PrenticeNet

With the freedoms we have today to move wherever and whenever we want, and to choose our own future, we sometimes do not appreciate the severe constraints placed upon those things by church and civil authorities in the 1800s and earlier.

Kerry Prentice has provided us with information which helps us better to understand the restructions faced by our ancestors in England in those earlier times. Since American laws and culture were based upon those in England, those same restrictions doubtless applied to our later ancestors in America.

While those restrictions were sometimes hard on the people of that time, they do have a bright side in that those records represent a valuable genealogical resource available to us today for use in researching our family trees. Below is some material which Kerry has provided:

The Origins of the Old Poor Law

Up to the early sixteenth century, the poor and infirm were cared for by the church, through monasteries, convents and religious charities. With the decline of monasteries and their dissolution under Henry VIII, and changes in social structure, this voluntary system disappeared, and the parish became responsible for supporting its own poor, raising the money to do this by taxing the parishioners who could afford to pay.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries laws were introduced in an effort to suppress begging by able-bodied labourers, and to control the movement of vagabonds, beggars, and labourers roaming in search of higher wages and work in areas where labour laws were not strictly enforced. Gradually parish officers were given greater powers over their own inhabitants, and also over any strangers entering the parish.

The Act of 1598

In 1598, under Elizabeth I, the Act For the Reliefe of the Poore was passed, requiring every parish to appoint Overseers of the Poor who were responsible for finding work for the unemployed, and setting up parish houses for those incapable of supporting themselves.

The Act of 1601

This Acte for the Reliefe of the Poore, passed 3 years later, was essentially a refinement of the previous Act, but is often said to mark the foundation of the Old Poor Laws. Under this Act, the responsibility of the parish was established. It was obliged to:

1. relieve its aged and helpless,
2. bring up unprotected children in ‘habits of industry’, and
3. provide work for the able-bodied who could not work in their usual trade.

The Overseers, who were unpaid, were to be elected annually by the parish vestry meeting, and they were to dispense money and bread, and supervise the parish poorhouse. The aims were to provide work for adults, apprentice poor children and set them to work, and suppress and punish beggars and vagabonds, in some cases by admitting them to county "Houses of Correction".

Thus every parish was a self-governing body, responsible for its own poor people. Overseers were given the power to raise money by charging parishioners according to their ability to pay. This charge, called the Poor Rate, was originally a form of income tax, but evolved into a property tax or "rate" based on the value of real estate. Generally the tenant paid, instead of the owner. Failure to pay could lead to a summons to appear before the Justices, a fine and sometimes prison. You may find summons and distraints for non-payment of rates among parish records.

Overseers kept account books, which recorded the poor rates collected and the payments made to and on behalf of paupers. Sometimes separate books – poor rate accounts, and disbursement books – were kept. A record of the arrangements made for the relief of the poor were sometimes recorded in vestry minute books.

The Settlement Act of 1662

Two years after the restoration of King Charles II, an Act for the Better Relief of the Poor of this Kingdom – also known as the Settlement Act – was passed. This sought to establish the parish to which a person belonged (ie his/her place of "settlement"), and hence clarify which parish was responsible for those who became "chargeable" to the parish poor rates. It also allowed the Overseers to "remove" newcomers that local Justices deemed likely to become dependent on poor relief. This could occur unless the newcomers were wealthy, were paying substantial rent, or had some form of security to indemnify the parish against the expense of supporting them. This might be in the form of a certificate from their own parish stating that they would be received back again.

In 1691 another Act laid down the qualifications for gaining settlement. Settlement in a parish could be acquired by:

1. Birth: a legitimate child took its father’s parish of settlement, even if this was not where it was born. An illegitimate child claimed settlement in its parish of birth.
2. Apprenticeship: by the parish or privately.
3. Service: A hiring agreement of a full year or more (ie continuous employment for at least 365 days), each subsequent settlement replacing the previous one.
4. Marriage or remarriage: A woman took her husband’s place of settlement on marriage.
5. Renting property worth at least £10 a year (well beyond the means of a labourer), and paying parish rates
6. Election to a parish office (e.g. overseer or church warden) for a year

From 1697, under yet another amendment to the Act, poor people could move to a new parish provided they brought a Settlement Certificate with them. This protected them from being removed to the parish to which they "belonged," unless they actually applied for poor relief. If they survived on wages alone they could not be removed. The parish Overseer often kept the Settlement Certificates addressed to him in the parish chest, and used these as proof of settlement when removing unwanted paupers who had claimed poor relief; this saved unnecessary time and the expense of examining the paupers and establishing their place of settlement.

A century later, in 1795, this protection against removal was extended to all poor persons not claiming poor relief, except pregnant unmarried women. Parish Overseers made them least welcome as they were considered the most expensive to support, and they were commonly removed from any parish they entered, back to their place of settlement. This was done by the issuing of a Removal Order signed by two Justices of the Peace.

Later Acts amending the laws relating to settlement, employment and relief of the poor allowed the setting up of parish workhouses from 1723 and the formation of unions of parishes which could set up a shared workhouse, for the old and infirm, from 1782. About 600 parish workhouses were set up in England by 1750. Less than 100 unions of parishes were formed under the 1782 Act, but it was under this Act that Exeter set up its Corporation of the Poor to better organise the relief of the poor living in parishes within the city walls.

The operation of the Settlement Act and all its subsequent amendments proved complex, confusing and contentious. Parishes often appealed to the Court of Quarter Sessions over disputed removal orders, settlement decisions, and over claims by other parishes for repayment of paupers’ upkeep costs. Expensive legal battles often took place between parishes over their responsibility to support individual paupers. The records of some of these disputed cases survive in parish records and Quarter Sessions records

Parish officers carefully preserved any evidence that a parishioner was legally settled in another parish, as it saved the expenditure of poor relief and thus the burden of poor rates for those who were eligible to pay.

These documents are particularly valuable to family historians since they are virtually autobiographies of persons of a class for which other such records are rarely found. They usually give the following:

1. Apprenticeship history
2. Occupation, work history and names of employers
3. Parishes of residence
4. Rental value of any property
5. Marriage and children

Note that a pauper sometimes lied under examination, or "remembered" different details on different occasions, and this can be obvious where several examinations survive for the same person. Relatives, past masters or employers and any other person involved in a settlement case were also examined, and their examinations may tell you both about the pauper and about their own lives.

Settlement Certificates

• can be hand-written or printed
• issued by the Overseers or Churchwardens, so that the cost of issue and sending of a Certificate for a named person may be recorded in overseers’ accounts
• Overseers sometimes kept lists of those arriving ‘by Certificate’ in the parish early certificates usually contain less detail on family members (eg children and their ages)
• remember the place of settlement named on the certificate may not be the parish of birth

Removal Orders

• two copies were made – one for each parish.
• late 17th-early 18th century removal orders often give brief proof of settlement
• later removal orders (which may occasionally exist up to the 1860s) are instead accompanied by a settlement examination, if one survives
• from the late 18th century they often give very specific information on names and ages of children, and sometimes on a husband’s fate (eg in prison, transported) or the pregnancy of an unmarried woman
• not all those named on the removal order were removed immediately or at all. Look on the reverse for endorsements relating to postponements because of confinement, illness or cancellation due to death.
• some families were never physically removed; instead they stayed put, and their parish of settlement agreed to maintain them. A member of the family may have regularly travelled to the parish of settlement to collect poor relief. Some were removed for a short while, but then returned to the parish they were removed from, collecting the relief regularly as above.
• families physically removed were sometimes found lodgings, or accommodated in the parish poorhouse of their parish of settlement, with the rent being paid half-yearly by the Overseers.

Until the early 1830s welfare support for the poor and infirm was organised at the local, parish level. It was in the 16th century, during the reign of Henry VIII and following the dissolution of the monasteries and the closing of almshouses and charity hospitals run by monks and nuns, that the parishes first became responsible for supporting their own poor. In order to do this, the parishes had to raise money by taxing the parishioners - landowners, tenant farmers and trades-people - who could afford to pay. This payment was known as the Poor Rate, and eventually became a local tax levied on those who owned or rented properties above a certain value in a parish.

The Poor Law Act of 1832 resulted in the introduction of a system of Poor Law Unions - parishes were grouped together into larger Unions each of which built its own workhouse which was administered by a Board of Guardians.

Some poor law documents can provide information on family relationships, and relationships between families and places, which is not available elsewhere. Before the census of 1841, they may be the only surviving record of the lives of ordinary labouring families apart from parish register entries. They may contain the only record of the movements of families between parishes and even from county to county, and of ancestors’ occupations and employers. They can provide a way of tracing poor ancestors through their trials and tribulations – unemployment, illegitimate pregnancy, desertion, illness and bereavement.

But they are not only of use to those with pauper ancestors, for they provide information on parishioners from all levels of society. Remember first of all that even well-established tradesmen and farmers could be put out of business by a fire, an accident, illness or economic pressures, and become dependent temporarily – or permanently - on the parish.

Tradesmen, farmers and minor gentry who were never dependent on the parish may still appear frequently in the records. They acted as Overseers and Churchwardens, and took apprentices; they may have alternatively employed, supported or housed the poor, provided them with shoes and clothes, or repaired the parish poorhouse. They may have given evidence about a pauper’s life history in front of a Justice. Poor law records – particularly poor rate accounts and apprenticeship records - may provide the only surviving information on the properties leased or owned by farming families for some time periods. Poor law documents of all kinds, including bills, letters and legal opinions, can provide information on the roles of the middle classes – of surgeons, attorneys, and of members of the local gentry who acted as magistrates and Justices of the Peace.

Parish officers were supposed to keep a careful account of the money that had spent (‘disbursed’) on poor relief.

In many cases the Overseer was very particular about detail and noted every pair of shoes, petticoat, or blanket supplied or paid for, naming the recipients as well.

Many paupers had their rent paid and some received weekly relief in money, food, medicine and fuel over many years.

The overseer paid for nurses’, midwives’ and doctors’ fees (naming the persons who offered this service and those who received it). He also paid for coffins to be made and other funeral costs.

He paid the costs of travel expenses for journeys undertaken on behalf of the parish, or for the transport of paupers in and out of the parish, and usually recorded the name of the person whose case was involved.

He made payments to unmarried mothers, wives of militia substitutes and poor strangers passing through the parish. Payments from the fathers of bastard children to the parish may also be recorded annually.

References to a pauper family should be looked for in the overseers’ accounts of the parish where they were legally settled, and not where they were living. In some parishes, particularly small ones, one book may have been used to record churchwardens’ accounts, overseers’ accounts and poor rates.

The poor rate was set each Easter at a Vestry meeting and was for a certain number of shillings/pence in the £; the amount a person paid was based on the value of their owned or leased property. If a parish needed more money to support its poor, it increased the number of times per year that the poor rate was collected.

A good set of Churchwardens’ Accounts will give an annual listing of all the ratepayers in the parish, together with how much they paid. Sometimes the payment of poor rates is recorded in the overseers' accounts or a separate Poor Rates book.

In the past the "vestry" was a decision-making body which took its name from the room where it met. All the important decisions about the parish, including those made about paupers and money, were made in the vestry meetings which were held weekly or fortnightly in many parishes. Vestries could be open – when most parishioners attended – or closed – where a small group of men including the parish officers and usually the incumbent attended.

A large variety of topics including what to do about individual pauper parishioners were discussed at such meetings.

Poor men often enrolled in the militia as substitutes in return for payment from those who were eligible for service, but who wished to avoid it. The wives and children of these militia substitutes were often left chargeable to the parish. They were eligible for payment of relief by the parish, and the parish was able to apply to the County Treasurer for reimbursement of the money that had been paid out. Parish records may therefore include the following:

1. Certificates of entitlement to relief
2. Militia Orders – i.e. orders to pay relief
3. Magistrates’ Orders to pay relief

1. Commitment to Bridewell: a document commanding the parish constable to deliver a man to prison for refusing to support his family.
2. Quarter Sessions Order: a document issued by the Justices sitting at the Quarter Sessions ordering a man to support his blind son and his grandchildren
3. Letter from an emigrant requesting that the parish assist his family to join him in America

In 1563 The Statute of Apprentices was introduced . Under this law, no-one who had not served an apprenticeship was allowed to enter a trade. However, there was no centralised record of apprentices kept in England and Wales until 1710. Before this date, you must look for evidence of apprenticeship locally, in the surviving papers of guilds, businesses, charities, families, individuals and in parish collections.

From 1710, in the reign of Queen Anne, another Statute introduced a stamp duty payment on private indentures of apprenticeship, and records of the duty paid for these apprenticeships were kept. However, by the 19th century, apprenticeships in common trades were often undertaken without any formal indenture, and in many trades a man would train his sons or other male relatives in the trade without formally apprenticing them. It was also ruled that the Statute of Apprentices did not apply to 'modern' trades, which did not exist when it was passed in the sixteenth century, so industries like cotton manufacturing did not have to conform. In addition, in many areas of England, the Statute was not actually enforced as time went on.

Apprenticeships for poor children, which were paid for by a parish or charity, were also exempt from this stamp duty payment and therefore there are no centralised records of these apprenticeships. Records are likely to exist among parish records and the records of charities.

Children who could not be cared for by their own family because they had no parents, or came from a poor family, were a problem to the poor law administrators, as they frequently lacked any means of support, and were too young to earn their own living. The Poor Law Act of 1597 gave Overseers of the Poor and Churchwardens the power to set these children to work, and so a large number of pauper children were put out as apprentices by parish officers.

Apprenticeship was carried out both by voluntary consent and by the parish officers; both forms of apprenticeship gave the apprentice a legal settlement if he or she served for 40 consecutive days. There were also private charities which made provision for apprenticing poor children. Children were usually bound at between 7 and 10 years of age. Later, in the early 19th century, the minimum age was increased to 9 years.

In earlier centuries, children were apprenticed to trades such as butchery, tailoring, tanning, weaving or boot-making. Increasingly, pauper children in rural parishes were apprenticed instead to husbandry or housewifery on farms, or in private houses and shops. Many children merely became used as unpaid servants in the houses of their masters. Charity apprentices - those whose apprenticeship was funded by a wealthy benefactor who founded a charity - fared better, in that they were more likely to be apprenticed to a proper trade. Records of these charity apprentices may also sometimes be found in parish collections.

When a parish wanted to bind a poor child, the parishioner they had chosen as master or mistress had to take the boy or girl, or pay a fine to be excused. Apprenticeship was sometimes organised by rotation, or drawn for, as in a raffle. Relatives sometimes took an orphaned or illegitimate child or a poor member of their family as apprentice; a later settlement examination may tell you this. The parish paid the apprenticeship fee, and two copies of the indenture were written – one was kept in the parish chest, and the other by the master until the apprenticeship ended, when it was presented to the apprentice.

In effect, an apprentice became like a member of the master’s family. If a master owned or leased land in a parish and lived elsewhere, the apprentice had to live there too; if the master moved from parish to parish, the apprentice moved with him. If the master died, the apprentice could stay with his widow, or be assigned to another master. Some landowners who were allocated apprentices assigned them to their tenants.

Apprenticeship was only supposed to be cancelled by mutual agreement of the three parties involved. However, in practice many apprentices did not stay with their masters. They were often badly treated, and some cases of abuse were brought before the Quarter Sessions Court. Sometimes they were disobedient or ran away. When this happened, masters sometimes put advertisements about runaway apprentices in the newspaper.

Editor's Note: In researching our Prentice line in Preston, CT, we found that one of our Prentice kin had been apprenticed in the 1770s, decided he didn't like the situation, ran away, and a notice was then published and posted about the runaway and seeking his return.

Sometimes parents refused to allow their children to be bound as apprentices, and records of all of these types of disputes can survive in Overseers' records.

Although compulsory apprenticeship was abolished in 1844, the system of parish apprenticeship continued into the 20th century, despite the efforts of legislators to end it.

If you have any information about the folks mentioned in this article, please contact us at dewald@prenticenet.com.

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