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 A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE reported a decrease in the total expenditure of the county since the appoint- ment of ninety-seven assistant overseers and sixty select vestries in accord- ance with an Act of 1819. The population during that time had risen steadily, but the rates, which amounted in that year to 155,309, fel1 to f l 33>7 1 m l8a2 > and to 107,634 in 1825, though they again rose in 1829 to 119,977, and amounted to 133,971 in i832. 143 The workhouses showed no trace of anything like a plan to prevent residence being an object of desire, and an entire absence of uniformity in management led the discriminating pauper to choose that which provided him with the best bill of fare, the kindliest governor, and the largest amount of freedom, added to the smallest modicum of work exacted. 144 Most of the workhouses suffered from inadequate classification of inmates, so that one might find able-bodied men, women and children, invalids and idiots, all herded together in a horrible community, in a sort of frowsy comfort of the most repulsive kind. 145 At Tamworth the master of the workhouse was also the assistant over- seer, vestry clerk, and police constable of the borough, and as there was no select vestry the parishioners of Tamworth seem to have troubled themselves very little as to the examination or audit of the accounts, one of them com- placently remarking that ' they had always given satisfaction.' 146 But some of the establishments were very well conducted, as at Walsall, where there were in 1833 fifty-three old men and women, and twenty children under ten who went to the national school under the charge of one of the aged paupers. 147 In Lichfield there were three parishes besides the cathedral close, and a workhouse in each. 148 The governor of the workhouse in the ' Foreign ' of Walsall was also the assistant overseer and farmed the poor under his charge at 3-r. 6d. per head. He admitted with engaging frankness that the contract found him in wine and spirits for his table, and perhaps 20 or 30 besides. His salary as assistant overseer and collector of rates amounted to 120. ' Incidental expenses ' came to 33 14.1. gd., and overseers' journeys on parish business, such as removing paupers and litigation, amounted to about 40. In this workhouse idiots were allowed to wander freely among the rest of the inmates with dreadful results. 149 The case of Lichfield Close was interesting and is quoted by the assistant commissioners as an illustration of the evils of the current system under the most unexceptionable management. The close was extra-parochial, had its own authorities, maintained its own poor, was exempt from the county rates, and possessed its own work- house. The rates were levied on the occupiers, two hundred inhabitants living in sixty houses. The poor-rate, which in 1816 amounted to 92, had risen in 1832 to 265. In 1833 there were in receipt of weekly pay nine women and five men, formerly domestic servants, and ten children. One was an able-bodied man 141 Rep. on the State of the Poor Laws in Engl. and Waki (1834/1, App. A, pt. i ; Rep. on the Counties of S 'afford and Chester, vol. x, A. 265. 144 Ibid. 265. ' Ibid. 266. ' Ibid. 271. " Ibid. 266. " Ibid. 149 Ibid. 298