The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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THE PROBLEMS OF POVERTY 575 brought into operation in 1723!; it empowered a parish, or AD, Io 2 union of parishes, to erect houses for the lodging and employing the poor. The plan was often adopted of letting of work- i the house to contractors, who either undertook the care of the tions the poor, as a whole, for a definite sum?, or provided for them rin in the workhouse, at so much a head®; they sometimes gave out-door relief, but those who farmed the poor per head appear to have put great pressure on the poor to go into the houses’. The immediate effect of the introduction of this as well as in Middlesex. There was only one each in Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire. L9Geo. Lc. 7. * Sir Frederick Eden reports of Stanhope in Durham in 1796: “The poor bave been farmed for many years: about 25 years ago they were farmed for £250, but the expense has gradually increased since that period ; the year before last the expense was £495 and last year £494; and the Contractor says that he shall lose £100 by his last bargain, and will not take the poor this year under £700. Twenty-two poor people are at present in the house, and 100 families receive weekly relief out of it; these out-poor the Contractor says will cost him £450 for the year ending at May Day last. The Poor-house was built about fifteen years go; it is, like most others in the hands of Contractors, in a very dirty state.” 8 At Newcastle, according to Eden, writing in 1796, * the Gateshead contractor is allowed 2s. a head for each pauper in the poor-house, and his earnings. The parish house in addition gives him this year a gratuity of £10, but it is supposed he will be a considerable loser by his bargain.” Ib. 554. At Downham in Norfolk there was a combination of those systems. ‘The poor are partly farmed. The contractor has the use of 4 acres of land, and a work- house in which he maintains such poor as the parish please to send him. They find beds, &e. and clothe the poor, when they go into the house; but the farmer provides clothing during their residence with him. He is paid £95 a year provided their number does not exceed 20, and for all sbove that number 2s. 3 week each, he is likewise entitled to their earnings. * * * The officers give weekly allowances to such poor as can support themselves upon a less sum than what is charged by the master of the poor-house.” Ib. 450. 4 The effects of the two systems of farming as practised in different counties on the Welsh border is discussed by Mr A. J. Lewis. “It is to be observed, that the mode of farming the poor as practised in Monmouthshire is materially different from what obtains in Shropshire and Herefordshire. In the former the practice is to contract for the farming of the poor, impotent and able-bodied, at a gross annual sum; in the latter, the parish enters into an agreement with the governor or manager of the workhouse to allow him a certain sum per week for each pauper relieved in the workhouse, and in general the agreement specifies the quantity and quality of the food with which each pauper is to be daily sapplied. The effects of the two systems are also different; in the latter it is the interest of the contractor to get as many paupers into the workhouse as he possibly ean; in the former, he admits as few as possible. The person who is allowed a given sum per week for each pauper relieved in the workhouse finds, that the more he has to maintain the greater is his profit. He who contracts to maintain them at a gross annual sum, saves more out of that allowance by keeping the poor out of the workhouse, for the poor invariably prefer the smallest pittance as out pensioners rather than

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