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Voices from the Far North: Pauper Letters and the Provision of Welfare in Sutherland, 1845–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Peter Jones  and
Steven King
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Abstract

This article explores the changing relationship between paupers and the parish authorities in Tongue, in the far north of Scotland, between the passing of the Scottish New Poor Law in 1845 and the end of the nineteenth century. It does so by focusing on Scottish pauper letters and petitions for relief. Such sources, though relatively abundant in the archives, have so far been ignored by welfare historians. The article begins with a discussion of the trials of Tongue's poor crofting community in the early years of the century, the impact of widespread land clearance, and the dislocation of long-established communities. Following on from this, through a close reading of pauper appeals alongside other official sources the authors demonstrate that, despite persistent hardship and inadequate resources, the relationship between paupers and the parish authorities changed markedly over the period. An attitude of supplication and entreaty, rooted in Highland traditions of deference and reflective of a rigid social hierarchy, gave way to a clear sense of entitlement and an expectation that paupers' appeals would—indeed, must—be heard toward the end of the century. This fundamental shift mirrored, and was profoundly influenced by, wider agitation among crofting communities for change.

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Articles
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 76 - 98
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Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2016 

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References

1 For a review of English poor law historiography see Samantha Williams, Poverty, Gender and Life-Cycle under the English Poor Law, c.1760–1834 (London, 2011), 1–20. For other recent contributions to the debate, see King, Steven, “Negotiating the Law of Poor Relief in England, 1800–1840,” History 96, no. 324 (October 2011): 410–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alysa Levene, The Childhood of the Poor: Welfare in Eighteenth-Century London (Basingstoke, 2012); Joanne McEwan and Pamela Sharpe, eds., Accommodating Poverty: The Housing and Living Arrangements of the English Poor, c. 1600–1850 (Basingstoke, 2011); Snell, Keith D. M., “Belonging and Community: Understandings of ‘Home’ and ‘Friends’ among the English Poor, 1750–1850,” Economic History Review 65, no.1 (February 2012): 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Hitchcock, Tim, “A New History From Below,” review of Thomas Sokoll, ed., Essex Pauper Letters 1731–1837 (Oxford, 2001), History Workshop Journal 57, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 294–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 297.

3 See, for example, Stewart, John and King, Steven, “Death in Llantrisant: Henry Williams and the New Poor Law in Wales,” Rural History 15, no. 1 (April 2004): 69–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Evans, Megan and Jones, Peter, “‘A Stubborn, Intractable Body’: Resistance to the Workhouse in Wales, 1834–77,” Family and Community History 17, no. 2 (October 2014): 101–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Houston, Rab, review of Steve Hindle, On the Parish? The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England, c.1550–1750 (Oxford, 2004), Scottish Historical Review 85, no. 2 (October 2006): 351–53Google Scholar, at 353. One important exception to this rule is the work of Andrew Blaikie on the northeast of Scotland. See especially his “Nuclear Hardship or Variant Dependency? Households and the Scottish Poor,” Continuity and Change 17, no. 2 (August 2002): 253–80Google Scholar; and idem, “Household Mobility in Rural Scotland: The Impact of the Poor Law after 1845,” International Review of Scottish Studies 27 (2002): 23–41Google Scholar.

5 See Robert Cage, The Scottish Poor Law 1745–1845 (Edinburgh, 1981); Ian Levitt, Poverty and Welfare in Scotland 1890–1948 (Edinburgh, 1988); Rosalind Mitchison, The Old Poor Law in Scotland: The Experience of Poverty, 1574–1845 (Edinburgh, 2000). See also Jean Lindsay, The Scottish Poor Law: Its Operation in the North-East from 1745 to 1845 (Ilfracombe, 1976); Audrey Paterson, “The Poor Law in Nineteenth-Century Scotland,” in The New Poor Law in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Derek Fraser (London, 1976), 171–93; MacDonald, Helen, “Boarding Out and the Scottish Poor Law, 1845–1914,” pt. 2, Scottish Historical Review 75, no. 200 (October 1996): 197–220CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andreas Gestrich and John Stewart, “Unemployment and Poor Relief in the West of Scotland, 1870–1900,” in Welfare Peripheries: The Development of Welfare States in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe, ed. Steven King and John Stewart (Bern, 2007), 125–48.

6 For the differences between the old and new systems in England/Wales and Scotland, see Cage, The Scottish Poor Law, chaps. 1 and 8.

7 Paterson, “The Poor Law,” 178.

8 For a useful comparative overview of the New Poor Laws in Scotland and England, see David Englander, Poverty and Poor Law Reform in 19th Century Britain, 1834–1914: From Chadwick to Booth, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2013), 47–55.

9 Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 153; Paterson, “The Poor Law,” 171–93; Gestrich and Stewart, “Unemployment and Poor Relief,” 128.

10 Steven King, Poverty and Welfare in England 1700–1850: A Regional Perspective (Manchester, 2000), 49, 261–69.

11 Exceptions to this rule are Blaikie, “Nuclear Hardship” and “Household Mobility”; Lindsey, The Scottish Poor Law; Tindley, Annie, “‘Actual Pinching and Suffering’: Estate Responses to Poverty in Sutherland 1845–1886,” Scottish Historical Review 90, no. 2 (October 2011): 236–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rab Houston, Peasant Petitions: Social Relations and Economic Life on Landed Estates, 1600–1850 (Basingstoke, 2014), 230–48.

12 The most complete and forceful expressions of this view can be found in three classic works on the Highland experience: James A. Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community (Edinburgh, 1976); Tom Devine, Clanship to Crofters' War: The Social Transformation of the Scottish Highlands (Manchester, 1994); Eric Richards, The Highland Clearances: People, Landlords and Rural Turmoil (Edinburgh, 2000).

13 Houston, review of Hindle, On the Parish?, 353.

14 These letters came to light during research for a major project conducted by the authors, along with professor Andreas Gestrich of the German Historical Institute in London, funded by the German Research Foundation and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council: “Pauper Letters and Petitions for Poor Relief in German and Great Britain, 1770–1914.”

15 Green, David, “Pauper Protests: Power and Resistance in Early Nineteenth-Century London Workhouses,” Social History 31, no. 2 (May 2006): 137–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Pauper Capital: London and the Poor Law, 1790–1870 (Farnham, 2010), 157–87.

16 The Statistical Account of Scotland drawn up from the Communications of the Ministers of the Different Parishes (Edinburgh, 1792), iii, 523–24 (hereafter Statistical Account). A survey conducted by Alexander Webster in 1755 put the population at 1,093. By 1791, when the incumbent reported for the Statistical Account, the population was 1,439. The first and second Statistical Accounts of Scotland were compiled on a parish-by parish basis by Church of Scotland ministers between 1791 and 1799, and 1834 and 1845.

17 Eric Richards, The Highland Clearances, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh, 2008), 157–58; Richards, Eric and Tindley, Annie, “After the Clearances: Evander McIver and the ‘Highland Question,’ 1835–73,” Rural History 23, no. 1 (April 2012): 41–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 42.

18 Statistical Account, iii, 529.

19 Ibid., iii, 524, 526.

20 Richards and Tindley, “After the Clearances,” 36; The New Statistical Account of Scotland. By the Ministers of the Respective Parishes …. (Edinburgh, 1845), xv, 184–85 (hereafter New Statistical Account).

21 Richards, The Highland Clearances: People, Landlords and Rural Turmoil, 92–105.

22 See ibid., 177–235, for the best account of the “Strathnaver Sensation.”

23 New Statistical Account, xv, 177.

24 Ibid.

25 The phrase is borrowed from Eric Richards, Highland Clearances, 92.

26 New Statistical Account, xv, 185.

27 Statistical Account, iii, 526; New Statistical Account, xv, 183.

28 Statistical Account, iii, 526.

29 New Statistical Account, xv, 183–84; Poor Law Inquiry (Scotland), Appendix 2, 296; Parliamentary Papers, 1844 (564) XX1.1.

30 Ibid.

31 King, Steven, “Welfare Regimes and Welfare Regions in Britain and Europe, c.1750s to 1860s,” Journal of Modern European History 9, no. 1 (April 2011): 42–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 50.

32 Tindley, “‘Actual Pinching and Suffering,’” 238.

33 See A. Sczesny, Der lange Weg in die Fuggerei: Augsburger Armenbriefe des 19. Jahrhunderts (Augsburg, 2012).

34 Quoted in Richards and Tindley, “After the Clearances,” 48.

35 Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 156–60, 185–90.

36 Paterson, “The Poor Law,” 174–75.

37 Ibid., 178.

38 Ibid.; John Day, Public Administration in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (London, 1918), 92.

39 Tongue Parochial Board Minutes, 8 November, 1845 GB0232/CS/6/12/1, Highland Archive Centre, Inverness (hereafter HAC).

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 The average amount of relief given to each pauper in Sutherland in 1847 was three pounds and four shillings; in Tongue, this figure was three pounds, seven shillings, and ninepence. Poor Law (SCOTLAND). Returns in reference to the record of applications to the Board of Supervision for Relief of the Poor in Scotland for the year 1846 … and for the years 1847 and 1848 …, 54–55; Parliamentary Papers, 1849 (450) XLVII.831.

43 King, Steven, “Pauper Letters as a Source,” Family and Community History 10, no. 2 (November 2007): 167–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 James S. Taylor, “Voices in the Crowd: The Kirkby Lonsdale Township Letters, 1809–36,” in Chronicling Poverty, ed. Tim Hitchcock, Peter King, and Pamela Sharpe (Basingstoke, 1996), 109–26; Sokoll, Essex Pauper Letters, 3–75; King, “Pauper Letters as a Source.”

45 See, e.g., King, Steven, “‘It is Impossible for our Vestry to Judge His Case into Perfection from Here’: Managing the Distance Dimensions of Poor Relief, 1800–40,” Rural History 16, no. 2 (October 2005): 161—89CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 163–65; Taylor, James S., “A Different Kind of Speenhamland: Nonresident Relief in the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of British Studies 30, no. 2 (April 1991): 183–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 183–87.

46 Such are the findings of the project whose archival work underpins the research for this article. See n.14 for details.

47 Sokoll, Thomas, “Negotiating a Living: Essex Pauper Letters from London, 1800–1834,” International Review of Social History 45, no. S8 (December 2000): 19–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 22–24.

48 King, Poverty and Welfare, 268; King, Steven, “Regional Patterns in the Experiences and Treatment of the Sick Poor, 1800–40: Rights, Obligations and Duties in the Rhetoric of Paupers,” Family and Community History 10, no. 2 (May 2007): 61–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Kirkby Lonsdale letters are held at Kendal Archive Centre, reference WPR 12.

49 Sanquhar Parochial Board Vouchers, Reports and Correspondence, 1867–1896, Dumfries Archive Centre, and Sanquhar Parochial Board Correspondence, 1845–1866, CB848/5/1/12–39, CB848/5/5/5–22; Kirkcudbright Parochial Board, Record of Applications, 1883–1901, Ewart Library, Dumfries, K7/15/14–18; Documents Relating to the Administration of the Burgh of Perth, 1634–1850, B59/24/12, Perth and Kinross Council Archives; Mitchell Library, Glasgow, general classification D-HEW.

50 Petitions to Tongue Parochial Board, GB0232/R/31/1/1 and GB0232/CS/6/12/61, HAC. The very fact that a remote Highland parish has so many extant pauper letters further suggests that it was clerical culture, rather than specific relief regimes, which led to certain parishes being better represented than others in this sense.

51 King, “‘It is Impossible,’” 163–65.

52 Steven King and Geoff Timmins, Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution: English Economy and Society 1700–1850 (Manchester, 2001), 222–35.

53 Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 153; Paterson, “The Poor Law,” 171–93.

54 New Statistical Account, xv, 165, 180.

55 For an overview, see Gestrich, Andreas and King, Steven, “Pauper Letters and Petitions for Poor Relief in Germany and Great Britain, 1770–1914,” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 35, no. 2 (November 2013): 12–25Google Scholar.

56 Sokoll, “Writing for Relief,” 7–8.

57 Sokoll, Essex Pauper Letters, 59 (original emphasis).

58 Hunter, Making of the Crofting Community, 136–42.

59 See, for example, Symonds, James, “Toiling in the Vale of Tears: Everyday Life and Resistance in South Uist, Outer Hebrides, 1760–1860,” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3, no. 2 (June 1999): 101–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 116; Iain Robertson, Landscapes of Protest in the Scottish Highlands after 1914: The Later Highland Land Wars (London, 2013), 128, 148–49.

60 Houston, Peasant Petitions, 82–83.

61 See Rudolf Dekker, ed., Egodocuments and History: Autobiographical Writing in its Social Context since the Middle Ages (Hilversum, 2002); and contributions to Anke Sczesny, Rolf Kieβling, and Johannes Burkhardt, eds., Prekariat im 19. Jahrhundert: Armenfürsorge und Alltagsbewältigung in Stadt und Land (Berlin, 2014).

62 Tongue Parochial Board Minutes, 24 October, 8 November and 26 December 1845, GB0232/CS/6/12/1, HAC.

63 Tindley, Annie, “‘They Sow the Wind, They Reap the Whirlwind’: Estate Management in the Post-Clearance Highlands, c.1815–c.1900,” Northern Scotland 3, no. 1 (May 2012): 66–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 68; eadem, “‘Actual Pinching and Suffering,’” 239–42. See also Houston, Peasant Petitions, 234.

64 Tindley, “‘They Sow the Wind, They Reap the Whirlwind,’” 68, 70.

65 For the Highland context, see Houston, Peasant Petitions, 230–34, 237–44; Mitchison, Old Poor Law, 185–215; Paterson, “The Poor Law,” 171–93. For a still excellent general discussion of the situation in the Highlands, see Day, Public Administration, 91–120.

66 George MacKay to the Parochial Board, 15 April 1847; John Munro to the Inspector of the Poor, 27 June 1848; Charles McKay to the Parochial Board, 8 February 1847, GB0232/R31/1/1, HAC.

67 Tongue Parochial Board, Register of Poor, 1845–64, GB0232/CS/6/12/58, HAC. English vestry books much more rarely focus on capacity as opposed to incapacity.

68 Steven King, “Negotiating the Law of Poor Relief,” 412–13.

69 Hugh MacKenzie to the Parochial Board, 4 February 1851, Charles McKay to the Parochial Board, December 1846, and Catrin McKay to the Parochial Board, 6 April 1847, all under reference GB0232/R31/1/1, HAC.

70 Bell Reid to the Inspector of the Poor, 26 June 1848, GB0232/R31/1/1, HAC.

71 Hunter, Making of the Crofting Community, 41–42; Richards, Highland Clearances, 44–47.

72 Hunter, Making of the Crofting Community, 65–67.

73 Tindley, “‘Actual Pinching and Suffering,’” 255.

74 Unattributed critics of the crofting system quoted in Hunter, Making of the Crofting Community, 64.

75 Tongue Parochial Board Minutes, 13 March 1846, GB0232/CS/6/12/1, HAC.

76 Hunter, Making of the Crofting Community, 120.

77 George MacKay to the Inspector of the Poor, 17 April 1847, GB0232/R31/1/1, HAC; Donald McLeod, William Ogilvie and John Ogilvie to the Inspector of the Poor, 13 March 1863, 0232/CS/6/12/61, HAC.

78 Houston, Peasant Petitions, 245.

79 Christy McKay Down to the Inspector of the Poor, 9 April 1847, and Cathrine McKinzie to the Inspector of the Poor, April 1847, GB0232/R31/1/1, HAC.

80 Catharine McKay to the Parochial Board, February 1851, GB0232/CS/6/12/61, HAC.

81 Jones, Peter, “'I cannot keep my place without being deascent': Pauper Letters, Parish Clothing and Pragmatism in the South of England, 1750–1830,” Rural History 20, no. 1 (April 2009): 31–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 Effemy McKay to the Parochial Board, n.d. and Catharine McKenzie to the Parochial Board, n.d., GB0232/R31/1/1, HAC.

83 Dolina McKay to the parochial board, 7 February 1854, and John McKay Down to the Parochial Board, 27 November 1850, GB0323/CS6/12/61, HAC.

84 See, for example, Angus McKay McNeil to the Parochial Board, n.d., HAC, and Catharine MacKay Kirkboll to the Parochial Board, 31 October 1850, GB0323/CS6/12/61. For motifs of clothing and nakedness in English pauper letters, see Jones, “‘I Cannot Keep my Place,’” 31–49. For the legal awareness of English paupers, see King, “Negotiating the Law of Poor Relief.” For English paupers' threats to return “home” see, for example, Jones, ‘“I Cannot Keep my Place,’” 40; King, “Distance Dimensions,” 183; Snell, “Belonging and Community,” 8; Sokoll, “Negotiating a Living,” 36, 43–44.

85 Houston, Peasant Petitions, 77–78. See also Peter Jones and Steven King, “From Petition to Pauper Letter: The Development of an Epistolary Form,” in Obligation, Entitlement and Dispute under the English Poor Laws, ed. Peter Jones and Steven King (Cambridge, 2015), 53–77, at 62–63.

86 Widow Gunn to the Inspector of the Poor, 14 August 1850, GB0323/CS6/12/61, HAC.

87 William MacKay to Mr. MacDougall, n.d. [1899], GB0232/R31/1/1, HAC.

88 Widow Sinclair to Mr. McDougall, 1899, GB0232/R31/1/1, HAC.

89 Betsy MacKay (recipient not named), 21 August 1899, GB0232/R31/1/1, HAC.

90 Sir John McNeill's report to the Board of Supervision, Edinburgh, 1851, quoted in Day, Public Administration, 103.

91 These included cases of maltreatment from Knoidart in the northwest Highlands in 1853 and Strath on the Isle of Skye in 1854, which were widely reported at the time. Day, Public Administration, 107–8.

92 Hunter, Making of the Crofting Community, 136.

93 Ibid., 173.

94 Ibid., 187.

95 Ewen Cameron, “Poverty, Protest and Politics: Perceptions of the Scottish Highlands in the 1880s,” in Miorun Mor nan Gall, “The Great Ill-Will of the Lowlander”? Lowland Perceptions of the Scottish Highlands, Medieval and Modern, ed. Dauvit Broun and Martin MacGregor (Glasgow, 2007), 218–19, 224–26; Hunter, Making of the Crofting Community, 188–93. See also Andrew Newby, Ireland, Radicalism and the Scottish Highlands, c.1870–1912 (Edinburgh, 2007), 85–116.

96 Cameron, “Poverty,” 218–20.

97 Ibid., 226–28; Hunter, Making of the Crofting Community, 201.

98 Hunter, Making of the Crofting Community, 224–25.

99 Hugh MacKay to Mr. MacDougall, Clerk of the Parish Council, 25 August 1899; Robert McLeod to Mr. Mcdugal [sic], n.d. [1899], GB0232/R31/1/1, HAC.

100 James MacKay to John Murray, Inspector of Poor, 4 Oct. 1887, GB0232/R31/1/1, HAC.

101 Day, Public Administration, 116, 126–27.

102 See, for example, the evidence of Adam Gunn, crofters' representative for five townships in Strathy, in the parish Farr, immediately to the East of Tongue. Evidence Taken by Her Majesty's Commissioners of Inquiry into the Condition of the Crofters and Cottars in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, 1610–12; Parliamentary Papers, 1884 (c.3980-II) XXXIV.1.

103 Hunter, Making of the Crofting Community, 252–78.

104 Ibid., 320–21.

105 Forty-Third Report of the Board of Supervision for the Relief of the Poor and of Public Health in Scotland 1887–88, ix; Parliamentary Papers, 1888 (c.550) L.203.

106 For example, Parish Council Minutes, 26 August 1897, 5 July 1898, 24 September 1898, 1 November 1898, 13 December 1898, 7 February 1899, CS/6/12/9, HAC.

107 Day, Public Administration, 120–21.

108 Parish Council Minutes, 28 February 1899, CS/6/12/9, HAC. For information about the Congested Districts Board, and its role in Highland land reform, see Hunter, Making of the Crofting Community, 251–53.

109 It is notable that crofters who were eligible to pay parish rates, but were unable to do so, were specifically exempted from further action by the parish council. Parish Council Minutes, 7 February 1899, CS/6/12/9, HAC.