2. D. O. P. Okeden, ‘A Letter to The Members in Parliament, for Dorsetshire, on the subject of Poor-Relief and Labourers' Wages’, 2^nd Edition (Blandford, 1830), p. 10.

3. Ibid., p. 5.

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17. The average annual expenditure on poor relief per head in England and Wales rose to thirteen shillings in 1818 from just over two shillings in 1749, see B. Harris, The Origins of the British Welfare State, p. 43 (see figure 4.1); For a thoroughgoing analysis of these dynamics see Boyer, G. R., An Economic History of the English Poor Law, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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23. For example, A. Tomkins, ‘Pawnbroking and the Survival Strategies of the Urban Poor in 1770s York’ in Tomkins and King, eds, The Poor in England, pp. 166–98; This has been expanded on within Tomkins, A., The Experience of Urban Poverty, 1723–82: Parish, Charity and Credit (Manchester, 2006)Google Scholar.

24. Levene, A., ‘The Origins of the Children of the London Foundling Hospital, 1741–1760: A Reconsideration’, Continuity and Change, 18 (2003), 201–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levene, A., ‘The Mortality Penalty of Illegitimate Children: Foundlings and Poor Children in Eighteenth-Century England’ in Levene, A., Nutt, T. and Williams, S., Illegitimacy in Britain, 1700–1920 (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 34–49Google Scholar; S. Williams, ‘“A Good Character for Virtue, Sobriety, and Honesty”: Unmarried Mothers' Petitions to the London Foundling Hospital and the Rhetoric of Need in the Early Nineteenth Century’ in ibid., pp. 86–101; Evans, T., Lone Mothers in Eighteenth-Century London (Basingstoke, 2005)Google Scholar; Jones, P., ‘Clothing the Poor in Early-Nineteenth-Century England’, Textile History, 37 (2006), 17–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. Levene, A., ed., Narratives of the Poor in Eighteenth-Century Britain, (London, 2006)Google Scholar.

26. Hitchcock, T., ‘A New History From Below’, History Workshop Journal, 57 (2004), 296CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hitchcock, T., Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London (London, 2004), p. 239Google Scholar.

27. Hitchcock, ‘A New History from Below’, p. 294.

28. Ibid. p. 294.

29. Rowntree, B. S., Poverty: A Study of Town Life (London, 1902), p. 136Google Scholar.

30. Reay, Rural Englands, p. 81.

31. King, Poverty and Welfare, p. 128.

32. Hitchcock, ‘A New History from Below’, p. 295.

33. King, Poverty and Welfare, p. 128.

34. Wales, T., ‘Poverty, Poor Relief and Life-cycle: Some Evidence from Seventeenth-Century Norfolk’ in Smith, R. (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 351–88Google Scholar.

35. Ibid., p. 353.

36. King, Poverty and Welfare, p. 128; Samantha Williams, examining the two communities of Campton and Shefford, categorised those receiving an allowance into several groups depending on their familial structure: the elderly, families, lone parents, lone men and women, non elderly couples and orphans. Using these categories, Williams has calculated the average duration of poor relief allowances according to each particular group, but not how these durations varied according to each individual and their personal demographic events. See Williams, S., ‘Poor Relief, Labourers' Households and Living Standards in Rural England c. 1770–1834: A Bedfordshire Case-Study’, Economic History Review, 58 (2005), 485–519CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37. Stapleton, B., ‘Inherited Poverty and Life-Cycle Poverty: Odiham, Hampshire, 1650–1850’, Social History, 18 (1993), 339–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; King, S., ‘Reconstructing Lives: The Poor, the Poor Law and Welfare in Calverley, 1650–1820’, Social History, 22 (1997), 318–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; King, Poverty and Welfare, pp. 127–34.

38. Stapleton, ‘Inherited Poverty’, p. 355.

39. King, Poverty and Welfare, p. 132.

40. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor, pp. 358–9.

41. B. Reay, Microhistories. For the concept of microhistory see Muir, E., ‘Introduction: Observing Trifles’, in Muir, E. and Ruggiero, G., Microhistories and the Lost Peoples of Europe (Baltimore, 1991)Google Scholar; Levi, G., ‘On Microhistory’ in Burke, P., New Perspectives on Historical Writing (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 93–113Google Scholar; Ginsburg, C., ‘Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know About It’, Critical Inquiry, 20 (1993), 10–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a classic piece of microhistory see Ginzburg, C., The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (London, 1980, translated edition)Google Scholar.

42. E. Muir, ‘Introduction: Observing Trifles’, p. viii.

43. Ibid., p. xv.

44. Reay, Microhistories, p. 260; Microhistory and local histories are two different things. Microhistories focus on specific sets of documents deriving from that locale to clarify broader assumptions about society. This approach, therefore, is a dramatic shift from the conventional models of ‘local history’ pioneered by W. G. Hoskins. Indeed, in contrast to microhistory, local history uses national abstractions to ‘fit and explain a great deal what is happening locally’. See Hoskins, W. G., Local History in England (London, 1972), p. 8Google Scholar.

45. Examples include: Sharpe, P., Population and Society in an East Devon Parish, Reproducing Colyton 1540–1840 (Exeter, 2002)Google Scholar; R. Thompson, ‘Economic and Social Change in a Somerset Village, 1700–1851: A Microhistory’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 2004); Thompson, R., ‘A Breed Apart? Class and Community in a Somerset Coal-Mining Parish, c.1750–1850’, Rural History, 16 (2005), 137–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Griffin, C., ‘‘Policy on the hoof’: Sir Robert Peel, Sir Edward Knatchbull and the Trial of the Elham Machine Breakers, 1830’, Rural History, 15 (2004), 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Short, B. and Godfrey, J., ‘The Outhwaite Controversy': A Micro-history of the Edwardian Land Campaign’, Journal of Historical Geography, 33 (2007), 45–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Lepore, J., ‘Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography’, Journal of American History, 88 (2001), 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47. Ibid., p. 33.

48. S. Williams, ‘Poor Relief, Welfare and Medical Provision in Bedfordshire: The Social, Economic and Demographic Context, c.1770–1834’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 1999); Williams, S., ‘Caring for the Sick Poor: Poor Law Nurses in Bedfordshire, c.1770–1834’, in Lane, P., Raven, N. and Snell, K. D. M., eds., Women, Work and Wages in England, 1600–1850 (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 141–69Google Scholar; the term ‘pauper biographies’ is deployed on page 168 and Williams presents the lives of three pauper nurses on pp. 168–9.

49. Edited collections include: Burnett, J., Useful Toil: Autobiographies of Working People from the 1820s to the 1920s (Harmondsworth, 1977)Google Scholar; Burnett, J., ed., Destiny Obscure: Autobiographies of Childhood, Education and Family from the 1820s to the 1920s (London, 1982)Google Scholar. Further publications include: Kussmaul, A., ed., The Autobiography of Joseph Mayett of Quainton 1783–1839, Buckinghamshire Record Society, volume 23 (Buckinghamshire, 1986)Google Scholar. Substantial work has already been completed on published and non-published autobiographies, for instance: Vincent, D., Bread, Knowledge and Freedom: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Working Class Autobiography (London, 1981)Google Scholar; chapters in French, H. and Barry, J., eds., Identity and Agency in England, 1500–1800 (Basingstoke, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Collections of poems include Goodridge, J., ed., Eighteenth-Century English Labouring-Class Poets, 1700–1800 (London, 2003)Google Scholar; Duck, S. and Collier, M., The Thresher's Labour and The Woman's Labour: Two Eighteenth Century Poems (London, 1989)Google Scholar; for the analyses of such poems, Landry, D., The Muses of Resistance: Laboring Class Women's Poetry in Britain, 1739–1796 (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar.

50. This does not mean that the labouring classes did not engage with the written word at all. Indeed, the poor had a complex relationship with both writers and readers even if they could not actually do these activities themselves. See Bushaway, B. ‘“Things Said or Sung a Thousand Times”: Customary Society and Oral Culture in Rural England, 1700–1900’, in Fox, A. and Woolf, D., eds., The Spoken Word: Oral Culture in Britain 1500–1850 (Manchester, 2002), pp. 256–77Google Scholar; For the idea of writing as a social practice see Sockoll, Essex Pauper Letters, p. 61–7.

51. The relative absence of labouring class autobiographies in the archive could be due to the deterioration or loss of documents, but it is likely that the low literacy rates amongst the labouring class had the largest impact on their rare appearance in the archive. These rates were still low in rural England throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. By examining whether people had marked or signed the marriage register it is possible to gain a rough gauge of rates of illiteracy. In Motcombe, between 1790 and 1840, 491 marriages were solemnised. As male occupations were recorded, sixty-five per cent of male labourers were illiterate and whilst eighty-one per cent of women marrying male labourers were illiterate. The rates found by Barry Reay in the Blean area of Kent (the parishes of Boughton, Dunkirk and Hernhill), from marriages registered in the years 1801 to 1850, are similar. Seventy-seven per cent of male labourers were illiterate as well as eighty per cent of women marrying labourers: Reay, Microhistories, p. 218 and data about Motcombe extracted from the following parish registers: Motcombe Marriages, 1776–1812, D[orset] H[istory] C[entre] PE/MOT/RE3/2; 1813–1862, DHC PE/MOT/RE3/3; 1837–1906, DHC PE/MOT/RE3/4; Marriage Banns, 1823–1868, DHC PE/MOT/RE5/1. Links between illiteracy and class have also been explored elsewhere, e.g. Vincent, D., Literacy and Popular Culture: England 1790–1914 (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52. Steve King makes the point that there is a ‘need for greater spatial balance and new perspectives on the character and role of poor relief outside the south-east’ to stress that more detailed studies of northern parishes are needed. It could be argued, however, that this bias towards the south-east also suggests that south-western counties also need to be examined, not least Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall; King, ‘Reconstructing Lives’, p. 319; also King, Poverty and Welfare, p. 8.

53. K. Bawn, ‘Social Protest, Popular Disturbances and Public Order in Dorset, 1790–1838’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Reading, 1984); Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor, p. 130.

54. Snell, K. D. M., Parish and Belonging: Community, Identity and Welfare in England and Wales, 1700–1950 (Cambridge, 2006), p. 191CrossRefGoogle Scholar; high dependence on the poor law in Dorset is also commented on in Perry, P. J., ‘Working-Class Isolation and Morbidity in Rural Dorset, 1837–1936’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 46 (1969), 121–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the impact of late Victorian depressions in Dorset see Perry, P. J. and Johnston, R.J., ‘The Temporal and Spatial Incidence of Depression in Dorset, 1868–1902’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 3 (1972), 297–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55. Hardy, T., Tess of the D'Urbervilles, edited by Dolin, T. (1891, London, 2003), p. 12Google Scholar.

56. Hobsbawn, E., and Rudé, G., Captain Swing, (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Kerr, B., Bound to the Soil: A Social History of Dorset, 1750–1918 (Wakefield, 1975)Google Scholar.

57. Claridge, J., ‘General View of the Agriculture in the County of Dorset’ (1793) in Marshall, W., ed., The Review and Abstract of the County Reports to the Board of Agriculture, Volume 5: Southern and Peninsular Departments (1818, New York, 1968), p. 241Google Scholar; Stevenson, W., ‘General View of the Agriculture of the County of Dorset’, (1812), in Marshall, W., ed., The Review and Abstract of the County Reports to the Board of Agriculture, Volume 5: Southern and Peninsular Departments (1818, New York, 1968), p. 278Google Scholar.

58. These included the destruction of new fences and banks; The Hampshire Chronicle, 26th March, 12th August and 20th August 1810; for resistance in the early modern period to enclosures in the area see Underdown, D., Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 108–14Google Scholar; Sharp, B., In Contempt of All Authority: Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586–1660 (California, 1980), pp. 87–9, 238Google Scholar.

59. The recipients of the charity may, however, have received occasional poor relief. Hindle, S., On the Parish? The Micropolitics of Poor Relief in Rural England c. 1550–1750 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 145–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My thanks to Steve Hindle for clarifying this term.

60. All details of the charities from British Parliamentary Papers (herein BPP), ‘Reports of the Charity Commissioners’, vol. 30 (1837), vol. XXIII, report of the charities in the Parish of Motcombe, pp. 153–5; See also Hutchins, J., Hutchins' History of Dorset, volume 3, 3rd Edition, (London, 1868), pp. 647–9Google Scholar.

61. Eden examined just two places in Dorset, namely Durweston and Blandford both on the cusp of the vale. When Eden visited these places in October 1795, there was a newly established friendly society in Blandford and none in Durweston. Eden, F. M., The State of the Poor, vol. 3 (1797, Bristol, 2001), pp. 146–51Google Scholar. See also Gosden, P., The Friendly Societies in England 1815–75 (Manchester, 1961), pp. 22–3Google Scholar; Friendly societies were established in the villages of Henstridge (Somerset) and Marnhull (Dorset), in 1822 and 1836 respectively. Both are on the fringe of the Blackmore Vale and the latter was commonly known as the ‘Blue Club’. The nearby towns of Milbourne Port (Somerset, established in 1753), Sherbourne (Dorset, 1761), Sturminster Newton (Dorset, 1811) and Yeovil (Somerset, 1835) hosted friendly societies. Fuller, M., West Country Friendly Societies: An Account of Village Benefit Clubs and Their Brass Poleheads (Lingford, Surrey, 1964), pp. 133–46Google Scholar.

62. Often this was actually arranged by the parish and either undertaken in their houses or in the wash and weave rooms of parish workhouses. A vestry on 9th August 1805 decided that a workhouse would be founded ‘for employing and setting the Poor to work’, Motcombe Overseers' Account Book, DHC PE/MOT/OV 1/3; The duties of workhouse master were contracted out to William Rotley in Stower Provost from 1804, suggesting that work was undertaken in the house. Stower Provost Overseers' Account Book, 3rd September 1804, DHC PE/SPV/OV 1/5; In the Gillingham poorhouse there was a room called the ‘weaving shop’ which contained looms, although the significance of this to the poor and parish officers' policy remains ambiguous. Shaftesbury Union Minute Book, 29th May 1837, DHC BG/SY/A1/1.

63. BPP, ‘Report from His Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiring into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws’ (1834), vol. XXX, Appendix (B.1), Answers to Rural Queries in five parts. Part 1, answer to question 11, p. 145.

64. Reay, Rural Englands, p. 63; also Verdon, N., Rural Women Workers in Nineteenth-Century England: Gender, Work and Wages (Woodbridge, 2002), especially pp. 53, 65 and 133Google Scholar. The Dorset Button industry was founded by Abraham Case in the early seventeenth-century and continued to be under the charge of his family. Buttons were sold both within England and exported to Canada, America, Australia and the continent. There were small depots for distributing the raw materials and receiving the finished product established at Wool, Sixpenny Handley, Milborne Stiles, Piddletrenthide and Langton Matravers, but the main depots were in Shaftesbury and Bere Regis (although Milborne Stiles was extended in 1803 into a larger depot). In these larger warehouses children were employed to prepare threads and unload wire mass produced in Birmingham, bend and solder wire rings and string them together in bundles. By 1805, these children (known as ‘winders’, ‘dippers’ and ‘stringers’) were paid one penny per training day and one shilling per week. On a set day in the week, known as ‘Button Day’, those who made the buttons, mainly women, would walk to the depots where they would bring back the finished products and acquire more raw materials. The finished buttons were exchanged for goods, rather than cash, until 1800. They were worth between one shilling and sixpence and four shillings per ‘gross’ and less for seconds. Bright, M., Buttony: The Dorset Heritage (Lytchett Minster, 1971), pp. 3–8Google Scholar. Also see Jackson, M. A., The History of the Dorset Button (Romsey, 1970)Google Scholar. In some places in north Dorset buttony was an important source of employment. In October 1795 Eden noted that in Blandford ‘the women, and children, are, chiefly, employed in making thread and wire buttons for shirts &c.’ and in the parish workhouse ‘[t]hose, who are able to work, and are not engaged in the business of the house, are employed in button making.’ Eden, The State of the Poor, pp. 146–7.

65. The Assistant Poor Law Commissioner, Robert Weale, initially superintended the Yeovil Union (with a population of 25581 in 1831) and reported that many individuals relied on both glove and linen manufacture. Weale to Poor Law Commission 19th July 1838, National Archives MH32/85, p. 2.

66. J. Rutter, ‘A Brief Sketch of the State of the Poor, and of the Management of the Houses of Industry; Recommended to the Consideration of the Inhabitants of the Town of Shaftesbury, and Other Places’, 2nd Edition, (Shaftesbury, 1819), p. 36. A copy is held at the DHC. ‘Linsey’ is the shortened name for linsey-woolsey, a fabric weaved from different materials although often just a mixture of linen and wool.

67. Raven, N., ‘A “humbler, industrious class of female”: Women's Employment and Industry in the Small Towns of Southern England, c.1790–1840’ in Lane, P., Raven, N. and Snell, K.D.M., eds., Women, Work and Wages in England, 1600–1850 (Woodbridge, 2004), p. 172Google Scholar.

68. The labels of ‘open’ and ‘close’ have been used to summarise how some parishes had, in the latter case, a few elite individuals taking control over parish concerns whilst others, in the former, witnessed ‘a diversified power structure [which] prevented monopolistic or oligarchal control’. In terms of poor relief, closed parishes tended to dictate relief policy and limit the building of lodgings to restrict the number of potential poor relief claimants whilst open parishes tended not to exert such control, and therefore were more likely to spend more on relief and levy heftier poor rates; Song, B. K., ‘Parish Typology and the Operation of the Poor Laws in Early Nineteenth-Century Oxfordshire’, Agricultural History Review, 50 (2002), 203Google Scholar; also see Holderness, B. A., ‘‘Open’ and ‘Close’ Parishes in England in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, The Agricultural History Review, 20 (1972), 126–39Google Scholar; Banks, S., ‘Nineteenth-Century Scandal or Twentieth Century Model? A New Look at “Open” or “Close” Parishes’, Economic History Review, 41 (1988), 51–73Google Scholar; Brundage, The English Poor Laws, p. 23.

69. See note 51 for the documents used.

70. King, Poverty and Welfare, p. 128.

71. Literature which adopts such techniques include: Macfarlane, A., Harrison, S., and Jardine, C., Reconstituting Historical Communities (Cambridge, 1977)Google Scholar; Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S., The Population History of England 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (London, 1981)Google Scholar; Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S., ‘English Population History from Family Reconstruction: Summary Results 1600–1799’, Population Studies, 37 (1983), 157–84Google Scholar; Wrigley, E. A., Davies, R. S., Oeppen, J. E. and Schofield, R. S., English Population History from Family Reconstitution 1580–1837, (Cambridge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Separate pieces of methodological literature include Wrigley, E. A., ‘Some Problems of Family Reconstitution using English Parish Register Material: The Example of Colyton’, in Demography and Economy (Paris, 1971), 199–221Google Scholar.

72. Steve King mentions the same issue in Poverty and Welfare, p. 129.

73. Literature on using computers for mass reconstruction includes R. S. Schofield, ‘The Standardisation of Names and the Automatic Linking of Historical Records’, Annales de Démographie Historique (1972), pp. 359–64; Schofield, R.S., ‘Automated Family Reconstitution: The Cambridge Experience’, Historical Methods, 25 (1992), 75–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; King, S., ‘Multiple Source Record Linkage in a Rural Industrial Community’, History and Computing, 6 (1994), 32–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74. For a detailed discussion of the social construction of documents see Prior, L., Using Documents in Social Research (London, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75. The ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor debate, that is to say the question as to who was and who was not considered as deserving of poor relief or charity, originated from the Medieval period. For a consideration of these dynamics in relation to the elderly see Thane, P., Old Age in English History, Past Experiences, Present Issues (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.

76. Emmison, F.G., ‘The Relief of the Poor at Eaton Socon, 1706–1834’ Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 15 (1933), p. 21Google Scholar, cited in Hindle, On the Parish?, p. 188.

77. Hitchcock, T., ‘Paupers and Preachers: The SPCK and the Parochial Workhouse Movement,’ in Davison, L., Hitchcock, T., Keirn, T., and Shoemaker, R. B. (eds.), Stilling the Grumbling Hive: The Response to Social and Economic problems in England, 1689–1750 (Gloucester, 1992), p. 163Google Scholar, cited in Hindle, On the Parish?, p. 188.

78. Ottoway, S., ‘Providing for the Elderly in Eighteenth-Century England’, Continuity and Change, 13 (1998), 400–11Google Scholar. This research draws upon the records available for Terling (Essex) and Puddletown (Dorset), although for the latter parish detailed workhouse accounts have not survived.

79. Motcombe Overseers' Account Book, 9th August 1805, DHC PE/MOT/OV/1/3. When the Charity Commission surveyed the ‘Feoffees' Land’ charity in Motcombe in 1837, they noted that the parish ‘workhouse was built between 30 and 40 years ago, upon the feoffees consenting to demise the land for a term of 500 years, from the 25th March 1806, at the rent of 4l.’ As such it is evident that the workhouse was not established until after they had secured a patch of the charity land for the building. BPP, ‘Reports of the Charity Commissioners’, vol. 30 (1837), vol. XXIII, p. 154.

80. Hurren, E. and King, S., ‘‘Begging for a Burial’: Form, Function and Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Pauper Burial’, Social History, 30 (2005), p. 325CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81. This is an adaptation of Tim Wales' monthly payments charts provided for thirty-nine different people (and/or their partners and/or children) of Hedenham from 1662 to 1709, but due to the number of individuals' being traced Wales placed the key demographic events in their lives in an appendix. Wales, ‘Poverty, Poor Relief and the Life-Cycle’, charts pp. 362–64; for the details of their lives see appendix 2, pp. 395–404.

82. Biographies and charts have been reconstructed using the following documents: Motcombe Baptisms (1790–1812) and Burials (1789–1812) DHC PE/MOT/RE1/3; Baptisms, 1813–1869, DHC PE/MOT/RE2/1; Marriages, 1776–1812, DHC PE/MOT/RE3/2; Marriages, 1813–1862, DHC PE/MOT/RE3/3; Marriages, 1837–1906, DHC PE/MOT/RE3/4; Burials, 1813–1924, DHC PE/MOT/RE 4/1; Marriage Banns, 1823–1868, DHC PE/MOT/RE5/1; Overseers' Account Books, 1800–1817, DHC PE/MOT/OV1/3; 1817–1822, DHC PE/MOT/OV1/4; 1822–1827, DHC PE/MOT/OV1/5; 1827–1832, DHC PE/MOT/OV1/6; Bastardy Bonds, DHC PE/MOT/OV6/1/40–9; Bastardy Orders, DHC PE/MOT/OV6/2/40-63; Bastardy Examinations, DHC PE/MOT/OV6/3/4-6; Bastardy Warrants and Examinations, DHC PE/MOT/OV6/4/4-12.

83. This age-relief dynamic was not common. In Odiham, according to Stapleton, between 1650 and 1849 just seven per cent of all paupers made their first claim for relief between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four. Stapleton, ‘Inherited Poverty’, p. 343.

84. In Motcombe fifty-two per cent of couples had already baptised their first child within nine months of marriage at least half of all brides had a prenuptial pregnancy.

85. The following agreement between the parish officials and the Motcombe farmers (including Mr Davidge) was devised in 1818: ‘At a vestry held in the Parish Church of Motcombe according to notice given we the undersigned do agree to pay the Stem men their full pay & no half pay ones, & we agree for Jn^a Davidge to attend & look after the said stem men as he had heretofore & to have 10s-6d P[er] week pay same.’ Similar agreements could have existed before this date; Motcombe Overseers' Account Book, 15th January 1818, DHC PE/MOT/OV1/4. The origin of the term ‘stem’ is yet to be found. It appears to have been mainly used in the south and south-western counties of England.

86. In Motcombe, between 1790 and 1840, the average age of first marriage for males was twenty-four (and for females the same). See note 51 for the documents used.

87. See note 51.

88. Similar to the records of Calverley-cum-Farsley used by King, the Motcombe Overseers' account books do not provide different lists of ‘pensions’ and ‘allowances’. Indeed King has called regular relief ‘pensions’, but here I call them ‘allowances’ because large labouring families were present on the lists. The sum of 12s provided to Edward and Sarah Herridge per month exceeds the maximum monthly pension payment of 10s. in 1757 in Calverley-cum-Farsley. King, ‘Reconstructing Lives’, p. 328.

89. Motcombe was in the Shaftesbury Union. This union used the parish poorhouses of Gillingham and Motcombe until the construction of a new workhouse was completed in Shaftesbury in the summer of 1837; Shaftesbury Union Minute Book, October 1835 to October 1837, DRO BG/SY/A1/1; October 1837 to February 1840, DRO BG/SY/A1/2.

90. Unfortunately, it is not possible to decipher which child within a family was provided with clothes or became ill. This is due to the way payments were recorded in the Motcombe Overseers' account books, whereby simply the words ‘son’ or ‘daughter’ were written next to Silas' name.

91. Although bastardy orders, examinations, warrants and bonds for the period are held by the DHC, Martha Clark's first bastard child does not feature in any one of the deposited documents. The father's maintenance pay is noted in Motcombe Overseers' Account Book, 29th December 1805, DHC PE/MOT/OV1/3. Bunt's occupation and native parish is unknown although it is likely he lived in Motcombe because there were high rates of marital endogamy in rural Dorset parishes throughout the nineteenth century. See Snell, Parish and Belonging, pp. 162–206, especially the analysis on page 192.

92. Hawker suggests that between 1700 and 1799 only six per cent of Dorset carers were men and even when they did nurse they undertook different tasks such as lifting the bedridden. J. Hawker, ‘An Investigation into the Patterns of Care in Two Dorset Parishes, 1700–99’, unpublished local study, cited in Williams, ‘Poor Law Nurses in Bedfordshire’, pp. 150–1.

93. Williams' study suggests that most poor law nurses were not receiving relief whilst working for the parish: twenty per cent of nurses received relief at the same time as working as a nurse in Campton, and twenty-seven per cent in Shefford; Ibid., p. 152.

94. Reay also noticed this dynamic but did not suggest how it impacted upon relief regimes. In 1851, approximately forty-three per cent of children aged ten to fourteen were working and twenty-three per cent of these were employed as agricultural labourers. However, in places where wages were low, more children were likely to be employed as the wages were important to the family budget; Stephens, W.B., Education, Literacy and Society 1830–70: The Geography of Diversity in Provincial England (Manchester, 1987), p. 216Google Scholar.

95. Stapleton, ‘Inherited Poverty’, p. 355.

96. Ibid., p. 355.

97. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor, table 7.7, p. 359. The western counties comprise data from Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Dorset, Devon and Somerset and the table covers the period 1700–1880. The averages calculated which related to 1800–1832 are as follows: 1801–10 2.76, 1810–20 2.76, 1821–30 2.64 and 1831–34 2.64.

98. Stapleton, ‘Inherited poverty’, p. 355.

99. Broad, J., ‘Parish Economies of Welfare, 1650–1834’, The Historical Journal, 42 (1999), 985–1006CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; in specific relation to the provision of housing see Broad, J., ‘Housing the Rural Poor in Southern England, 1650–1850’, Agricultural History Review, 48 (2000), 151–170Google Scholar.

100. Brundage, The English Poor Laws, p. 15.

101. See Levene et al., Illegitimacy in Britain, for a range of interpretations of parish and other welfare providing authorities' attitudes towards bastard bearing women.

102. Hitchcock makes this point in relation to a London institution for women in ‘‘Unlawfully begotten on her body’: Illegitimacy and the Parish Poor in St Luke's Chelsea’ in Hitchcock et al., Chronicling Poverty, pp. 70–86; within the rural context see Reay, Microhistories, pp. 179–212.

103. Hitchcock, T., ‘Imagining the Poor in Nineteenth-Century London’, History Workshop Journal 50 (2000), 274Google Scholar.

104. Stapleton's study makes some broad assumptions about the nature of the dynamics of poverty based on statistical techniques, rather than detailing the relief dynamics of specific individuals. Stapleton, ‘Inherited Poverty’, p. 355.

105. Tomkins and King, ‘Introduction’, p. 1 in King and Tomkins, eds., The Poor in England, pp. 1–38.

106. Ibid., p. 3.

107. Reay, Rural Englands, p. xii.