RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: BattyB on Saturday 14 March 09 18:09 GMT (UK)
-
A few of my distant relations "died a pauper" yet according to the census forms they were listed as Agricultural labourers which I took to be that they were working.
Could you be a labourer and still die a pauper. :( :( :(
-
Hi Batty
I have a number of Ag Labs who died paupers too. I believe thinking about it logically it could simply be that they were too old to carry out many of the tasks that would have been required on the farm of an Ag Lab and often ended up in the workhouse.
Being an Ag Lab would have included various farming jobs and was very hard physical labour that maybe older ancestors would have not have been able to do any more and probably the children if they were also Ag Labs may well not have been able to support them.
Kerry
-
Hi BattyB,
Yes, I agree with Kerryb because I also have a few relatives who had recognised useful employment but once they were too old to work and had to enter the Workhouse( if they had no family to care for them), they appeared to then be classed as Paupers.
It's pretty sad really.
Barbara.
-
A pauper was a person having no property or means of livelihood and was a recipient of relief under the provisions of the Poor Law or of public charity.
Stan
-
For the first time, I have also come across this, in that the grandfather of the family is listed as Ag Lab, but has Pauper written over the top of this. In the same family (though not the same family group) the grandmothers have 'Receiving Relief' or 'Parish Recipient' written in the Occupation column. Wonder why the women escaped the Pauper label in these instances.
-
It makes me realise the reason why many of the females moved further afield to work and in some cases, married and moved to USA and Australia.
I wonder if my immediate family realise what our ancesters went through as we have all been Ag. Labourers over the years. Never made a fortune but at least we never had that stigma of being paupers. :( :( :(
-
Interestingly in 1871 my 3 x g.grandmother was on Parish Relief living next door to one of her married daughters. In 1881, she is shown as a widowed annuitant and living with her, at least on the day of the census, was her 8 year old granddaughter, (the child of the married daughter living next door).
I wonder how you can go from being on Parish Relief aged 71 to being a widowed annuitant at age 81, especially as she called herself a widow in 1851, although I've yet to find her husband's death.
Lizzie
-
The term annuitant could also be used for institutionalised pensioners.
Stan
-
From a House of Commons debate:
HC Deb 12 May 1825 vol 13 cc571-3 571
Mr. Monck moved for leave to bring in a bill to prohibit in certain cases, the payment of any part of the Wages of Labourers out of the Poor Rates. The hon. gentleman observed, that this practice of rendering every agricultural labourer partially a pauper, went not only to annihilate all independency of principle among the lower classes, but to incumber the country with a population which it had no means of providing for. The law, as it stood, amounted absolutely to a bounty upon idleness. A labourer who, by day-work, earned, say 8s. a-week, was unable, if he had a family, to live on this, and received, perhaps, 6s. therefore in aid from the parish. If he was a man industriously inclined, and by task-work or other extra exertion, raised his 8s. earnings to 12s., what was the consequence? He had his toil for his pains: for then the parish gave him 2s.
So if a worker did not earn enough to support himself he would receive a 'top up' from the Church (Parish). This also meant that if he worked more and earned more the amount he received from the Church was reduced by the same amount. So there was no incentive to 'work harder'.
There is an old phrase in England of 'going on the parish' or receiving benefits from the church.
-
There is an old phrase in England of 'going on the parish' or receiving benefits from the church.
It was not benefits from the Church, it was money (poor relief) from the Poor Rate levied on the rate payers of the Parish, the church had nothing to do with it.
See http://www.workhouses.org.uk/poorlaws/oldpoorlaw.shtml#PoorRate
Stan
-
That's really interesting Brian - and welcome to Rootschat. So things haven't changed much, since people nowadays are on zero hours contracts and receive working tax credits or other benefits to bring them up to what is claimed to be a living wage. Even after all this time, the taxpayer is subsidising the employer by allowing him/her to pay starvation wages with the balance met by the public purse.
Regards
GS
-
I wonder if my immediate family realise what our ancestors went through as we have all been Ag. Labourers over the years. Never made a fortune but at least we never had that stigma of being paupers.
We may be imagining that there was strong stigma in becoming a 'pauper'. That suggests it may have been a modest insult, while perhaps it was just a standard reference to say someone had no income. Even Mozart (and Vivaldi I believe) had pauper burials, in Mozart's case because he tended to spend more than he got.
Being an Ag.lab. must have worn a person down, especially during weather like we have just had in the UK.
-
When did he die? Agriculture had depressions, like other industries. Mechanisation put ag. labs out of work in late 19thC Britain.
He may not have been fully employed all year, every year, depending on type of agriculture.
-
When did he die? Agriculture had depressions, like other industries. Mechanisation put ag. labs out of work in late 19thC Britain.
He may not have been fully employed all year, every year, depending on type of agriculture.
I have a couple who seem to be regulars at the workhouse. In during the winter months and occupied in 'field work' the rest of the year. Living on the very border of Kent I guess they were reliant on the fruit and hop crops.
I also have a man aged 82 when he died and recorded as an ag lab, I often wonder if he was in fact still working up to the time of his death.
-
For the first time, I have also come across this, in that the grandfather of the family is listed as Ag Lab, but has Pauper written over the top of this. In the same family (though not the same family group) the grandmothers have 'Receiving Relief' or 'Parish Recipient' written in the Occupation column. Wonder why the women escaped the Pauper label in these instances.
Read instructions for completing census for the year in question. Try National Archives site - census.
Unemployed or retired people were to include their usual or former occupation in some years.
The grannies may not have had a former paid occupation. I assume that the man put ag. lab. and pauper on census form and the women put "Receiving Relief" or "Parish Recipient" on their forms.
-
I have a couple who seem to be regulars at the workhouse. In during the winter months and occupied in 'field work' the rest of the year.
"Plough Monday", the first Monday in January after the end of Christmastide, was a begging event by ag. labs to help them over the weeks until they became fully employed again.
An enquiry into poverty in Ireland in 1830s showed that a large proportion of the male rural population were fully employed for only half a year. Many were seasonal migrant labourers in Britain, returning to Ireland for winter. Browsing marriage register in a parish of one of my Irish families shows hardly any marriages June-September. Most single young men would have been away for the summer. February was a very popular month for weddings (4 on the day my gt. grandparents married) as it traditionally was for English ag. labs. too, one reason being that there wasn't much farm work, apart from feeding animals and mucking-out. Anglo-Saxons called February "mud-month".
-
I have a couple who seem to be regulars at the workhouse. In during the winter months and occupied in 'field work' the rest of the year.
"Plough Monday", the first Monday in January after the end of Christmastide, was a begging event by ag. labs to help them over the weeks until they became fully employed again.
An enquiry into poverty in Ireland in 1830s showed that a large proportion of the male rural population were fully employed for only half a year. Many were seasonal migrant labourers in Britain, returning to Ireland for winter. Browsing marriage register in a parish of one of my Irish families shows hardly any marriages June-September. Most single young men would have been away for the summer. February was a very popular month for weddings (4 on the day my gt. grandparents married) as it traditionally was for English ag. labs. too, one reason being that there wasn't much farm work, apart from feeding animals and mucking-out. Anglo-Saxons called February "mud-month".
Interesting reply, thank you.
February - mud month, it's certainly that here in Sussex at the moment. In days past we were renowned for our mud ;D
-
February - mud month, it's certainly that here in Sussex at the moment. In days past we were renowned for our mud ;D
As well as being renowned for your Saxons. :) Solmonoth (with accents) = February.
One of my Irish lines that went to England began as ag. labs. and later moved into factory work but reverted to agriculture occasionally. One of my English lines was similarly flexible. Both families moved to Preston in Lancashire to work in mills. Farm workers in predominantly rural counties may not have had alternative employment opportunities.
Spinning and weaving in Lancashire and Yorkshire were winter jobs for farming families until the Industrial Revolution took hold and squeezed out handloom weavers and put an end to a cottage industry. Some early small mills employed ag. labs. in winter when they were first set up.
-
My 3 x g.grandfather was an ag.lab as was his wife despite having - or maybe because of - 9 children. He was wooed by the new railways and went to Cheshire to work on the railways only to die there in 1841 of pulmonary consumption (Tuberculosis of the lungs), so his wife went back to Lincolnshire with 8 children (the eldest didn't Lincolnshire until much later) and became an ag lab again until 1871 when aged 71 she was on Parish Relief. By 1881 she was a widowed annuitant. She eventually died in 1890 aged 90, so the hard work and fresh air of Lincolnshire obviously helped her to live a long life. She died of old age!
I can't believe 3 x g.grandfather had consumption before he went to work on the railways, it wouldn't make sense to believe that he would be better off doing that type of labouring.