounts for successful relief of paupers, it is acknowledged that they often only capture the end of negotiations. The chapters in this edited volume have, nonetheless, effectively countered this limitation by analysing qualitative sources alongside the quantitative data, such as the records of diarist and parish official Thomas Turner. These qualitative sources usefully help authors decode the significance of the vouchers and provide insights into agency and negotiation. This was particularly well explored in Louise Falcini's chapter on accounting for illegitimacy, where the combined use of vouchers and a diary helped to reveal that the parish gave financial incentives including providing marital rings and wedding breakfasts to entice couples to marry if the woman was pregnant, so as to prevent her and her child becoming chargeable. Parishes could not force marriage, and this allowed couples to negotiate before finally agreeing. Falcini's inclusion of the parish officials’ personal expenses, including drinking to 2 a.m., gives a colourful insight into the exertions, discretion and local negotiations that took place in communities.
A key purpose of the book is to provide evidence of the negotiations and networks between welfare providers and recipients, but also to uncover who other than the poor benefitted from or participated in the process. The section of the book on providers and enablers is a particularly strong and welcome addition to understandings of the Old Poor Law, and socio-economic history more widely. Peter Collinge's chapter on women and business refreshingly refocuses analysis on women as the suppliers and conductors of business, rather than just as the recipients of relief. The use of vouchers reveals a wider professional involvement of women than has been uncovered by using directories alone. Collinge counters traditional narratives of women eking out a marginal existence and giving up their businesses when their sons become of age, instead finding that many women operated businesses for many years and even left them for their daughters to inherit. As well as identifying women business owners, the voucher expenses demonstrate parish tactics of actively supporting women in business, even if their prices were sometimes higher, as a strategy to fund them and thereby reduce the chance of them becoming chargeable. The chapter on overseers’ assistants by Alannah Tomkins complements these findings, demonstrating that employment in the parish could also be a form of relief for men who in their middle age were facing declining means.
The final section of the book focuses on public history. This book developed out of the collaborative project ‘Small Bills and Petty Finance’, which brought together academics, archivists and members of the public. The contributions of the volunteers are made evident through short interludes written by them, placed between chapters which explore short case studies of voucher expenditure ranging from payments for leg amputation or a settlement case to remove a widow, to the payment and roles of an overseer. These micro-histories give short archival glimpses revealing how much information can be gleaned on individuals. These interludes break up substantial analysis of the chapters yet complement them thematically. A key element of the book is the importance it places on collaborative working, inserting itself in a debate about who public history belongs to. It includes a self-reflexive chapter on collaborative workings, the problems encountered, and strategies to overcome them, making a case for its historiographic value. As a relatively new practice, the persuasiveness of this approach and how it can be replicated and expanded is yet to be fully tested.
Overall, this innovative book should be read not as an introduction to the Old Poor Law, but as another critical lens and source base from which to interrogate existing debates and identify knowledge gaps. As sources the vouchers are most effective when read alongside other qualitative sources to tease out their significance and reveal agency. Nonetheless, a convincing case has been made for the value of vouchers which importantly intersects the experiences of the poor, parish, and providers.
