But the long term consequences of the Speenhamland “Act” were disastrous. It destroyed the morale and independence of English agricultural labourers, much as Sir William Young had predicted. In Sussex and a few other counties, agricultural productivity per man dropped alarmingly, for why should a labourer work hard – or even work at all – when any extra he might earn would simply reduce what he received in Parish Relief? The “Poverty Trap” about which sociologists and some politicians now talk, was in operation two centuries ago. It paid the poorest man not to work. And, of course, the cost of the Poor Law soared alarmingly.

We have seen already some of the figures for Chiddingly. In 1803, out of a population of 673 persons, twenty eight adults and ninety-five children under the age of 14 were on permanent out-relief and another twenty-one, young and old, were in the Work House. In other words a quarter of the parish’s population were paupers!

In that year the Poor Rate levied on ratepayers was 11s. 6d. in the £. In 1804 it dropped to 8s. 6d., but was up again to 12s. in 1805. After a brief drop to 9s. 6d. it rose steadily to 19s. in the £ in 1810, dropped to 16s. 6d. in 1811 and in 1812, when the Vestry “put out” Elizabeth Deacon to Richard Lower, it was again 19s. Three somewhat better harvests produced a drop to 14s. by 1815 but in that year the long war with France ended and a widespread economic depression followed, with the result that in 1817 the Rate was again 19s. and in 1818 it rose to an alarming 22s. 11s. 6d.

Something had to be done. There were two alternatives: to raise labourer’s wages or to cut the scales of relief and tighten up on administration. The former, with the landowners controlling the County Bench of Justices and the farmers dominating the Vestries, was a non-starter. Instead, all over Southern England and not just in Chiddingly, scales were cut.

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