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