Settlement and poor law removals & changing your parish of settlement

[melba_schmelba]

Would I be right in thinking, that if a woman remarried, any children she had that were under age would become the responsibility re: parish relief of the parish of settlement of her new husband?
   Also, I have read that sometimes that a person's parish of settlement could change if they had paid poor rates for long enough in a parish. Does anyone know if there was a hard and fast rule to it, 5 years, 10 years etc., or was it just up to the discretion of the parish overseers, and perhaps, if that person was seen as deserving etc. not profligate, lazy, a drunkard etc.?

[Biggles50]

Interesting.

The whole Poor Relief is varied and confusing.

A Woman re-marries and she takes on her new Husband’s parish for settlement.

Her children are the responsibility of their Father’s Parish.

Given the very many Acts leading up to the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act and the 1846 Amendment which quotes a 5 year settlement period to qualify.

So probably very different actions resulted depending upon the actual date, records may exist in Petty Session records on specific cases.

I’ll follow this thread as one of my xtimes Great Grandmother’s was returned to her birth parish prior to her marriage in the parish from which she was sent

[Elwyn Soutter]

The Scottish Poor Law records often contain records of interviews with the applicants, both to establish whether they were truly destitute and also to confirm whether they could be bumped back to another parish (to save money). So the records contain questions about where the family had lived for the past 5 years or more and also what relatives they had in their parish of origin. 

The decisions whether to admit them were made by the Board of Guardians.

In Ireland there was no settlement rule and so folk could apply for relief anywhere.

[coombs]

In 1802 my ancestor, then aged 74 was going to be removed from Framlingham in Suffolk to Redligfield a few miles north. He had married his 2nd wife in 1785. She was 62 in 1802. As she was ill, the removal order was declared null and void. She was born in Parham but must have taken her husbands settlement upon marriage.

Also in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, my ancestor William Freeman in 1754 was said to be settled in Cuddington, Buckinghamshire. He had just married Frances Witham a month or so earlier in Kidlington. Frances was born in Charlton on Otmoor. Wm and Frances remained in Kidlington. I guess William was perhaps born in Cuddington or had gained settlement there. A William Freeman was born in 1720 in Kidington but I doubt it is mine as I think if you were born in the parish you did not have to gain a settlement cert.

[california dreamin]

Would I be right in thinking, that if a woman remarried, any children she had that were under age would become the responsibility re: parish relief of the parish of settlement of her new husband?
   Also, I have read that sometimes that a person's parish of settlement could change if they had paid poor rates for long enough in a parish. Does anyone know if there was a hard and fast rule to it, 5 years, 10 years etc., or was it just up to the discretion of the parish overseers, and perhaps, if that person was seen as deserving etc. not profligate, lazy, a drunkard etc.?

I have always been interested in Settlement and Removal.  I don’t think people use this resource enough.  Some years ago, I made some notes on the subject.  Qualification included the following:

1.  Being hired by a legally settled inhabitant for a continuous period of 365 days. (most single labourers were hired from the end of Michaelmas week till the beginning of the next Michaelmas so avoiding the grant of legal settlement). By the time you were married, had proved your worth and gained experience then longer hirings were possible therefore changing legal settlement.

2.  Having previously been granted poor relief. This condition implied that you had previously been accepted as being legally settled and was usually only referred to in settlement examinations.

3.  Females changed their legal settlement on marriage, adopting their husbands legal place of settlement. (If a girl married a certificate man in her own parish and he died, she would automatically be removed to his place of legal settlement along with any issue from the marriage).

CD

[coombs]

One ancestor of mine moved from Norwich in Norfolk to Bethnal Green in London circa 1780. He was a weaver and married in 1784 to a Bethnal Green born woman of Huguenot descent. Not everyone who moved from parish to parish needed a settlement cert though or examination, i think it was for people who might be viable for poor relief in the future. The Norfolk ancestor died in 1798 and his widow remarried in the Midlands in 1814, in Burton Latimer, Northamptonshire.

[california dreamin]

I'm sure they did....  Survival rate of these documents does vary from parish to parish.  And some parishes were far more vigilant and fierce than others.

CD

[coombs]

I'm sure they did....  Survival rate of these documents does vary from parish to parish.  And some parishes were far more vigilant and fierce than others.

CD

Yes they do vary, as they can be quite hit and miss but they are very good, especially the settlement examinations. I may have to see if any Bethnal Green settlement certs survive for the 1700s.

[melba_schmelba]

Interesting.

The whole Poor Relief is varied and confusing.

A Woman re-marries and she takes on her new Husband’s parish for settlement.

Her children are the responsibility of their Father’s Parish.

Given the very many Acts leading up to the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act and the 1846 Amendment which quotes a 5 year settlement period to qualify.

So probably very different actions resulted depending upon the actual date, records may exist in Petty Session records on specific cases.

I’ll follow this thread as one of my xtimes Great Grandmother’s was returned to her birth parish prior to her marriage in the parish from which she was sent

Thanks Biggles, and everyone else who replied. I did find this, basically, more or less the exact scenario, posted as a question to a periodical "The Justice of the Peace" in 1841:

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Justice_of_the_Peace_and_County_Borough/rP84AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=parish+settlement+children+remarry&pg=PA329&printsec=frontcover

"SETTLEMENT - Children

A woman was married and had several children, she becomes a widow and then remarries, and in two or three years becomes a widow again, the second husband leaving no children of his own. On her becoming chargeable to the union, to what parish are the expenses to be charged, the settlement of the father of the children or the parish to which the father-in-law belongs! The case being a new one in this district I am anxious for your opinion on the subject. A SUBSCRIBER

Answer

The children being legitimate take their own father's settlement, and not that of either of their stepfathers. If they have not, therefore, gained any settlement for themselves, the expenses should be charged to the parish where the last settlement of their father was, which they have derived from him. The mother belongs to her last husband's parish."

Also confirmed in the Tracing Your Ancestors' Childhood genealogy help book. It notes that given that rule, children by a woman's previous marriage(s) could be taken away from her and removed to their birth father's parish of settlement. Illegitimate children were settled in their parish of birth.

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Tracing_Your_Ancestors_Childhood/RzYRBQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=illegitimate+children+settlement+remarries&pg=PT36&printsec=frontcover

It also notes that:

"Unmarried servants, provided they lived in a parish for a year and received a full year's wage, gained a new settlement. Apprentices (over 7 years old) acquired a settlement after 40 days residence."