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Negotiating a Living: Essex Pauper Letters from London, 1800–1834

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2010

Thomas Sokoll
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Research undertaken over the last generation has greatly enhanced our understanding of the survival strategies of the labouring poor in early modern Europe. Under economic conditions where poverty was endemic, most families were forced to take to various forms of work and to draw on whatever forms of income were available. Whether among small peasants, proto-industrial producers, landless labourers or casual workers, their mere subsistence depended on the effort of as many family members as possible. Women's and children's work were the norm well into the nineteenth century, and their contribution to the family income greater than previously assumed. There were, nevertheless, many who could not make ends meet. The reasons for which people had to turn to others for help are legion: structural, cyclical or seasonal unemployment and underemployment; insufficient earnings and debts; illness and accidents; death within the family. A lot of assistance was informal and went through networks of kinship, neighbourhood and local community. Friendly societies provided rudimentary forms of collectively-organized support. Some state or municipal agencies supplying poor relief and charitable institutions offered assistance of various types, but most of it was meagre and combined with social control of the clients. It is no wonder, therefore, that many people took to begging, prostitution or petty crime.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 45 , supplement S8: Household strategies for survival 1600–2000: fission, factions and cooperation , December 2000 , pp. 19 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 2000

References

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15. See Sokoll, Essex Pauper Letters, “Introduction”, ch. 2.

16. Taylor, James Stephen, Poverty, Migration and Settlement in the Industrial Revolution: Sojoumers' Narratives (Palo Alto, CA, 1989) is based on pauper letters from Cornwall, Devon and WestmorelandGoogle Scholar . The extraordinary sample from Westmoreland is also used in idem, “Voices in the Crowd: The Kirkby Lonsdale Township Letters, 1809-36”, in Hitchcock et. al., Chronicling Poverty, pp. 109-116. For the first fruits of research on Essex pauper letters, see Sokoll, Thomas, “Selbstver-ständliche Armut. Englische Armenbriefe, 1750-1850”, in Schulze, Winfried (ed.), Ego-Dokumente. Annäherungen an den Menschen in der Geschichte (Berlin, 1995), pp. 227–270Google Scholar ; Sharpe, Pamela, “‘The Bowels of Compation’: A Labouring Family and the Law, c. 1790-1834”, in , Hitchcocket al., Chronicling Poverty, pp. 87–108Google Scholar ; Thomas Sokoll, “Old Age in Poverty. The Record of Essex Pauper Letters, 1780-1834”, in Ibid., pp. 127-154.

17. For the sake of simplicity, all references to the Essex pauper letters are given in parentheses within the main text, by quoting the number of the piece within the edition (Sokoll, Essex Pauper Letters). The same holds for other parish records referred to, where the details will be found in the critical apparatus of the edition, under the respective letter. All records are kept at the Essex Record Office (ERO) in Chelmsford and die ERO branches at Colchester and Southend-on-Sea. The precise archival references of all sources quoted in the present article are also given in the edition.

18. For readers unfamiliar with the traditional monetary units (£1 = 20 shillings (s) = 240 pence (d)), modern decimal equivalents (£1 = 100 pence (p)) have been added in brackets after quotations of specific amounts of money.

19. For an extensive discussion of the questions involved in the source criticism of pauper letters, with particular emphasis on their importance for the social history of literacy, see the Introduction to Sokoll, Essex Pauper Letters.

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23. For a more detailed account of the case of William James, see , Sokoll, “Old Age in Poverty”, pp. 144–145Google Scholar.

24. The case of the entire Hall family is described in detail by Sharpe, “Bowels of Compation”.

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27. , Feinstein, “Pessimism Perpetuated”, pp. 638–640.Google Scholar

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29. For a thoughtful discussion of the provision for the elderly under the Old Poor Law, see Thane, Pat, “Old People and Their Families in the English Past”, in Daunton, Martin (ed.), Charity, Self-interest and Welfare in the English Past (London, 1996), pp. 113–138Google Scholar.

30. Slack, Paul, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988), p. 85.Google Scholar

31. Medick, Hans, “The Proto-Industrial Family Economy: The Structural Function of Household and Family during the Transition from Peasant Society to Industrial Capitalism”, Social History, 1 (1976), pp. 308–309CrossRefGoogle Scholar . For a general discussion of the demographic implications of such household arrangements, see , Sokoll, Household and Family Among the Poor, pp. 289–293Google Scholar ; Smith, Richard, “Charity, Self-interest and Welfare: Reflections from Demographic and Family History”, in Daunton, Charity, Self-interest and Welfare, pp. 23–50Google Scholar.

32. Poor Law Report of 1834, P. 115.

33. Parliamentary Papers, 1803-1804, XIII, Abstract of the Returns Relative to the Expense and Maintenance of the Poor, p. 108 (yearly workhouse expenses per inmate roughly £14). That figure, which refers to 1802, would appear to be a sound proxy, given that total poor relief expenditure in Essex (indoor plus outdoor relief) were roughly the same in both 1802 and 1821, amounting to £0.8 per head (which was relatively low in the long run). See Baugh, D.A., “The Cost of Poor Relief in South-East England, 1790-1834”, Economic History Review, 28 (1975) p. 56 (Fig. 3)Google Scholar.

34. For similar conclusions with respect to the actual practice of relief in London even under the New Poor Law, see , Lees, “Survival of the Unfit”, pp. 69-71, 87–88Google Scholar.