Page:VCH Staffordshire 1.djvu/341

 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY interesting as a sample of eighteenth-century methods of poor law administra- tion, and as a contrast to those of to-day. Among other rules was one which laid down that any pauper working for the whole day was to have half his daily wages for himself, and that others subsisted in the House were to have two-pence out of every Shilling they gained. And that they who assist in the kitchen or wash-house shall be paid a penny, two-pence, or three- pence a week according to the nature of the business, and as their service shall deserve. But whosoever shall make an ill use of this money shall be denied the encouragement. The inmates are to go twice to church on Sunday, but if found begging, loitering, or taking the opportunity to get drunk, or not returning in time, shall be expelled from the house, sent to the house of correction, or other- wise severely punished. The pauper children were set to work at a very tender age in the school within the workhouse where all children above three shall be kept until five, and then be set to spinning, knitting, or other such work as shall be thought most proper for the benefit of the parish. And the master or mistress who shall teach them to work shall likewise instruct such of them in reading twice a day, half-an-hour each time until they are nine years of age. The children above three are to be up and at school by seven o'clock, or eight in winter, the rest to rise at five or seven o'clock, all going to bed at nine p.m. ' with the rest of the family.' 140 In 1806 the borough workhouse is said to have been in a deplorable state, the poor, seventeen in number, being farmed out at 3-f. 3^. per week per head, washing, soap, and firing included. The building was damp, dirty, and nearly tumbling down, with no special room for the sick, and four years before, when a fire broke out, twenty-two persons died out of forty-eight. 141 The last years of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth form an epoch in the history of Poor Law administration in this country. They were unfortunately marked by an incredibly rapid rise in the poor-rate, a great increase in the number of paupers, and a general demoralization of the working classes due to methods intended to be philanthropic but really disastrous to everyone concerned. An Act of 1796 practically rescinded the workhouse test and enabled the poor to receive relief at their own houses 143 if they had an income which the justices deemed insufficient. The result in most counties was that the justices made a sort of by-law by which they pledged themselves to make up deficiencies in wages out of the rates, according to the price of bread and the number of children in the pauper's family. Naturally wages fell and the poor- rate continued to rise till in some districts it swallowed up the value of the land, and drove it out of cultivation. From the report published in 1834 by the commissioners appointed to inquire into the working of the Poor Laws in England, a great deal may be learnt as to the state of affairs in Staffordshire, not only at that date, but in the period which preceded it. In this county the worst evils of the old unreformed parochial system were not so widespread as in the purely agricultural counties of the south and east. The assistant commissioner for Staffordshire 140 J. L. Cherry, op. cit. 81,82. ul Article in Gent. Mag. 1806, quoted by J. L. Cherry, op. cit. 83. 141 Fowle, Hist, of Poor Law, 70-1. I 297 38