By J. D. Marshall

As is well known, the thirties of the last century brought a vast change in the organisation of poor relief in England and Wales, represented by the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which laid down that groups of parishes should combine into a Poor Law Union, each with its own workhouse. The idea behind the re-grouping was to build a ’deterrent’ workhouse, which would make the said building a place of last resort for any person without work.

The famous Act of 1834 was held not to be very useful or helpful in Lancashire, since new jobs and wealth were being created daily, and the most likely occupants of the hated workhouse were likely to be sick or helpless people. Nevertheless, rural parishes in the county did have their problems, and we have some information about this in the midst of a vast survey carried out in 1832, the report of the Poor Law Commission, which sent surveyors (or Assistant Commissioners) all over the country to garner such information. The results of the survey were printed, and they are available on microcard in the library of the University of Lancaster (not, it must be said, reproduced with total clarity), or, better still, at the Central Reference Library, Manchester, where the original volumes – the best being called ’Answers to the Rural Queries’ – can be consulted. They are likely to be catalogued under ’Poor Law Commission’.

Sadly, there was no report for Warton, but there is one for Bolton-le-Sands township, and this gives us something of an insight into the lives of our poorer inhabitants of a century and a half ago. It is always a good idea to read the findings of the Answers to the Rural Queries in conjunction with the details in the 1831 Census, which gives much useful information of a statistical kind. Hence, in 1831, Bolton-le-Sands had 695 people, divided into 142 families, of which 39 were mainly dependent on agriculture, but 48 on trades and manufactures or handicrafts. A glance at Baines’s Directory of 1824 suggests that some of the latter occupations were created by the canal traffic – there was a coke burner, and of course a ‘Packet Boat’ Inn, just as there were lime burners at nearby Nether Kellet. But most of the non-agricultural families were concentrated in Bolton township, a very important point. No fewer than 50 labourers in Bolton township made their livings in agriculture (1832), and both the census and the survey are in agreement here. There were also 17 farms occupied in the township, and, of these, ten employed labourers, some of whom (it appears from the survey) were farm servants who would be hired at the twice-yearly fairs. There were, in addition, 17 non-agricultural labourers. The general picture suggests that there were various small tradespeople and craftsmen working on their own account, and that the locality had a good many retired people of no occupation at all, including some gentlefolk.

For some reason that is not fully or clearly specified, Bolton-le-Sands township did have something of a pauper problem. The 1832 survey give details of the poor rates paid in 1831, but also in the three preceding census years, and these were well above the Lancashire average (which was low, at about 5s, or 6d a head a year), but, on the other hand, they weren’t high by comparison with most of the parishes and counties of England. Bolton-le-Sands was not a refuge of idleness, in other words, but it did have some very poor people. In 1832, the township – as reported by Thomas Birkett, the overseer, and his assistant, one Nelson – had 31 persons in receipt of some form of relief at the time of the survey, and a further six who were kept in a workhouse elsewhere. Of the 31 persons, it was remarked that some of them were ‘with large families.’

This gives the key to at least some of the pauperism. Wages were low, and much depended upon whether a couple with a large family could find employment for the children. It is known, thanks to the same 1832 survey, that some families found their way to Galgate, where the children could sometimes find work in the silk mills there. But there were no such easy outlets on the coast near Bolton. When the 1832 Commission asked ’what employment is there for women and children?’, the reply came, ’gathering cockles on the sand’. It was also revealed that women and older children might earn some money at harvest time, as much as 1s or 1s 3d a day. The overseers even went on to say that ‘a man with a family makes a good living with fishing and catching cockles’. But when the next question asked bluntly, ’can it, (the family) lay by anything?’, the equally blunt answer was ’no’. In other words, you couldn’t save for your old age.

The Commission sought details of wage payments, but, although it touched on earnings, which are not the same thing at all, it did not really disentangle the two. Hence, we are told that wages were 2s 6d a day in summer, that is on the farms, and 2s a day in winter. But, unless you were a farm servant, and paid by the six-monthly period with your keep deducted, you did not necessarily receive an average of 12s to 15s a week all the year round. Many of the local correspondents for Lancashire settled for 10s to 12s as being the most likely average, and the north of England was a high-wage area because of the competition from industry!

A number of other interesting facts emerge from the survey. Cottage rents were £3 to £5 a year, and they could, accordingly, take as much as one-fifth to one-quarter of a family’s income. It appears, too, that a good many of the better-off local people were rentiers – they made a living by house and cottage renting speculations. But, although cottages might be let, land for allotments or potato patches evidently was not, so the poor man couldn’t ease his lot markedly in the way of food- growing for his family. It was pointed out that some of the cottages had gardens, but that, again, would presumably affect the rent. What is more, all the cottages were liable to carry a poor rate charge, very much as we pay general rates today.

The Bolton overseers observed that there was very little unemployment in the township – it occurred ’seldom’ – and it is interesting to observe that even where there were conditions for competition, with work available, wage rates remained low. It is fair to add that many or most of the farmers in the locality were small farmers, without much capital, and they could not pay high wages or provide decent accommodation.

It is often complained today that families on public assistance can obtain more in such relief than they would earn when in normal employment. Very nearly the same could happen in Bolton-le- Sands in 1832. A ‘deserving’ man with a family would be given relief at the rate of 2s a head of his family, and would perhaps obtain a total of 10s in this way. Not for nothing has an eminent writer on the Poor Law, Mark Blaug, claimed that this former or pre-1834 system was ‘a welfare state in miniature’, but if we could look more closely at what happened in those days, we should find, as Blaug pointed out, that people were simply kept alive at a low rate of subsistence or nutrition.

It is also interesting to note, from the survey, that according to the Bolton overseers, local labourers did not become less industrious because there was a basic concern for their welfare – nor did they change their employment more frequently. When out of work, they were not supplied to farmers as subsidised labour (this happened in some southern counties, but rarely in the north), and family allowances were kept for ’deserving’ cases, as we have seen, but not according to any scale based on the price of bread or flour. This arrangement was said to be a scourge of parishes throughout England, but the argument that it did much harm is now regarded with great scepticism.

Since most readers will readily agree that the study of the poor is just as important as the study of the better-off, and one must study the whole of local society to make sense of it, then the ’Answers to Rural Queries’ is a valuable source of information. The next local places, and the nearest, to be dealt with apart from Bolton-le-Sands are Burton-in-Kendal and Ellel (including Galgate), and, after that, and travelling north, Dalton, Church Coniston and Hawkshead. Lancaster is dealt with in a separate volume called ‘Answers to Town Queries’.

The background to the Poor Law in this period is dealt with in three very useful handbooks:

• Anne Digby, The Poor Law in Nineteenth Century England and Wales (Historical Association, General Series, 104,1982).
• J.D.Marshall, The Old Poor Law, 1795-1834 (Studies in Economic and Social History, new edition, 1985, Macmillan, £1.95).
• Michael E. Rose, The Relief of Poverty, 1834-1914 (same series and publisher as above).

My own survey, for what it is worth, has sold 20,000 copies and has just been totally overhauled.

Every parish has its peculiarities, and Warton records will show plenty of these; but one cannot study local material without background, a point to bear in mind. That is why we are glad to do our bit towards training local historians at the nearby university.

[Ed A website about the Lancaster Workhouse]

Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 11 Spring 1985