Chapter VII: The Remedies of 1795 (2)

Such was the parish machinery. The method of giving relief varied greatly, but the main distinction to be drawn is between (1) out relief, or a weekly pension of a shilling or two at home; and (2) indoor relief, or relief in a workhouse, or poorhouse, or house of industry. Out relief was the earlier institution, and it held its own throughout the century, being the only form of relief in many parishes. Down to 1722 parishes that wished to build a workhouse had to get a special Act of Parliament. In that year a great impetus was given to the workhouse movement by an Act[254] which authorised overseers, with the consent of the vestry, to start workhouses, or to farm out the poor, and also authorised parishes to join together for this purpose. If applicants for relief refused to go into the workhouse, they forfeited their title to any relief at all. A great many workhouses were built in consequence of this Act: in 1732 there were stated to be sixty in the country, and about fifty in the metropolis.[255]

Even if the applicant for relief lived in a parish which had built or shared in a workhouse, it did not follow that he was forced into it. He lost his title to receive relief outside, but his fate would depend on the parish officers. In the parishes which had adopted Gilbert’s Act the workhouse was reserved for the aged, for the infirm, and for young children. In most parishes there was out relief as well as indoor relief: in some parishes outdoor relief being allowed to applicants of a certain age or in special circumstances. In some parishes all outdoor relief had stopped by 1795.[256] There is no doubt that in most parishes the workhouse accommodation would have been quite inadequate for the needs of the parish in times of distress. It was quite common to put four persons into a single bed.

The workhouses were dreaded by the poor,[257] not only for the dirt and disease and the devastating fevers that swept through them,[258] but for reasons that are intelligible enough to any one who has read Eden’s descriptions. Those descriptions show that Crabbe’s picture is no exaggeration:--

‘Theirs is yon House that holds the Parish-Poor,
Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door;
There, where the putrid vapours, flagging, play,
And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;--
There Children dwell who know no Parents’ care;
Parents, who know no Children’s love, dwell there!
Heart-broken Matrons on their joyless bed,
Forsaken Wives and Mothers never wed;
Dejected Widows with unheeded tears,
And crippled Age with more than childhood fears;
The Lame, the Blind, and, far the happiest they!
The moping Idiot and the Madman gay.
Here too the Sick their final doom receive,
Here brought, amid the scenes of grief, to grieve,
Where the loud groans from some sad chamber flow,
Mixt with the clamours of the crowd below;
Here sorrowing, they each kindred sorrow scan,
And the cold charities of man to man:
Whose laws indeed for ruin’d Age provide,
And strong compulsion plucks the scrap from pride;
But still that scrap is bought with many a sigh,
And pride embitters what it can’t deny.’[259]

A good example of this mixture of young and old, virtuous and vicious, whole and sick, sane and mad, is given in Eden’s catalogue of the inmates of Epsom Workhouse in January 1796.[260] There were eleven men, sixteen women, and twenty-three children. We read of J. H., aged forty-three, ‘always ... somewhat of an idiot, he is now become quite a driveller’; of E. E., aged sixty-two, ‘of a sluggish, stupid character’; of A. M., aged twenty-six, ‘afflicted with a leprosy’; of R. M., aged seventy-seven, ‘worn out and paralytic’; of J. R., aged seventeen, who has contracted so many disorderly habits that decent people will not employ him. It is interesting to notice that it was not till 1790 that the Justices of the Peace were given any power of inspecting workhouses.

In 1796, before Pitt’s scheme was brought in, the Act of 1722, which had been introduced to stiffen the administration of the Poor Laws, was relaxed. An Act,[261] of which Sir William Young was the author, abolished the restriction of right to relief to persons willing to enter the workhouse, and provided that claimants could apply for relief directly to a magistrate. The Act declares that the restrictions had been found ‘inconvenient and oppressive.’ It is evidence, of course, of the increasing pressure of poverty.

But to understand the arrangements in force at this time, and also the later developments, we must glance at another feature of the Poor Law system. The Poor Laws were a system of employment as well as a system of relief. The Acts before 1722 are all called Acts for the Relief of the Poor: the Act of 1722 speaks of ‘the Settlement, Employment and Relief.’ That Act empowered parishes to farm out the poor to an employer. Gilbert’s Act of 1782 provided that in the parishes incorporated under that Act the guardians were not to send able-bodied poor to the poorhouse, but to find work for them or maintain them until work was found: the guardian was to take the wage and provide the labourer with a maintenance. Thus there grew up a variety of systems of public employment: direct employment of paupers on parish work: the labour rate system, or the sharing out of the paupers among the ratepayers: the roundsman system by which pauper labour was sold to the farmers.[262]

This was the state of things that Pitt proposed to reform. His general ideas on Poor Law reform were put before the House of Commons in the debate on the second reading of Whitbread’s Bill.[263] He thought that persons with large families should be treated as entitled to relief, that persons without a settlement, falling into want, should not be liable to removal at the caprice of the parish officer, that Friendly Societies should be encouraged, and that Schools of Industry should be established. ‘If any one would take the trouble to compute the amount of all the earnings of the children who are already educated in this manner, he would be surprised, when he came to consider the weight which their support by their own labours took off the country, and the addition which, by the fruits of their toil, and the habits to which they were formed, was made to its internal opulence.’ On 22nd December of that year, in a new Parliament, he asked for leave to bring in a Bill for the better Support and Maintenance of the Poor. He said the subject was too extensive to be discussed at that stage, that he only proposed that the Bill should be read a first and second time and sent to a committee where the blanks could be filled up, and the Bill printed before the holidays, ‘in order that during the interval of Parliament it might be circulated in the country and undergo the most serious investigation.’[264] Sheridan hinted that it was unfortunate for the poor that Pitt had taken the question out of Whitbread’s hands, to which Pitt replied that any delay in bringing forward his Bill was due to the time spent on taking advice. On 28th February of the next year (1797), while strangers were excluded from the Gallery, there occurred what the _Parliamentary Register_ calls ‘a conversation upon the farther consideration of the report of the Poor’s Bill,’ in which nobody but Pitt defended the Bill, and Sheridan and Joliffe attacked it. With this its Parliamentary history ends.

The main features of the Bill were these.[265] Schools of Industry were to be established in every parish or group of parishes. These schools were to serve two purposes. First, the young were to be trained there (this idea came, of course, from Locke). Every poor man with more than two children who were not self-supporting, and every widow with more than one such child, was to be entitled to a weekly allowance in respect of each extra child. Every allowance child who was five years or over was to be sent to the School of Industry, unless his parent could instruct and employ him, and the proceeds of his work was to go towards the upkeep of the school. Secondly, grown-up people were to be employed there. The authorities were to provide ‘a proper stock of hemp, flax, silk, cotton, wool, iron, leather or other materials, and also proper tools and implements for the employment of the poor,’ and they were empowered to carry on all trades under this Act, ‘any law or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.’ Any person lawfully settled in a parish was entitled to be employed in the school; any person residing in a parish, able and willing to be employed at the usual rates, was entitled to be employed there when out of work. Poor persons refusing to be employed there were not to be entitled to relief. The authorities might either pay wages at a rate fixed by the magistrates, or they might let the employed sell their products and merely repay the school for the material, or they might contract to feed them and take a proportion of their receipts. If the wages paid in the school were insufficient, they were to be supplemented out of the rates.

The proposals for outside relief were briefly and chiefly these. A person unable to earn the full rate of wages usually given might contract with his employer to work at an inferior rate, and have the balance between his earnings and an adequate maintenance made up by the parish. Money might be advanced under certain circumstances for the purchase of a cow or other animal, if it seemed likely that such a course would enable the recipient to maintain himself without the help of the parish. The possession of property up to thirty pounds was not to disqualify a person for relief. A parochial insurance fund was to be created, partly from private subscriptions and partly from the rates. No person was to be removed from a parish on account of relief for temporary disability or sickness.

The most celebrated and deadly criticism came from Bentham, who is often supposed to have killed the Bill. Some of his objections are captious and eristical, and he is a good deal less than just to the good elements of the scheme. Pitt deserves credit for one statesmanlike discovery, the discovery that it is bad policy to refuse to help a man until he is ruined. His cow-money proposal was also conceived in the right spirit if its form was impracticable. But the scheme as a whole was confused and incoherent, and it deserved the treatment it received. It was in truth a huge patchwork, on which the ideas of living and dead reformers were thrown together without order or plan. As a consequence, its various parts did not agree. It is surprising that the politician who had attacked Whitbread’s Bill as an interference with wages could have included in his scheme the proposal to pay wages in part out of rates. The whole scheme, though it would have involved a great expenditure, would have produced very much the same result as the Speenhamland system, by virtue of this clause. Pitt showed no more judgment or foresight than the least enlightened of County Justices in introducing into a scheme for providing relief, and dealing with unemployment, a proposal that could only have the effect of reducing wages. The organisation of Schools of Industry as a means of dealing with unemployment has sometimes been represented as quite a new proposal, but it was probably based on the suggestion made by Fielding in 1753 in his paper, ‘A proposal for making an effectual provision for the poor, for amending their morals, and for rendering them useful members of society.’ Fielding proposed the erection of a county workhouse, which was to include a house of correction. He drew up a sharp and drastic code which would have authorised the committal to his County House, not only of vagrants, but of persons of low degree found harbouring in an ale-house after ten o’clock at night. But the workhouse was not merely to be used as a penal settlement, it was to find work for the unemployed. Any person who was unable to find employment in his parish could apply to the minister or churchwardens for a pass, and this pass was to give him the right to claim admission to the County House where he was to be employed. The County House was also to be provided with instructors who could teach native and foreign manufactures to the inmates. Howlett, one of Pitt’s critics, was probably right in thinking that Pitt was reviving this scheme.

The Bill excited general opposition. Bentham’s analysis is the most famous of the criticisms that have survived, but in some senses his opposition was less serious than the dismay of magistrates and ratepayers. Hostile petitions poured into the House of Commons from London and from all parts of the country; among others there were petitions from Shrewsbury, Oswestry, Worcester, Bristol, Lincoln, Carmarthen, Bedford, Chester and Godalming.[266] Howlett attacked the scheme on the ground of the danger of parish jobbery and corruption. Pitt apparently made no attempt to defend his plan, and he surrendered it without a murmur. We are thus left in the curious and disappointing position of having before us a Bill on the most important subject of the day, introduced and abandoned by the Prime Minister without a word or syllable in its defence. Whitbread observed[267] four years later that the Bill was brought in and printed, but never brought under the discussion of the House. Pitt’s excuse is significant: ‘He was, as formerly, convinced of its propriety; but many objections had been started to it by those whose opinion he was bound to respect. Inexperienced himself in country affairs, and in the condition of the poor, he was diffident of his own opinion, and would not press the measure upon the attention of the House.’

Poor Law Reform was thus abandoned, but two attempts were made, at the instance of Pitt, one of them with success, to soften the brutalities of the Law of Settlement. Neither proposal made it any easier to gain a settlement, and Pitt very properly declared that they did not go nearly far enough. Pitt had all Adam Smith’s just hatred of these restrictions, and in opposing Whitbread’s Bill for a minimum wage he pointed to ‘a radical amendment’ of the Law of Settlement as the true remedy. He was not the formal author of the Act of 1795, but it may safely be assumed that he was the chief power behind it. This Act[268] provided that nobody was to be removeable until he or she became actually chargeable to the parish. The preamble throws light on the working of the Settlement laws. It declares that ‘Many industrious poor persons, chargeable to the parish, township, or place where they live, merely from want of work there, would in any other place where sufficient employment is to be had, maintain themselves and families without being burthensome to any parish, township, or place; and such poor persons are for the most part compelled to live in their own parishes, townships, or places, and are not permitted to inhabit elsewhere, under pretence that they are likely to become chargeable to the parish, township, or place into which they go for the purpose of getting employment, although the labour of such poor persons might, in many instances, be very beneficial to such parish, township, or place.’ The granting of certificates is thus admitted to have been ineffectual. The same Act provided that orders of removal were to be suspended in cases where the pauper was dangerously ill, a provision that throws some light on the manner in which these orders had been executed, and that no person should gain a settlement by paying levies or taxes, in respect of any tenement of a yearly value of less than ten pounds.[269]

From this time certificates were unnecessary, and if a labourer moved from Parish A to Parish B he was no longer liable to be sent back at the caprice of Parish B’s officers until he became actually chargeable, but, of course, if from any cause he fell into temporary distress, for example, if he were out of work for a few weeks, unless he could get private aid from ‘the opulent,’ he had to return to his old parish. An attempt was made to remedy this state of things by Mr. Baker who, in March 1800, introduced a Bill[270] to enable overseers to assist the deserving but unsettled poor in cases of temporary distress. He explained that the provisions of the Bill would apply only to men who could usually keep themselves, but from the high cost of provisions had to depend on parochial aid. He found a powerful supporter in Pitt, who argued that if people had enriched a parish with their industry, it was unfair that owing to temporary pressure they should be removed to a place where they were not wanted, and that it was better for a parish to suffer temporary inconvenience than for numbers of industrious men to be rendered unhappy and useless. But in spite of Pitt’s unanswerable case, the Bill, which was denounced by Mr. Buxton as oppressive to the landed interest, by Lord Sheffield as ‘subversive of the whole economy of the country,’ by Mr. Ellison as submerging the middle ranks, and by Sir William Pulteney as being a ‘premium for idleness and extravagance,’ was rejected by thirty votes to twenty-three.[271]

ALLOTMENTS

Another policy that was pressed upon the governing class was the policy of restoring to the labourer some of the resources he had lost with enclosure, of putting him in such a position that he was not obliged to depend entirely on the purchasing power of his wages at the shop. This was the aim of the allotment movement. The propaganda failed, but it did not fail for the want of vigorous and authoritative support. We have seen in a previous chapter that Arthur Young awoke in 1801 to the social mischief of depriving the poor of their land and their cows, and that he wanted future Enclosure Acts to be juster and more humane. Cobbett suggested a large scheme of agrarian settlement to Windham in 1806. These proposals had been anticipated by Davies, whose knowledge of the actual life of the poor made him understand the important difference between a total and a partial dependence on wages. ‘Hope is a cordial, of which the poor man has especially much need, to cheer his heart in the toilsome journey through life. And the fatal consequence of that policy, which deprives labouring people of the expectation of possessing any property in the soil, must be the extinction of every generous principle in their minds.... No gentleman should be permitted to pull down a cottage, until he had first erected another, upon one of Mr. Kent’s plans, either on some convenient part of the waste, or on his own estate, with a certain quantity of land annexed.’ He praised the Act of Elizabeth which forbade the erection of cottages with less than four acres of land around them, ‘that poor people might secure for themselves a maintenance, and not be obliged on the loss of a few days labour to come to the parish,’[272] and urged that this prohibition, which had been repealed in 1775,[273] should be set up again.

The general policy of providing allotments was never tried, but we know something of individual experiments from the Reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor. This society took up the cause of allotments very zealously, and most of the examples of private benevolence seem to have found their way into the pages of its reports.

These experiments were not very numerous. Indeed, the name of Lord Winchilsea recurs so inevitably in every allusion to the subject as to create a suspicion that the movement and his estates were coextensive. This is not the truth, but it is not very wide of the truth, for though Lord Winchilsea had imitators, those imitators were few. The fullest account of his estate in Rutlandshire is given by Sir Thomas Bernard.[274] The estate embraced four parishes--Hambledon, Egleton, Greetham, and Burley on the Hill. The tenants included eighty cottagers possessing one hundred and seventy-four cows. ‘About a third part have all their land in severalty; the rest of them have the use of a cow-pasture in common with others; most of them possessing a small homestead, adjoining to their cottage; every one of them having a good garden, and keeping one pig at least, if not more.... Of all the rents of the estate, none are more punctually paid than those for the cottagers’ land.’ In this happy district if a man seemed likely to become a burden on the parish his landlord and neighbours saved the man’s self-respect and their own pockets as ratepayers, by setting him up with land and a cow instead. So far from neglecting their work as labourers, these proprietors of cows are described as ‘most steady and trusty.’ We have a picture of this little community leading a hard but energetic and independent life, the men going out to daily work, but busy in their spare hours with their cows, sheep, pigs, and gardens; the women and children looking after the live stock, spinning, or working in the gardens: a very different picture from that of the landless and ill-fed labourers elsewhere.

Other landlords, who, acting on their own initiative, or at the instance of their agents, helped their cottagers by letting them land on which to keep cows were Lord Carrington and Lord Scarborough in Lincolnshire, and Lord Egremont on his Yorkshire estates (Kent was his agent). Some who were friendly to the allotments movement thought it a mistake to give allotments of arable land in districts where pasture land was not available. Mr. Thompson, who writes the account of Lord Carrington’s cottagers with cows, thought that ‘where cottagers occupy arable land, it is very rarely of advantage to them, and generally a prejudice to the estate.’[275] He seems, however, to have been thinking more of small holdings than of allotments. ‘The late Abel Smith, Esq., from motives of kindness to several cottagers on his estates in Nottinghamshire, let to each of them a small piece of arable land. I have rode over that estate with Lord Carrington several times since it descended to him, and I have invariably observed that the tenants upon it, who occupy only eight or ten acres of arable land, are poor, and their land in bad condition. They would thrive more and enjoy greater comfort with the means of keeping two or three cows each than with three times their present quantity of arable land; but it would be a greater mortification to them to be deprived of it than their landlord is disposed to inflict.’[276] On the other hand, a striking instance of successful arable allotments is described by a Mr. Estcourt in the Reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor.[277] The scene was the parish of Long Newnton in Wilts, which contained one hundred and forty poor persons, chiefly agricultural labourers, distributed in thirty-two families, and the year was 1800. The price of provisions was very high, and ‘though all had a very liberal allowance from the poor rate’ the whole village was plunged in debt and misery. From this hopeless plight the parish was rescued by an allotment scheme that Mr. Estcourt established and described. Each cottager who applied was allowed to rent a small quantity of land at the rate of £1, 12s. an acre[278] on a fourteen years’ lease: the quantity of land let to an applicant depended on the number in his family, with a maximum of one and a half acres: the tenant was to forfeit his holding if he received poor relief other than medical relief. The offer was greedily accepted, two widows with large families and four very old and infirm persons being the only persons who did not apply for a lease. A loan of £44 was divided among the tenants to free them from their debts and give them a fresh start. They were allowed a third of their plot on Lady Day 1801, a second third on Lady Day 1802, and the remainder on Lady Day 1803. The results as recorded in 1805 were astonishing. None of the tenants had received any poor relief: all the conditions had been observed: the loan of £44 had long been repaid and the poor rate had fallen from £212, 16s. to £12, 6s. ‘They are so much beforehand with the world that it is supposed that it must be some calamity still more severe than any they have ever been afflicted with that could put them under the necessity of ever applying for relief to the parish again.... The farmers of this parish allow that they never had their work better done, their servants more able, willing, civil, and sober, and that their property was never so free from depredation as at present.’[279]

Some philanthropists, full of the advantages to the poor of possessing live-stock, argued that it was a good thing for cottagers to keep cows even in arable districts. Sir Henry Vavasour wrote an account in 1801[280] of one of his cottagers who managed to keep two cows and two pigs and make a profit of £30 a year on three acres three perches of arable with a summer’s gait for one of his cows. The man, his wife, and his daughter of twelve worked on the land in their spare hours. The Board of Agriculture offered gold medals in 1801 for the best report of how to keep one or two cows on arable land, and Sir John Sinclair wrote an essay on the subject, reproduced in the account of ‘Useful Projects’ in the _Annual Register_.[281] Sir John Sinclair urged that if the system was generally adopted it would remove the popular objections to enclosure.

Other advocates of the policy of giving the labourers land pleaded only for gardens in arable districts; ‘a garden,’ wrote Lord Winchilsea, ‘may be allotted to them in almost every situation, and will be found of infinite use to them. In countries, where it has never been the custom for labourers to keep cows, it may be difficult to introduce it; but where no gardens have been annexed to the cottages, it is sufficient to give the ground, and the labourer is sure to know what to do with it, and will reap an immediate benefit from it. Of this I have had experience in several places, particularly in two parishes near Newport Pagnell, Bucks, where there never have been any gardens annexed to the labourers’ houses, and where, upon land being allotted to them, they all, without a single exception, have cultivated their gardens extremely well, and profess receiving the greatest benefits from them.’[282] ‘A few roods of land, at a fair rent,’ wrote a correspondent in the _Annals of Agriculture_ in 1796,[283] ‘would do a labourer as much good as wages almost doubled: there would not, then, be an idle hand in his family, and the man himself would often go to work in his root yard instead of going to the ale house.’[284] The interesting report on the ‘Inquiry into the General State of the Poor’ presented at the Epiphany General Quarter Sessions for Hampshire and published in the _Annals of Agriculture_,[285] a document which does not display too much indulgence to the shortcomings of labourers, recommends the multiplication of cottages with small pieces of ground annexed, so that labourers might live nearer their work, and spend the time often wasted in going to and from their work, in cultivating their plot of ground at home. ‘As it is chiefly this practice which renders even the state of slavery in the West Indies tolerable, what an advantage would it be to the state of free service here!’[286]

The experiments in the provision of allotments of any kind were few, and they are chiefly interesting for the light they reflect on the character of the labourer of the period. They show of what those men and women were capable whose degradation in the morass of the Speenhamland system is the last and blackest page in the history of the eighteenth century. Their rulers put a stone round their necks, and it was not their character but their circumstances that dragged them into the mire. In villages where allotments were tried the agricultural labourer is an upright and self-respecting figure. The immediate moral effects were visible enough at the time. Sir Thomas Bernard’s account of the cottagers on Lord Winchilsea’s estate contains the following reflections: ‘I do not mean to assert that the English cottager, narrowed as he now is in the means and habits of life, may be immediately capable of taking that active and useful station in society, that is filled by those who are the subject of this paper. To produce so great an improvement in character and circumstances of life, will require time and attention. The cottager, however, of this part of the county of Rutland, _is not of a different species from other English cottagers_; and if he had not been protected and encouraged by his landlord, he would have been the same hopeless and comfortless creature that we see in some other parts of England. The farmer (with the assistance of the steward) would have taken his land; the creditor, his cow and pig; and the workhouse, his family.’[287]

We have seen, in discussing enclosures, that the policy of securing allotments to the labourers in enclosure Acts was defeated by the class interests of the landlords. Why, it may be asked, were schemes such as those of Lord Winchilsea’s adopted so rarely in villages already enclosed? These arrangements benefited all parties. There was no doubt about the demand; ‘in the greatest part of this kingdom,’ wrote one correspondent, ‘the cottager would rejoice at being permitted to pay the utmost value given by the farmers, for as much land as would keep a cow, if he could obtain it at that price.’[288] The steadiness and industry of the labourers, stimulated by this incentive, were an advantage both to the landlords and to the farmers. Further, it was well known that in the villages where the labourers had land, poor rates were light.[289] Why was it that a policy with so many recommendations never took root? Perhaps the best answer is given in the following story. Cobbett proposed to the vestry of Bishops Walthams that they should ‘ask the Bishop of Winchester to grant an acre of waste land to every married labourer. All, however, but the village schoolmaster voted against it, on the ground ... that it would make the men “too saucy,” that they would “breed more children” and “want higher wages.”’[290]

The truth is that enclosures and the new system of farming had set up two classes in antagonism to allotments, the large farmer, who disliked saucy labourers, and the shopkeeper, who knew that the more food the labourer raised on his little estate the less would he buy at the village store. It had been to the interest of a small farmer in the old common-field village to have a number of semi-labourers, semi-owners who could help at the harvest: the large farmer wanted a permanent supply of labour which was absolutely at his command. Moreover, the roundsman system maintained his labourers for him when he did not want them. The strength of the hostility of the farmers to allotments is seen in the language of those few landlords who were interested in this policy. Lord Winchilsea and his friends were always urging philanthropists to proceed with caution, and to try to reason the farmers out of their prejudices. The Report of the Poor Law Commission in 1834 showed that these prejudices were as strong as ever. ‘We can do little or nothing to prevent pauperism; the farmers will have it: they prefer that the labourers should be slaves; they object to their having gardens, saying “The more they work for themselves, the less they work for us.”’[291] This was the view of Boys, the writer in agricultural subjects, who, criticising Kent’s declaration in favour of allotments, remarks: ‘If farmers in general were to accommodate their labourers with two acres of land, a cow and two or three pigs, they would probably have more difficulty in getting their hard work done--as the cow, land, etc., would enable them to live with less earnings.’[292] Arthur Young and Nathaniel Kent made a great appeal to landlords and to landlords’ wives to interest themselves in their estates and the people who lived on them, but landlords’ bailiffs did not like the trouble of collecting a number of small rents, and most landlords preferred to leave their labourers to the mercy of the farmers. There was, however, one form of allotment that the farmers themselves liked: they would let strips of potato ground to labourers, sometimes at four times the rent they paid themselves, getting the land manured and dug into the bargain.[293]

The Select Vestry Act of 1819[294] empowered parishes to buy or lease twenty acres of land, and to set the indigent poor to work on it, or to lease it out to any poor and industrious inhabitant. A later Act of 1831[295] raised the limit from twenty to fifty acres, and empowered parishes to enclose fifty acres of waste (with the consent of those who had rights on it) and to lease it out for the same purposes. Little use was made of these Acts, and perhaps the clearest light is thrown on the extent of the allotment movement by a significant sentence that occurs in the Report of the Select Committee on Allotments in 1843. ‘It was not until 1830, when discontent had been so painfully exhibited amongst the peasantry of the southern counties that this method of alleviating their situation was much resorted to.’ In other words, little was done till labourers desperate with hunger had set the farmers’ ricks blazing.

THE REMEDY ADOPTED. SPEENHAMLAND

The history has now been given of the several proposals made at this time that for one reason or another fell to the ground. A minimum wage was not fixed, allotments were only sprinkled with a sparing hand on an estate here and there, there was no revolution in diet, the problems of local supply and distribution were left untouched, the reconstruction of the Poor Law was abandoned. What means then did the governing class take to tranquillise a population made dangerous by hunger? The answer is, of course, the Speenhamland Act. The Berkshire J.P.’s and some discreet persons met at the Pelican Inn at Speenhamland[296] on 6th May 1795, and there resolved on a momentous policy which was gradually adopted in almost every part of England.

There is a strange irony in the story of this meeting which gave such a fatal impetus to the reduction of wages. It was summoned in order to raise wages, and so make the labourer independent of parish relief. At the General Quarter Sessions for Berkshire held at Newbury on the 14th April, Charles Dundas, M.P.,[297] in his charge to the Grand Jury[298] dwelt on the miserable state of the labourers and the necessity of increasing their wages to subsistence level, instead of leaving them to resort to the parish officers for support for their families, as was the case when they worked for a shilling a day. He quoted the Acts of Elizabeth and James with reference to the fixing of wages. The Court, impressed by his speech, decided to convene a meeting for the rating of wages. The advertisement of the meeting shows that this was the only object in view. ‘At the General Quarter Sessions of the Peace for this county held at Newbury, on Tuesday, the 14th instant, the Court, having taken into consideration the great Inequality of Labourers’ Wages, and the insufficiency of the same for the necessary support of an industrious man and his family; and it being the opinion of the Gentlemen assembled on the Grand Jury, that many parishes have not advanced their labourers’ weekly pay in proportion to the high price of corn and provisions, do (in pursuance of the Acts of Parliament, enabling and requiring them so to do, either at the Easter Sessions, yearly, or within six weeks next after) earnestly request the attendance of the Sheriff, and all the Magistrates of this County, at a Meeting intended to be held at the Pelican Inn in Speenhamland, on Wednesday, the sixth day of May next, at ten o’clock in the forenoon, for the purpose of consulting together with such discreet persons as they shall think meet, and they will then, having respect to the plenty and scarcity of the time, and other circumstances (if approved of) proceed to limit, direct, and appoint the wages of day labourers.’[299]

The meeting was duly held on 6th May.[300] Mr. Charles Dundas was in the chair, and there were seventeen other magistrates and discreet persons present, of whom seven were clergymen. It was resolved unanimously ‘that the present state of the poor does require further assistance than has been generally given them.’ Of the details of the discussion no records have come down to us, nor do we know by what majority the second and fatal resolution rejecting the rating of wages and substituting an allowance policy was adopted. According to Eden, the arguments in favour of adopting the rating of wages were ‘that by enforcing a payment for labour, from the employers, in proportion to the price of bread, some encouragement would have been held out to the labourer, as what he would have received, would have been payment for labour. He would have considered it as his right, and not as charity.’[301] But these arguments were rejected, and a pious recommendation to employers to raise wages, coupled with detailed directions for supplementing those wages from parish funds, adopted instead.[302] The text of the second resolution runs thus: ‘Resolved, that it is not expedient for the Magistrates to grant that assistance by regulating the wages of Day Labourers according to the directions of the Statutes of the 5th Elizabeth and 1st James: But the Magistrates very earnestly recommend to the Farmers and others throughout the county to increase the Pay of their Labourers in proportion to the present Price of Provisions; and agreeable thereto the Magistrates now present have unanimously Resolved, That they will in their several divisions, make the following calculations and allowances for the relief of all poor and industrious men and their families, who, to the satisfaction of the Justices of their parish, shall endeavour (as far as they can), for their own support and maintenance, that is to say, when the gallon loaf of second flour, weighing 8 lbs. 11 oz. shall cost one shilling, then every poor and industrious man shall have for his own support 3s. weekly, either produced by his own or his family’s labour or an allowance from the poor rates, and for the support of his wife and every other of his family 1s. 6d. When the gallon loaf shall cost 1s. 4d., then every poor and industrious man shall have 4s. weekly for his own, and 1s. 10d. for the support of every other of his family.

‘And so in proportion as the price of bread rises or falls (that is to say), 3d. to the man and 1d. to every other of the family, on every penny which the loaf rises above a shilling.’

In other words, it was estimated that the man must have three gallon loaves a week, and his wife and each child one and a half.

It is interesting to notice that at this same famous Speenhamland meeting the justices ‘wishing, as much as possible, to alleviate the Distresses of the Poor with as little burthen on the occupiers of the Land as possible’ recommended overseers to cultivate land for potatoes and to give the workers a quarter of the crop, selling the rest at one shilling a bushel; overseers were also recommended to purchase fuel and to retail it at a loss.

The Speenhamland policy was not a full-blown invention of that unhappy May morning in the Pelican Inn. The principle had already been adopted elsewhere. At the Oxford Quarter Sessions on 13th January 1795, the justices had resolved that the following incomes were ‘absolutely necessary for the support of the poor, industrious labourer, and that when the utmost industry of a family cannot produce the undermentioned sums, it must be made up by the overseer, exclusive of rent, viz.:--

‘A single Man according to his labour.

‘A Man and his Wife not less than 6s. a week.

‘A Man and his Wife with one or two Small Children, not less than 7s. a week.

‘And for every additional Child not less than 1s. a week.’ This regulation was to be sent to all overseers within the county.[303]

But the Speenhamland magistrates had drawn up a table which became a convenient standard, and other magistrates found it the simplest course to accept the table as it stood. The tables passed rapidly from county to county. The allowance system spread like a fever, for while it is true to say that the northern counties took it much later and in a milder form, there were only two counties still free from it in 1834--Northumberland and Durham.

To complete our picture of the new system we must remember the results of Gilbert’s Act. It had been the practice in those parishes that adopted the Act to reserve the workhouse for the infirm and to find work outside for the unemployed, the parish receiving the wages of such employment and providing maintenance. This outside employment had spread to other parishes, and the way in which it had been worked may be illustrated by cases mentioned by Eden, writing in the summer and autumn of 1795. At Kibworth-Beauchamp in Leicestershire, ‘in the winter, and at other times, when a man is out of work, he applies to the overseer, who sends him from house to house to get employ: the housekeeper, who employs him, is obliged to give him victuals, and 6d. a day; and the parish adds 4d.; (total 10d. a day;) for the support of his family: persons working in this manner are called rounds-men, from their going round the village or township for employ.’[304] At Yardley Goben, in Northamptonshire, every person who paid more than £20 rent was bound in his turn to employ a man for a day and to pay him a shilling.[305] At Maids Morton the roundsman got 6d. from the employer and 6d. or 9d. from the parish.[306] At Winslow in Bucks the system was more fully developed. ‘There seems to be here a great want of employment: most 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, about ten years old, are put on the rounds, and receive from the parish from 1s. 6d. to 3s. a week.’[307] The Speenhamland systematised scale was easily grafted on to these arrangements. ‘During the late dear season, the Poor of the parish went in a body to the Justices, to complain of their want of bread. The Magistrates sent orders to the parish officers to raise the earnings of labourers, to certain weekly sums, according to the number of their children; a circumstance that should invariably be attended to in apportioning parochial relief. These sums were from 7s. to 19s.; and were to be reduced, proportionably with the price of bread.’[308]

The Speenhamland system did not then spring Athene-like out of the heads of the justices and other discreet persons whose place of meeting has given the system its name. Neither was the unemployment policy thereafter adopted a sudden inspiration of the Parliament of 1796. The importance of these years is that though the governing classes did not then introduce a new principle, they applied to the normal case methods of relief and treatment that had hitherto been reserved for the exceptions. The Poor Law which had once been the hospital became now the prison of the poor. Designed to relieve his necessities, it was now his bondage. If a labourer was in private employment, the difference between the wage his master chose to give him and the recognised minimum was made up by the parish. Those labourers who could not find private employment were either shared out among the ratepayers, or else their labour was sold by the parish to employers, at a low rate, the parish contributing what was needed to bring the labourers’ receipts up to scale. Crabbe has described the roundsman system:

‘Alternate Masters now their Slave command,
Urge the weak efforts of his feeble hand,
And when his age attempts its task in vain,
With ruthless taunts, of lazy poor complain.’[309]

The meshes of the Poor Law were spread over the entire labour system. The labourers, stripped of their ancient rights and their ancient possessions, refused a minimum wage and allotments, were given instead a universal system of pauperism. This was the basis on which the governing class rebuilt the English village. Many critics, Arthur Young and Malthus among them, assailed it, but it endured for forty years, and it was not disestablished until Parliament itself had passed through a revolution.

FOOTNOTES:

[184] Eden, vol. i. p. 495.

[185] Resolution of Privy Council, July 6, 1795, and Debate and Resolution in House of Commons. _Parliamentary Register_, December 11, 1795, and Lord Sheffield in _Annals of Agriculture_, vol. xxv. p. 31.

[186] See _Senator_ for March 1, 1796, p. 1147.

[187] See Wilberforce’s speech, _Parliamentary Register_ and _Senator_, February 18, 1800.

[188] Eden, vol. ii. pp. 104-6.

[189] _Ibid._, p. 15.

[190] _Ibid._, p. 280.

[191] _Ibid._, p. 426.

[192] See _Annals of Agriculture_, vol. xxiv. pp. 63, 171, 177, 204, 285, 316, etc.

[193] _Annals of Agriculture_, vol. xxv. p. 678.

[194] Eden, vol. i. p. 533.

[195] Perhaps the unpopularity of soup is partly explained by a letter published in the _Annals of Agriculture_ in December 1795, vol. xxvi. p. 215. The writer says it is the custom for most families in the country ‘to give their poor neighbours the pot liquor, that is, the liquor in which any meat has been boiled, and to which they sometimes add the broken bread from the parlour and kitchen tables: this,’ he adds, ‘makes but an indifferent mess.’ The publications of the time contain numerous recipes for cheap soups: ‘the power of giving an increased effect to Christian benevolence by these soups’ (_Reports on Poor_, vol. i. p. 167) was eagerly welcomed. Cf. Mrs. Shore’s account of stewed ox’s head for the poor, according to which, at the cost of 2s. 6d. with the leavings of the family, a savoury mess for fifty-two persons could be prepared (_Ibid._, p. 60).

[196] Davies, pp. 31-2.

[197] _Annals of Agriculture_, vol. xxv. p. 455.

[198] _Parliamentary Register_, November 2, 1795.

[199] Eden, vol. iii. p. 769.

[200] _Ibid._, vol. ii. p. 97.

[201] _Ibid._, p. 621.

[202] _Ibid._, p. 645.

[203] In many budgets no milk is included.

[204] _Reports on Poor_, vol. iv. p. 151.

[205] Davies, p. 104.

[206] _Reports on Poor_, vol. ii. p. 178.

[207] Vol. ii. p. 587.

[208] _Reports on Poor_, vol. i. p. 134; another reason for the dearth of milk was the growing consumption of veal in the towns. Davies says (p. 19), ‘Suckling is here so profitable (to furnish veal for London) that the poor can seldom either buy or beg milk.’

[209] P. 27.

[210] See _Annals of Agriculture_, vol. xxv. pp. 367-8.

[211] Davies, p. 37.

[212] _Ibid._, p. 39.

[213] _Annals of Agriculture_, vol. xxvi. p. 121.

[214] The dearness of malt was another fact which helped the introduction of tea. Cf. Davies, p. 38: ‘Time was when _small beer_ was reckoned one of the necessaries of life, even in poor families.’

[215] Lecky, _History of England in Eighteenth Century_, vol. ii. p. 318.

[216] In connection with the dearth of milk it is important to notice the rise in the price of cheese. ‘Poor people,’ says Davies, (p. 19), ‘reckon cheese the dearest article they can use’ (cf. also p. 143), and in his comparison of prices in the middle of the eighteenth century with those of 1787-94 he gives the price of 112 lbs. of cheese at Reading Fair as from 17s. to 21s. in the first period, and 40s. to 46s. in the second. Retail cheese of an inferior sort had risen from 2-1/2d. or 3d. a lb. to 4-1/2d. or 5d. (p. 65); cf. also correspondent in _Annals of Agriculture_, vol. ii. p. 442. ‘Every inhabitant of Bath must be sensible that butter and cheese have risen in price one-third, or more, within these twenty years.’ (Written in 1784).

[217] _Reports on Poor_, vol. i. p. 129.

[218] _Ibid._, vol. iii. p. 78.

[219] _Annual Register_, 1806, p. 974; ‘My local situation afforded me ample means of knowing how greatly the lower orders suffered from being unable to procure a supply of milk; and I am fully persuaded of the correctness of the statement that the labouring poor lose a number of their children from the want of a food so pre-eminently adapted to their support’; cf. also Curwen’s _Hints_.

[220] Eden, vol. i. p. 510.

[221] Vol. iii. p. 96.

[222] Eden, vol. iii. p. 694.

[223] Cf. _Reports on Poor_, vol. i. p. 43; ‘Where there are commons, the ideal advantage of cutting flags, peat, or whins, often causes a poor man to spend more time in procuring such fuel, than, if he reckoned his labour, would purchase for him double the quantity of good firing.’

[224] Vol. iv. p. 496.

[225] Vol. ii. p. 587.

[226] Davies, p. 28.

[227] _Ibid._, p. 118.

[228] Eden, vol. iii. p. 805.

[229] P. 179.

[230] Cf. also Eden’s description of a labourer’s expenses, vol. iii. p. 797, where he says that whilst hedging and ditching, they are allowed to take home a faggot every evening, whilst the work lasts, ‘but this is by no means sufficient for his consumption: his children, therefore, are sent into the fields, to collect wood where they can; and neither hedges nor trees are spared by the young marauders, who are thus, in some degree, educated in the art of thieving.’

[231] Vol. ii. p. 231.

[232] Cf. also for the difficulties of the poor in getting fuel, the account by the Rev. Dr. Glasse; _Reports on Poor_, vol. i. p. 58. ‘Having long observed, that there is scarcely any article of life, in respect to which the poor are under greater difficulties, or for the supply of which they have stronger temptations to dishonest practices, than that of fuel,’ he laid up in summer a store of coals in Greenford (Middlesex), and Wanstead, and sold them rather under original cost price, carriage free, in winter. ‘The benefit arising from the relief afforded them in this article of coals, is obvious: they are habituated to pay for what they have; whereas at the shop they ran in debt. When their credit was at an end, they contrived to do without coals, by having recourse to wood-stealing; than which I know no practise which tends more effectually to introduce into young minds a habit of dishonesty; it is also very injurious to the farmer, and excites a degree of resentment in his breast, which, in many instances, renders him averse to affording relief to the poor, even when real necessity calls loudly for it.’

[233] 20 George II. c. 19.

[234] _Annals of Agriculture_, vol. xxv. p. 305 ff.

[235] _Annals of Agriculture_, vol. xxv. p. 298.

[236] _Parliamentary Register_, December 9, 1795.

[237] _Ibid._, February 12, 1796.

[238] _Annals of Agriculture_, vol. xxv. p. 345.

[239] _Ibid._, p. 316.

[240] _An Examination of Mr. Pitt’s Speech in the House of Commons, February 12, 1796._

[241] P. 106 ff.

[242] _Annals of Agriculture_, 1795, vol. xxv. p. 503.

[243] _Parliamentary Debates._

[244] Printed in _Parliamentary Papers_ for 1795-6.

[245] The age was not filled up.

[246] For report of debate see _Parliamentary Register_ for that date.

[247] See _Parliamentary Register_.

[248] See _Parliamentary Register_, February 14, 1800.

[249] _Reports on Poor_, vol. v. p. 23.

[250] See p. 179.

[251] _Annals of Agriculture_, vol. xxvi. p. 178.

[252] 22 George III. c. 83.

[253] In 1834 there were 924 comprised in 67 incorporations (Nicholls, vol. ii. p. 91.)

[254] 9 George I. c. 7.

[255] Eden, vol. i. p. 269.

[256] _E.g._ Oxford and Shrewsbury.

[257] There is a significant entry in the Abstracts of Returns to the 1775 Poor Relief Committee in reference to the building of that death-trap, the Bulcamp House of Industry. ‘In the Expences for Building is included £500 for building a Part which was pulled down by a Mob.’