Accommodating Poverty: The Housing and Living Arrangements of the English Poor, c. 1600–1850

304 Pages·2011·3.04 MB·English

by  Joanne McEwan

Accommodating Poverty
Also by Pamela Sharpe:
POPULATION AND SOCIETY IN AN EAST DEVON PARISH: Reproducing
Colyton, 1540–1840
ADAPTING TO CAPITALISM: Working Women in the English Economy,
1700–1850
WOMEN, GENDER AND LABOUR MIGRATION: Historical and Global
Perspectives (editor)
WOMEN’S WORK: The English Experience 1650–1914 (editor)
CHRONICLING POVERTY: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor
1640–1840 (editor with T. Hitchcock, P. King)
Accommodating Poverty
The Housing and Living Arrangements
of the English Poor, c. 1600–1850
Edited by
Joanne McEwan
School of Humanities, University of Western Australia
and
Pamela Sharpe
Professor of History, School of History and Classics, University of Tasmania
Editorial matter, Introduction and selection © Joanne McEwan and
Pamela Sharpe 2011
All remaining chapters © their respective authors 201 1
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-54242-6
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First published 2011 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-36000-0 ISBN 978-0-230-30470-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230304703
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
Contents
List of Plates vii
List of Tables ix
List of Figures x
Preface and Acknowledgements xi
Notes on the Contributors xiii
List of Abbreviations xvi
Introduction: Accommodating Poverty: The Housing and
Living Arrangements of the English Poor, c. 1600–1850 1
Pamela Sharpe & Joanne McEwan
Part I The Value of Accommodation
1 ‘Turned into the Street with My Children Destitute of
Every Thing’; The Payment of Rent and the London Poor,
1600–1850 25
Jeremy Boulton
2 The Lodging Exchange: Space, Authority and Knowledge in
Eighteenth-Century London 50
Joanne McEwan
3 Heartless and Unhomely? Dwellings of the Poor in
East Anglia and North-East England 69
Adrian Green
4 Joys of the Cottage: Labourers’ Houses, Hovels and
Huts in Britain and the British Colonies, 1770–1830 102
Sarah Lloyd
Part II Mobility and Household Composition
5 Vagrant Lives 125
Tim Hitchcock
6 The Residential and Familial Arrangements of
English Pauper Letter Writers, 1800–40s 145
Steven King
v
vi Contents
7 Labour Discipline, Agricultural Service and the
Households of the Poor in Rural England,
c. 1640–1730 169
Steve Hindle
8 ‘I was Forced to Leave my Place to Hide my Shame’:
The Living Arrangements of Unmarried Mothers in
London in the Early Nineteenth Century 191
Samantha K. Williams
Part III Parochial Relief and Charity
9 ‘The Comforts of a Private Fireside’? The Workhouse,
the Elderly and the Poor Law in Georgian Westminster:
St Martin-in-the-Fields, 1725–1824 221
Jeremy Boulton & Leonard Schwarz
10 The Parish Poor House in the Long Eighteenth Century 246
John Broad
11 Retirement from the Noise and Hurry of the World?
The Experience of Almshouse Life 263
Alannah Tomkins
Select Bibliography 284
Index 287
List of Plates
3.1 Reconstructed wooden cabin at Salem, Massachusetts,
1630. A close parallel for the wooden huts with chimneys
erected for coal workers in Durham. (Samuel Chamberlain
(1937), Open House in New England (Battleboro, Vermont:
Stephen Daye Press), p. 37) 74
3.2 S ingle-storey cottages in Sunderland. (Reproduced and
edited by Michael Clay, Geoffrey Milburn and Stuart Miller
(1984), An Eye Plan of Sunderland and Bishopwearmouth
1785–90, by John Rain (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Frank
Graham), p. 24. © Sunderland Antiquarian Society) 76
3.3 Cobbler’s Cottage, North Lopham, Norfolk. Originally a
single-hearth one room cottage (built c. 1600); ceiling and
chimney inserted c. 1750; extended to the right o f the
new chimney-gable before 1800; pantiled outshut added
later. (National Monuments Record, English Heritage.
© Mrs. C. Cole) 79
3.4 Norfolk houses built before 1700 with one room on the
ground floor. (A. Longcroft, ‘Plan-forms in smaller post-
medieval houses: a case-study from Norfolk’, Vernacular
Architecture, 33, (2002), p. 40, fig. 5 [Type S1 refers to
RCHME classification] © Vernacular Architecture Group) 80
3.5 A late seventeenth-century house on The Rows, Great
Yarmouth. (B. H. St. J. O’Neil, ‘Some Seventeenth-Centur y
Houses in Great Yarmouth’, Archaeologia XCV (1953),
p. 157, fig. 2 ‘Row 99, No.5’ © The Society o f Antiquaries of
London) 92
5.1 Israel Potter, ‘Old Chairs to Mend’, c. 1819; Plate xvi of
John Thomas Smith, The Cries of London: Exhibiting Several
of the Itinerant Traders of Antient and Modern Times. Copied
from Rare Engravings, or Drawn from the Life ( John Bowyer
Nichols & Son, 25 Parliament Street, 1839). From the
Author’s Private Collection 137
vii
viii List of Plates
10.1 ‘ The Barracks’, Swanbourne, Buckinghamshire, built by
the Parish Authorities c. 1800 to house Poor Families 257
10.2 P lans for a Cottage Row in Nuneham Courtenay,
Oxfordshire, built by the Harcourt Family, c. 1760–70.
(Courtesy of Nothamptonshire Record Office) 258
10.3 R evd Luxmore’s Parish Cottages, c. 1800, Bridgestowe,
Devon (Illustration from Vancouver, A General View o f
the Agriculture of Devon, 1808) 259
List of Tables
3.1 Exempt households in the hearth tax 71
3.2 Norfolk pauper inventories with room names 83
3.3 Selected goods in Nor folk pauper inventories,
1690–1810 87
9.1 Age distribution of inmates in St James Workhouse,
c. 1797 228
9.2 Estimated percentage of the population of the parish in
different age groups in the workhouse 229
9.3 The relief of the aged poor in St James, Westminster,
c. 1797 233
10.1 Accounts for building of Parish house at Shawbury
(Shropshire), c. 1650 247
10.2 H ousing spend as a percentage of total poor law
expenditure 1776 248
ix