PAP 045

The Poet and The Paupers

VIII.045


An example of how an Overseer might have to lay out his own money comes a year later when the Vestry voted to pay Edward Whitebread’s rent for a year. Unless the Overseer had already collected sufficient money from ratepayers, he would have had to finance this payment out of his own pocket until he could be reimbursed at the following Easter when parish accounts were settled. Some Overseers saw this as an opportunity to make money by lending money to the parish, so that the Vestry found it necessary to make another agreement in 1759: “An Agreement then made that no officer be allowed interest for the money they disburse. Witness our hands.” Nine signatures followed, but later someone commented at the side in a very neatly written hand: “Agreements made but soon broken. No law stands in force long here.” The Chiddingly Poor Law accounts for 1803 quoted earlier suggest that in the parish by then, abusing the expenses account was rare, but in some other parishes it had reached scandalous proportions. The Commission of Enquiry into the Poor Laws revealed such items as champagne and oyster suppers for parish officers being charged to the Poor Rate! There was, of course, abuse on the other side, at the receiving end. The Commission uncovered one case of a man who had been drawing relief for years even though he owned four houses; but there were many thousands of paupers for whom the difference between receiving and not receiving Relief was that between living and dying. All over Southern England Vestries strove to cope with poverty without placing too heavy a burden on the Poor Rate and many of the actions they took have a surprising resemblance to modern counterparts. The payment of Edward Whitebread’s rent, for instance, was something equivalent to a modern award of Supplementary Benefit, whilst the basic form of Relief, a direct grant of money or goods, was similar to what we now call Social Security. The boarding out of pauper children as servants or apprentices suggest fostering. Committal into care, youth employment schemes and job creation schemes are by no means a 20^th century invention. In 1757, for instance, in Alfriston where Richard’s grandfather, Henry, was then the Parish Clerk, the Vestry decided:

An example of how an Overseer might have to lay out his own money comes a year later when the Vestry voted to pay Edward Whitebread’s rent for a year. Unless the Overseer had already collected sufficient money from ratepayers, he would have had to finance this payment out of his own pocket until he could be reimbursed at the following Easter when parish accounts were settled. Some Overseers saw this as an opportunity to make money by lending money to the parish, so that the Vestry found it necessary to make another agreement in 1759:

“An Agreement then made that no officer be allowed interest for the money they disburse. Witness our hands.”

Nine signatures followed, but later someone commented at the side in a very neatly written hand:

“Agreements made but soon broken. No law stands in force long here.”

The Chiddingly Poor Law accounts for 1803 quoted earlier suggest that in the parish by then, abusing the expenses account was rare, but in some other parishes it had reached scandalous proportions. The Commission of Enquiry into the Poor Laws revealed such items as champagne and oyster suppers for parish officers being charged to the Poor Rate! There was, of course, abuse on the other side, at the receiving end. The Commission uncovered one case of a man who had been drawing relief for years even though he owned four houses; but there were many thousands of paupers for whom the difference between receiving and not receiving Relief was that between living and dying. All over Southern England Vestries strove to cope with poverty without placing too heavy a burden on the Poor Rate and many of the actions they took have a surprising resemblance to modern counterparts. The payment of Edward Whitebread’s rent, for instance, was something equivalent to a modern award of Supplementary Benefit, whilst the basic form of Relief, a direct grant of money or goods, was similar to what we now call Social Security. The boarding out of pauper children as servants or apprentices suggest fostering. Committal into care, youth employment schemes and job creation schemes are by no means a 20^th century invention. In 1757, for instance, in Alfriston where Richard’s grandfather, Henry, was then the Parish Clerk, the Vestry decided:

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