What sort of relief??!

[Old Mother Reilly]

At 82 my gt-grandmother appears to have been living on relief - but what sort?  Can I have some clever eyes on the following, please?

[nanny jan]

It looks like parochial......parish relief.


Nanny Jan

[stanmapstone]

Parish poor relief was dispensed mostly through "out-relief"
Because of the stigma attached to the Workhouse, and despite the intentions of the 1834 Act, the vast majority - even up to 90 per cent in some areas, in the early 1860's - received outdoor relief (-i.e. outside the work house, not as an inmate). This relief took the form of a small sum of money (one or two shillings), or income in kind (usually loaves of bread) or both. it was normally granted for reasons like the death of a husband, sickness, desertion by the husband, age and infirmity and occasionally it was granted to able bodied men out of work.

Stan

[Old Mother Reilly]

Yep - that's what I thought.  Looks as if the ennumerator was slurring his (written) words, though!

As to workhouse bread - there is a rather graphic discription of what it was like and how it tasted in one of Ralph Whitlock's books on Victorian village life in Wiltshire.  And it doesn't sound like something to give to the old and infirm - poor old Lydia!