ENGLISH POOR LAW RECORDS
Providing for the poor has long been challenge in
Poor law records deal with providing food, shelter, and sometime work
for those who had none. Records include settlement certificates, removal
orders, workhouse records, minutes of meetings, accounts, out-relief books,
creed registers, rate books, appointment books (of overseers). Some of these
records include names, dates, places and ages, while others are merely
statistical.
Providing relief for a person in need took time. Monies were collected
by an appointed person from those who had land or property in the parish. An
amount was assessed according to the amount of said land or property. Before
money was given to a person in need, the parish (or civil) overseer determined
the parish of settlement. Money was hard to come by, and was only given in
cases where it was justified (not by indigence, by proof of residence). The
parish was not always the parish of birth, since there were ways a person could re-establish settlement in another parish.
When a woman married, her husband's parish of settlement became her's.
The Family History Library collection contains many poor law documents.
Those kept by the parish are most often part of the parish chest materials.
Most recently, filming is being done in the post-1834 poor law union records.
Poor law records can be found in the Family History Library catalog under one
of the following ways. Some catalogers may be creative and record them under
another subject heading.
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This page works closely with the Parish
Chest records page.
Please read the small
booklet An Introduction to Poor Law Documents before 1834
by Anne Cole (FHL book Ref 942 P37c). Then study the web site www.workhouses.org.uk, paying
attention to the sections titled Introduction, Poor Laws, Timeline, and
Union Lists. Then study the web page
www.fourbears.worldonline.co.uk/html/union_finder_database.html
Then learn how to use
the Gibson Poor Law Guides (see 4 parts or volumes listed below), the authoritative
source for listing existing records.
The following books give more information about the poor law system,
its administration and records.
Gibson, Jeremy, Colin Rogers and Cliff Webb. Poor Law Union Records:
1. South-East England and
Gibson,
Jeremy and
Colin Rogers. Poor Law Union Records: 2. The Midlands
and
Gibson, Jeremy and Colin Rogers. Poor Law Union Records:
3. South-West
Gibson, Jeremy and Frederic A. Youngs, Jr. Poor
Law Union Records: 4. Gazetteer of
McLaughlin, Eve. Annals of the Poor.
Morris,
Andrew J. The Poor in
Parliamentarv Pagers 1834-1847.
Nicholls, Sir George. A History of the English
Poor Law. reprint ed.
Pompey, Sherman Lee. The
Miserable Lives of the Poor. the
Indigent. the Paupers and Others of Their Ilk in
Simpson, Elizabeth M. Paupers' Passports: Sources for Tracing the
Family History of Your Poorer Engl ish Ancestors.
Slack, Paul. The English Poor Law 1531-1782.