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 conditions." He is probably the earliest advocate of equalisation of poor rates and the first to point out that the burden of maintaining the paupers falls chiefly upon the poor. Cary's description of his own experience in Bristol where he took the leading part in poor law reform, and of his difficulties with the mayor and others has a curiously modern flavour; similar difficulties are now met with every day by poor law reformers. His efforts resulted in "a great abatement" of the number of the poor, but the workhouse was not financially successful, and in three years made a loss of £600.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century and at the beginning of the eighteenth there was a reaction in the direction of indoor relief which was probably chiefly due to the examples at Exeter and Bristol. Up to this time the word workhouse was ambiguous. It might either be a place from which work was given out to be done in the home as was the case with that of Thomas Firmin, or it might be a place in which the poor received their board in return for work done or by way of maintenance. From this time forward the word began gradually to be accepted in the latter sense. Shortly afterwards many other places followed suit with workhouses upon the Bristol lines. In 1725 "an account of several workhouses" was published by Mr Matthew Marryett of Olney in Bucks, who was the chief mover in the matter. The effect of these workhouses in reducing rates was immediate and striking, and showed itself in all cases within two or three years.