Samantha Williams’ recent monograph examines the poor and their families during the ‘crisis’ years of the old poor law, when the numbers of people on relief and the amount expended almost reached breaking point. Stemming from her doctoral work on Bedfordshire, Williams focuses on the agricultural village of Campton and the market town of Shefford, one mile away. The book's scope is wide and it painstakingly reconstitutes over 1,000 ‘pauper biographies’ to assess the recipients of relief, ratepayers, the life-cycle, entitlement and the economy of makeshifts. This forensic approach allows Williams to examine the data in minute detail and address wider contemporary concerns. Thomas Malthus's widely acknowledged claim that the poor law encouraged lower age at marriage and higher birth rates is found to be misleading in this case. Most relief, even during the ‘crisis’ years, went to the elderly, whereas allowances to families with children tended to be short lived, supplementary and relatively inexpensive. In some years, however, the number of paupers could be very considerable. In Campton in 1801, 15.2 per cent of the population were being relieved in some way, which equates to nearly half of the population when their dependants are included.
The book is particularly informative on the life-cycles of poverty. Williams argues that ‘at least 85 per cent of all pensioners were elderly individuals or elderly couples, couple-headed families or lone parents, and a few were orphans’ (p. 101), and she maintains that this ‘overwhelming evidence…confirms that life-cycle poverty accounted for the majority of parish spending’ (p. 124). Her arguments are convincing and supported with ample evidence. However, Williams does not explain who the other fifteen per cent of recipients were. Were they people who had irrecoverable backgrounds, or were these people pauperised for reasons other than life-cycle poverty?
Interestingly, Williams explores ratepayers as well as those on relief. To cope with the growing costs of relieving the poor, Shefford rated further down the social ladder resulting in the ‘social distance between paupers and ratepayers…narrowing’ (p. 75). The historiography has often acknowledged that the line between being a ratepayer and a pauper was thin, and this book contributes important empirical evidence for this assumption. One fifth of all ratepayers received some form of relief in their lifetimes. Moreover, this did not always follow a chronology of paying rates, and then moving onto poor relief. Almost half received weekly pensions or casual relief whilst they were contributing to the parish fund.
Some historians will not accept Williams’ claim that a localised study can help us to understand broader regional and national trends. However, the author is clearly conscious of this issue and frequently compares the findings to other areas and to wider contemporary debates. More fundamentally, Williams does not discuss her methodology in sufficient detail. In total there are only five pages devoted to this, which are mostly made up of diagrams and footnotes (pp. 30–4). Nevertheless, this is a minor criticism of a book that is carefully researched and generally well written. The book is important and further aids our understanding of the intricate workings of the poor law at a micro level.
