Narrating the Poor

Reflecting wider shifts within the historical profession, historians of the poor in recent years have turned to analyzing texts in order to shed light on both pauper agency and the attitudes of those who shaped the provision of informal and formal means of poor relief. By examining language and narrative strategies, historians have attempted to untangle the complex power relations embedded in poor-relief practices. This rich and diverse collection, consisting of some 1,755 pages (including introductory material) and covering a wide range of primary sources, provides abundant evidence on these issues, and on much else besides. We have depositions, bastardy examinations, and letters concerning the administration of parochial relief from six counties (Berkshire, Essex, Lancashire, Northamptonshire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire), as well as petitions, notes left with infants, and clerks’ reports concerning applications for relief from the London Foundling Hospital, established in 1739, and from the Refuge for the Destitute, founded in 1806 in order to provide support, and reformation, for destitute men and women. The voices of the poor can also be heard in the small number of ballads and broadsides included. Elite voices, which influenced almost all these sources, are also documented in sermons, tracts written in support of philanthropy or to promote specific charities, such as the Foundling Hospital, and in various types of fiction, including poems, songs, novels, and children’s literature.

Of the many themes that this cornucopia of sources can be used to examine, the most notable concern the causes of poverty, and the ways in which the poor negotiated with the diverse institutions that sought to help them. The numerous stories documenting the difficulties the poor experienced as a result of illness, old age, and lack of work are unsurprising, but few readers will have previously encountered the raw emotions embedded in the notes mothers left with the infants they deposited at the Foundling Hospital, when they knew they were unlikely ever to see their children again. In other stories, we learn of numerous additional causes of destitution, including the loss of jobs because the poor were unable to carry out the work expected of them, for example, because they were not strong enough. Many suffered from breakdowns of relationships with families and friends, a topic as yet inadequately studied by historians. Women who formed illicit liaisons, often lasting for years, were vulnerable to sudden desertion by their partners. Applicants to the Refuge, most of whom were still in their teens or early twenties, had often fallen on hard times as the result of the loss of parental support, through death, mistreatment by the father, a falling out with a stepparent, or misbehavior by the applicant. Indeed, biting the hand that fed you was a sure way to ruin: George Priddie’s parents died when he was very young, and when left under the charge of his grandmother, he “ran loose in the streets contracting every sort of evil habit.” The parish officers then refused to take him under their care, but a man who had known his parents took him into his service, upon which Priddie stole £11 from him and ended up in court (4:251). The loss of character through criminal or sexual deviance often made it difficult to find work, and brought the not-always-welcome attention of philanthropists, but it is important to note that the poor were also often victims of crime: the theft of their stock or tools, often by recent acquaintances in whom they had placed their trust, could immediately drive men and women into destitution.

In reading these stories...