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The Poet and The Paupers
VIII.042

VIII: THE POOR WHO ARE ALWAYS WITH US

Richard Lower and John Knight came to be appointed as the Chiddingly enumerators of the 1821 Census because for the preceding twelve months they had been the parish’s Overseers of the Poor. In 1820 the Vestry had finally overcome its mistrust of the Dissenting schoolmaster sufficiently to nominate him for a purely parish post, but even then it did so with safeguards. Traditionally for many years past only two men had been needed at any one time as Overseers; in 1820 the Vestry nominated three: Richard, John Knight and James Morris of Stone Cross. If Lower was to have responsibility within the parish, the Vestry seems to have been thinking, he would also have two watchdogs attached to ensure that he did not abuse his position.

By 1820 the Vestry badly needed an efficient Overseer. According to the Government survey carried out in 1804, in 1773 Chiddingly’s total expenditure on Poor Law Relief had been £279. 0. 4d. By 1783 it had risen to £339. 8. 10d. and by 1803 to £1064. 15. 11¼, broken down as follows:

In-relief (i.e. to paupers in the Poor House)

£180. 12. 4d.

Out-relief

£867. 5. 10¾d.

Removal of pauper to other parishes +

Lawsuits +

Overseers Expenses

£16. 17. 9d.

By 1818 the figure had risen to over £2200. Poverty was a problem that just would not go away. If nothing were done about it, it could, as William Cobbett recorded, cause a Sussex man to die in the ditch with nothing in his stomach except nettles; but it was not just a Chiddingly, or even a peculiarly Sussex problem. It was one shared by almost every rural parish in Southern England and some in the North as well. Indeed, it had been a permanent problem for parishes and central governments in England since Tudor times.

There had, of course, been poverty before that – the old, the maimed, the orphaned young, the sick, the widowed and the unlucky whose crops had been destroyed by war or weather - but the Charity that had sustained – or not sustained – them had been private, not a government concern. The new phenomenon of the 16th century was the able-bodied pauper, the “sturdy vagabond” as the Elizabethans called him; the man who had health, strength and often the will to work to support himself and his family but could find neither land to till nor anyone to employ him for wages. The number of such men and their rootlessness as they wandered in search of work became a serious threat to social stability, and it was to deal with this that Elizabeth’s Poor Law Act of 1601 made the parish responsible for the sustenance of its own paupers.

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