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6 Williams, Poverty, 101–19; Shave, ‘Dependent poor?’, 77–88; Ottaway, Decline of life, 204, has reconstructed the relief histories of a limited number of elderly paupers, in addition to longitudinal surveys in Terling and Puddletown, 1770–1794.

7 Ottaway, Decline of life, 189–220, 221–46.

8 David Eastwood has emphasised 1795 as a pivotal moment in the provision of poor relief nationally; see D. Eastwood, Governing rural England: tradition and transformation in local government 1750–1840 (Oxford, 1994), 121.

9 Williams, Poverty, 56.

10 Williams, Poverty, 58.

11 Williams, Poverty, 102.

12 Williams, Poverty, 101, 107, 114.

13 Williams, Poverty, 119.

14 Williams, Poverty, 130.

15 Shave, ‘Dependent poor?’, 86 (italics in the original).

16 Shave, ‘Dependent poor?’, 85.

17 Shave, ‘Dependent poor?’, 86–7.

18 Shave, ‘Dependent poor?’, 89.

19 K. Williams, From pauperism to poverty (London and Boston, 1981), 41.

20 J. P. Huzel, ‘The labourer and the poor law, 1750–1850’, in G. E. Mingay ed., The agrarian history of England and Wales volume VI 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1989), 772.

21 King, Poverty and welfare, 48–77.

22 King, Poverty and welfare, 54–5.

23 K. Wrightson and D. Levine, Poverty and piety in an English village: Terling, 1525–1700 (New York and London, 1979).

24 Smith, ‘Ageing and well-being’, 64–95; Ottaway, Decline of life, 184–6, 198–202, 207–14, 222–39.

25 Ottaway, Decline of life, 191. The reconstitution extends from 1537 to the mid-nineteenth century, but the quality of marriage and burial data declines after 1788.

26 This is a different methodology from that adopted by Williams, whose cross-sectional analyses focus primarily on recipients of regular weekly payments in Campton and Shefford, because these comprised a larger proportion of total relief than in Terling. This tends to favour ‘pensioner’ groups (the young, lone parents and the elderly) over ‘non-pensioners’ (couple-headed, working-age households). Her qualitative surveys cover a much broader spectrum of relief. Williams, Poverty, 54–66.

27 Ottaway, Decline of life, 235.

28 There were few parish charities in Terling to supplement statutory provision, only clothes supplied by Henry Smith's Charity and two parish almshouses. Ottaway, Decline of life, 213, 215.

29 Rules for nominal linkage were that the identity of each person could be established only if they had two separate familial identifiers between the overseers’ records and the Family Reconstitution Form (FRF) (e.g. reference to spouse of same name, plus children of same name and age range; reference to parent of same name, plus siblings; payments for death of spouse linked to burial register/FRF event, plus remarriage or further named children). This produced positive identifications (1,339) and negative ones (169). The latter (11 per cent of all recipients recorded) formed a residual category where the linkage rules demonstrated that Person B was definitely not Person A. Once identified (positively and negatively), each individual was given a unique serial number linked to their pattern of relief recorded in the Microsoft (MS) Access database.

30 Very occasionally, details of family structure recorded in the overseers’ accounts appear to contradict the CAMPOP reconstitution (for example, by revealing the existence of additional children within a family born outside the parish).

31 See H. R. French, ‘Living in poverty in eighteenth-century Terling’, in S. Hindle, A. Shepard and J. Walter eds., Remaking English society. Social relations and social change in early modern England (Woodbridge, 2013), 290–1.

32 Essex Record Office (hereafter ERO) D/P 299/8/4 Terling Parish Vestry Book, 3 March 1824.

33 Williams, Poverty, 91–2, 99–100.

34 ERO D/P 299/8/1 Terling Parish Vestry Book, 1 May 1775; French, ‘Living in poverty’, 291.

35 ERO D/P 299/8/2 Terling Parish Vestry Book, 20 November 1785.

36 ERO D/P 299/8/2 Terling Parish Vestry Book, 25 March, 6 July and 21 July 1795.

37 ERO D/P 299/12/3 Terling Parish Overseers’ Accounts, 31 January 1801; D/P299/8/2 Terling Parish Vestry Book, 14 November 1799.

38 ERO D/P 299/12/4 Terling Parish Overseers’ Accounts, January 1801, 2 October 1803, 4 February 1809; D/P 299/12/5, 27 May and 30 October 1811.

39 ERO D/P 299/8/4 Terling Vestry Minutes, surveyors to set unemployed to work, 19 February, 6 May and 23 July 1816; list of labourers out of work to be kept by parish clerk, 1 February 1819.

40 See Shave, S. A., ‘The impact of Sturges Bourne's poor law reforms in rural England’, Historical Journal 56, 2 (2013), 399–429, here 414–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 ERO D/P 299/8/4 Terling Vestry Minutes, 5 January, 3 February and 12 February 1824; Karel Williams suggests that the proportion of parishes instituting labour rates in England and Wales may have declined between 1822 and 1834. Williams, Pauperism, 47.

42 ERP D/P 299/8/4 Terling Vestry Book, 26 February 1827; ERO D/P 299/8/5 Terling Vestry Book, 1828–1836.

43 ERO D/P 299/8/5 Terling Vestry Book, 25 March 1835.

44 Horrell and Humphries, ‘Women's labour force participation’, 89–117; Humphries, Childhood and child labour; Broad, ‘Parish economies’, 985–1006; Verdon, Rural workers; Burnette, Gender, work and wages.

45 Sokoll, Household and family, 215.

46 ‘Abstract of the answers and returns made pursuant to an act passed in the 43rd year of His Majesty King George III’ (P.P. 1803–4, XIII.1), 152–171, compared with ‘Census of Great Britain, 1851. Population tables I. numbers of the inhabitants, in the years 1801, 1811, 1821, 1831, 1841 and 1851 England and Wales, IV Eastern Division' (1852) (P. P. 1852–3, LXXXV.1), 20–1.

47 See C. Ferguson, C. Thornton and A. Wareham eds., ‘The Essex hearth tax return Michaelmas 1670’, The British Record Society Hearth Tax Series Volume VIII (London, 2012), Map 6, 22.

48 Relief levels remained relatively constant, but extremely high, in Braintree after 1800. Sokoll, Household and family, 138, 223; Williams, Poverty, 36–8; Baugh, D. A., ‘The cost of poor relief in south-east England, 1790–1834’, Economic History Review 28, 1 (1975), 50–68Google Scholar, here Figure 6.

49 Figures for the 1760s probably reflect a doubling in total relief levels since 1700. Ottaway found that annual per capita relief levels doubled from 4 shillings between 1700 and 1705 to 8 shillings between 1770 and 1774. Ottaway, Decline of life, 222.

50 Figure 2 charts the total numbers of recipients for each form of relief. It does not discount those who received more than one type of relief per year (i.e. weekly recipients who also received ‘occasional allowances’).

51 See note 8.

52 For an examination of the general trends among all recipients of poor relief in Terling 1762–1834, see French, Henry, ‘An irrevocable shift: detailing the dynamics of rural poverty in southern England, 1762–1834: a case study’, Economic History Review 68 (2015), forthcomingCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 ERO D/P 299/12/4 and 5 Terling Overseers’ Accounts 1801–1809, 1809–1818.

54 ERO D/P 299/12/3 Terling Overseers’ Accounts, 1790–1801, ‘Return of the poor inhabitants of the Parish of Terling taken in the month of January 1801’. The high degree of organisation of poor law payments and the detailed surveys of the poor in Terling echo Shave's observations about the effects of Sturges Bourne's act, but they prefigure the Act and Terling only convened a select vestry in January 1824. Shave, ‘Sturges Bourne's poor law reforms’, 414–20; ERO D/P 299/8/4 Terling Vestry Minutes, 1815–1827, 29 January 1824.

55 In Ardleigh in 1796, Sokoll found that those in receipt of relief comprised ‘40 per cent of the population’. Sokoll, Household and family, 127. Paupers comprised only 12–17.3 per cent of the population in Shefford between 1801–1803 and 1820–1821. Williams, Poverty, 72.

56 Sokoll, Household and family, 51–89.

57 Ottaway, Decline of life, 184–7.

58 Sokoll, Household and family, 154–81.

59 Sokoll, Household and family, 276.

60 Ottaway, Decline of life, 210; Sokoll, Household and family, 180; Williams, Poverty, 105.

61 Sokoll notes that in Ardleigh in 1790 adult males earned 8 shillings per week in winter, 9 shillings in summer, and 15 shillings in harvest, an average of 8 shillings 9½ pence per week. Sokoll, Household and family, 118.

62 T. L. Richardson, ‘Agricultural labourers’ wages and the cost of living in Essex, 1790–1840: a contribution to the standard of living debate’, in B. A. Holderness and M. Turner eds., Land, labour and agriculture, 1700–1920. Essays for Gordon Mingay (London and Rio Grande, 1991), 90.

63 Under the parish employment scheme adopted by the parish in February 1824, pay rates were 9 shillings per week for able-bodied men, 6 shillings per week for ‘old men’, and 3 shillings per week for ‘lads’. These rates may have reflected both lower post-war male earnings levels, and the desire to impose a financial disincentive on parish employment. ERO D/P 299/8/4 Terling Vestry Minutes, 12 February 1824.

64 Snell, Annals, 45; Horrell and Humphries, ‘Women's labour force participation’, 105; Burnette, Joyce, ‘The wages and employment of female day-labourers in English agriculture, 1740–1850’, Economic History Review 57, 4 (2004), 664–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 See Shepherd, ‘Income, domestic economy and the distribution of poverty’, 141; Snell, Annals, 21–2; Horrell and Humphries, ‘Women's labour force participation’, 101–5; P. Sharpe, Adapting to capitalism: working women in the English economy, 1700–1850 (Basingstoke, 1995), 135; Verdon, Rural workers, 99–102; Ottaway, Decline of life, 217.

66 Williams, Poverty, 65.

67 Ottaway, Decline of life, 231.

68 Verdon, Rural workers, 60.

69 Snell, K. D. M. and Millar, J., ‘Lone-parent families and the welfare state: past and present’, Continuity and Change 2, 3 (1987), 387–422CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 395–409.

70 ERO D/DRa E16 List of Labouring Families in the Parish of Terling, 5 May 1775.

71 Of the 250 individuals listed in 1801, 195 can be identified in the MS Access Database. Of these, dates of birth can be found or estimated for 173 (or 89 per cent).

72 ERO D/P 299/12/4 Terling Parish Overseers’ Accounts, 4 February 1809; ERO D/P 299/12/5 Terling Overseers’ Accounts, 4 May 1811.

73 B. Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty: a study of town life (London, 1901), 137; Baugh, ‘Cost of poor relief’, 57–62.

74 These figures are higher than Ottaway's mean ‘pension’ sums of 29 pence (2 shillings 5 pence) for all female recipients in Terling 1791–1800 and 27.1 pence (2 shillings 3 pence) for men, because they include the values of all ‘occasional payments’ per annum. Ottaway, Decline of life, 228.

75 Ottaway, Decline of life, 228.

76 Ottaway, Decline of life, 243–4.

77 Ottaway's finding for the period 1770–1794 is that the age of 70 years old ‘was a very common marker of male dependency’, whereas women's dependency varied by location. Ottaway, Decline of life, 202, 240–1.

78 Sokoll, Household and family, 265–6.

79 Williams, Poverty, 132–3, Baugh, ‘Cost of poor relief’, 55–63.

80 ERO D/P 299/12/4 Terling Overseers’ Accounts, 19 June 1803.

81 ERO D/P 299/12/4 Terling Overseers’ Accounts, 4 February 1809.

82 ERO D/P 299/12/5 Terling Overseers’ Accounts, 4 May 1811.

83 Widows such as Sarah Cutler (aged 50 years old) and Mary Chalice (aged 67 years old) had previously received occasional payments primarily for the costs of clothes, shoes or food and drink, but in the period from spring 1795 they received regular additional payments of 1–3 shillings per week until the summer of 1796. Thereafter, both moved to receiving weekly allowances (in more than 50 weeks per annum), receiving 2 shillings 6 pence per week until the spring of 1802.

84 ERO D/P 299/8/4 Terling Vestry Minutes, 1815–1827. The vestry recorded that men and women were ‘out of employ’ in February, May and July 1816; April 1817; November 1818; February 1819; March 1822; March and December 1823; and January and February 1824. In February 1824 the new select vestry resolved to follow the model of the parish of Oundle, by requiring householders to contribute to labourers’ wages according to the size of their rating assessments, with the rates of those who took on unemployed labourers being reduced accordingly. ERO D/P 299/8/4 Terling Vestry Minutes, 3 February 1824.

85 ERO D/P 299/12/5 Terling Overseers’ Accounts, 4 May 1811.

86 Kelly, M. and Gráda, C. Ó, ‘The poor law of old England: institutional innovation and demographic regimes’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 41, 3 (2011), 339–66, here 352CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 Williams, Poverty, 135.

88 Williams gives figures of 3–25 per cent of the population in Bedfordshire in the 1830s. Williams, Poverty, 134–5.

89 Shepherd, ‘Income, domestic economy and the distribution of poverty’, 140–1.