Introduction
Poor relief institutions (known locally as ‘poor tables’)Footnote 1 did not only distribute relief to local residents, but also to members residing elsewhere. Members of Bulskamp, a rural parish of about five hundred inhabitants in the French-Flemish border area, for example, lived as far as the cities of Dunkirk, Calais, Bruges and Ypres, as well as in the surrounding countryside. The Bulskamp-born Lucia Minne received money from the Bulskamp overseer while she was living in the nearby city of Furnes. Lucia subsequently moved to Ypres, where she was in the ‘house of correction’. During her detainment, Bulskamp provided her with a pension, supplemented by a pension provided by her friends. When Lucia Minne was released and finally moved back to her birth parish of Bulskamp in 1796, she continued to receive assistance from the poor table. The amount was however substantially smaller than what she had received in previous years.Footnote 2
Such ‘out-parish’ or ‘non-resident relief’ of poor table members living elsewhere, like Lucia received while she resided in Furnes and Ypres, was regulated through settlement legislation. Settlement status determined who may apply for relief at a local poor table, or loosely translated, membership to a local poor table.Footnote 3 The historian James Stephen Taylor has equated settlement as the Cinderella of poor relief historiography, stating that ‘settlement, like Cinderella, has been taken for granted’.Footnote 4 Steven King added the subject of out-parish relief to this list of neglected topics when he argued that
One important mechanism for coping with the space and distance problems facing poor law administrators has, however, been inadequately explored: the so-called ‘Industrial Speenhamland’ or the ‘out-parish relief system’.Footnote 5
Little is indeed known about the extent, scale and organisation of out-parish relief. Quantitative research is especially still lacking.Footnote 6 Research into out-parish relief is not only necessary to fill the gaps in historiography, it also can shed new light on the changing sense of belonging, community and identification. It moreover promises to add to the debate on the ‘micro-politics of poor relief’, that is, how the distribution of poor relief functioned in daily practice and how this was determined by the distribution of power.Footnote 7 These micro-politics of relief are an ever-growing field in historiography, but as Taylor and King rightfully noted, the phenomenon of mobility, settlement and out-parish relief deserve more attention.Footnote 8 We still know little about the mobility patterns of the parish's non-resident poor, as well as the relations between sending and receiving parishes concerning out-parish relief.
Despite these gaps in historiography, we do know that parishes generally concluded agreements and regulations on relief with other parishes. Such agreements diverged from central legislation to best suit the local parishes’ interests. One such example is the English Speenhamland system, where relief was used as a means of labour subsidies according to shifting prices. Labour-hiring farmers, especially in the south-east of England, also often agreed to replace annual contracts by short-term contracts. Short-term contracts would allow them to only hire labourers at key periods such as sowing and harvesting seasons, and shift the costs of sustenance in slack seasons to the poor rates. There are many examples of such divergent local practices. Out-parish relief itself, for example, was also never centrally legislated, but was a local practice in England and Wales, as has been demonstrated by Taylor and King. The same goes for Flanders, as this article will show. The macro-level motives for sending parishes to grant out-parish relief, or the motives of receiving parishes to accept the poor of other parishes as residents, are generally considered to have been economic.Footnote 9 It was profitable for settlement parishes where employment was low, because the dependent poor could move elsewhere to find work, so as to supplement their dependency on relief with income from wage labour. The parishes of residence, on the other hand, profited from the reserve labour supply, which could be ‘deployed’ in times or seasons of high labour demand. Moreover, out-parish relief normally implied that the poor would not have to be sent back to their settlement parish. Thus, by preventing the process of removal, the parishes also saved on transport costs.Footnote 10
Inspired by the recent work of Anne Winter and Thijs Lambrecht, who argued that local practices regarding settlement were similarly extensively regulated in the southern Low Countries as in England and Wales, this indepth research of Bulskamp will further examine the functioning of relief in a European region and provide a quantitative analysis of out-parish relief in a rural area.Footnote 11 Comparing the practices of English and Flemish cases increases our understanding of the similarities and differences in poor relief. This puts into perspective the scope and limits of the northern European welfare system, for which we now have indications of it existing not only in Great Britain, but also in the Low Countries, Nordic countries and Germany.Footnote 12 This article is one of the first explorations into how out-parish relief functioned in daily practice and what its implications were for communities and migrants. The extensiveness of the Bulskamp sources remain unforeseen in that regard.
Situated just north of the border between France and Flanders, Bulskamp was a small rural parish. The population rose from 323 inhabitants in 1697, to 418 inhabitants in 1759 and 549 in 1796. It was part of the commercial agricultural polder region on the coast of Flanders. This region consisted mostly of fertile clay soil and was characterised by its high levels of inequality, proletarianisation and mobility. Large farm holders who hired seasonal labourers and day labourers for the predominantly grain-growing agriculture increasingly dominated the area. Bulskamp was located next to De Moeren, a swampy area that was drained and allotted during the early modern period to be used as arable lands, and to prevent bandits and criminals from settling there. The air coming from De Moeren was considered to spread disease, and this ‘bad air’ was also considered to affect Bulskamp. Having been an important centre of wool production, as well as timber, Bulskamp was in decline from the mid-sixteenth century onwards and suffered from the consequences of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century wars. It still maintained a high tax burden, with the highest land tax pressure of the chatellany, because the foundations for the distributions of these taxes were calculated in the sixteenth century.Footnote 13
Following the hypotheses put forward by Taylor and King, who argued that out-parish relief resulted in lower costs, one would expect the practice of out-parish relief to have thrived in Bulskamp. Scholarship on the early agrarian capitalism of the coastal Flemish area has, after all, shown that cost-benefit considerations were the driving forces of locally divergent relief practices. The area was dominated by large labour-hiring farmers who would, theoretically speaking, benefit from flexible mobility and be attracted by the positive cost-benefit considerations of out-parish relief.Footnote 14 It would ease mobility in the area and allow migrants to move to places with high labour demand.
This article first investigates the scale and geographical spread of out-parish relief, to analyse to what extent and why this practice was institutionalised. The accounts of the poor table of Bulskamp form the main sources. Against all the odds, the late eighteenth-century consecutive account books of this parish have been entirely preserved between 1768 and 1804.Footnote 15 This allows for a systematic quantitative analysis. But Bulskamp has not only been chosen because of the rareness of available sources. It was also a member of a local convention, a French-Flemish agreement between rural districts and cities to regulate mobility and relief, signed in June 1750. This Concordat was known to have practices of out-parish relief.Footnote 16 Bulskamp administratively formed part of the chatellany of Furnes, one of the creators and longest-running members of the convention.
The main corpus of this account are the Bulskamp table accounts between 1768 and 1804.Footnote 17 These books contain biennial accounts, which were concluded in April from 1768 onwards.Footnote 18 They contain lists of all the income and expenses of the poor table. The distribution is listed per poor person. Remarkably, the distribution lists also mention the place of residence of the poor table members. The parish overseer registered if a table member was resident outside of Bulskamp, something we, as of yet, have not found in any other accounts in Flanders.Footnote 19
Using these accounts, this article focuses on three main areas: the share of out-parish poor among the total poor table recipients; the geographical spread of the Bulskamp out-parish poor; and the consequences of out-parish relief for the local poor table and the migrants themselves, including the comparison of expenses on in-parish and out-parish poor. Exploring these three subjects allows us to better understand the scale of out-parish relief, its functioning and the relations between the involved parishes. For the sake of coherency, I will not elaborate on which kinds of people received out-parish relief or on the terms by which this relief was distributed.Footnote 20 Instead, I have analysed the number of out-parish and in-parish poor throughout these years. To map the mobility of the Bulskamp poor, a relational database programme was used with geographical visualisation tools (nodegoat) to plot the spread of the Bulskamp poor table recipients’ migration over the region.Footnote 21 Lastly, the expenses on out-parish and in-parish poor were analysed.
These three quantitative methods were complemented by analysis of individual case files from the Concordat of Ypres. This allowed contextualisation of the quantitative research. The individual cases form conflicts between parishes on the settlement and removal (or granting of out-parish relief) of migrants who became destitute. As such, these files offer additional information on the negotiations between settlement and residence parish, as well as on how money was transmitted and which criteria had to be met before out-parish relief was paid. These sources were not analysed quantitatively. The files are not adequately representative or reliable for that, because they concern conflicts and thus rather tell us something about extreme cases. Moreover, only one of about forty conflicts related to the parish of Bulskamp, and this concerned an immigrant from Bruges residing in Bulskamp. The sources therefore unfortunately tell us nothing about the motivations of Bulskamp to opt for out-parish relief or removal. They are used here as illustration backing the quantitative research.
In what follows, I will first elaborate on the Concordat of Ypres to provide an understanding of the legal framework within which the Bulskamp out-parish relief functioned. The article then discusses the share of out-parish poor, followed by a discussion of the geographical spread, an analysis of the expenses, and concludes with a qualitative section on how distribution to out-parish poor functioned in practice.
The Concordat of Ypres: resolving relief issues locally
The Concordat was created in June 1750 by the magistrates of West Flanders and the magistrates of Flandres Maritimes.Footnote 22 They deemed the central legislation on relief and settlement insufficient. Both regions comprised parts of different states and thus involved different settlement legislation,Footnote 23 and the poor often crossed the borders between these regions. Flemish migrants residing in France were thus sent back to their Flemish birthplace if they became destitute, while French immigrants in Flanders could obtain settlement after three years of continuous residence according to the contemporary legislation in the Austrian Netherlands. This resulted in many conflicts on settlement and removal. These problems were augmented, at least within the Southern Netherlands, by the widely ranging interpretations of the central legislation, also resulting in many conflicts. The members thus wanted to streamline settlement and mobility regulations, to prevent conflicts and ensure reciprocity. The aim was to save costs, limit poverty-related problems and also to ease mobility in a region that heavily depended on flexible seasonal labour mobility. The Concordat thus addressed the transnational interests of the adjacent polder regions.
The Concordat steadily increased to encompass the entire area between Bruges, Dunkirk, Lille, Tournai and Courtrai, thereby comprising inland Flanders as well. These later joining members were attracted by the Concordat's promises of uniformity and reciprocity (cross-border but also internally) to resolve the many and costly conflicts concerning migrants’ belonging. After all, the Concordat promised to solve such conflicts internally instead of opting for arbitration at the courts. The agreement lasted until 1795, when the French occupants abolished all local regulations and customs. A large number of the members, however, had already abolished the agreement in 1776, because they did not consider it an apt solution to the local problems concerning relief and mobility.Footnote 24
Despite the underlying aim of the Concordat of creating a coherent agreement, the regulations had a legal vagueness that allowed for both removals of and the distribution of out-parish relief to migrants. This vagueness was created by a disparity between the first and second article of the agreement. The first article stated that every (poor) person was free to move and settle in a place that best suited his or her interests, essentially advocating free mobility. The second article stated that each person, upon becoming poor, should return to his or her birthplace to be relieved there. This therefore advocated removal, but then again, the free mobility clause also allowed for out-parish relief to take place.Footnote 25
Before entering into the detailed analysis of out-parish relief in Bulskamp, we can firstly agree that out-parish relief should be expected here. After all, Taylor explained how this system was beneficial in areas dependent on flexible labour mobility. Bulskamp was part of the polder region of coastal Flanders, an area known for its high numbers of migrants (about 40 per cent of the adult men residing in its rural areas were born in a different parish) and its early agrarian capitalism.Footnote 26 Flexible labour mobility was definitely in the interest of the labour-hiring farmers who dominated the area. Moreover, the Concordat itself had been created out of a need to regulate mobility and the labour market. It therefore stimulated mobility, inter alia by abandoning the obligation for migrants to present a warranty letter from their settlement parish before moving into a new place, a practice that formed a barrier to migration. The instalment of the birthplace as place of settlement acted as a shared insurance for all members that immigrants would not become dependent on the parish.Footnote 27 The Concordat was thus created out of motives similar to those underpinning the practices of out-parish relief in England.Footnote 28
The scope of out-parish relief: shares of in-parish and out-parish poor
This section analyses the evolution of the number of out-parish poor in Bulskamp. When calculating the amount of entries of individuals in the account books, each entry was considered as one individual. Some did mention dependent family members in the headings, whereas other entries did not but contained references to dependent family members in the more detailed justification of the particular expenses. Some poor were also listed but did not receive any money or relief in kind, they were registered as ‘has not received this year’. In this study these are also taken into account, because the parish overseer did consider them as members of the poor table.
Number of in-parish and out-parish poor table members in Bulskamp (1768-96).
The Bulskamp accounts show that the out-parish poor over the years add up to an average of 30 per cent of total recipients. This corresponds to the findings for Lancashire and Manchester, which indicated that their parishes generally had 20–40 per cent of relief recipients residing elsewhere. However, the share of out-parish poor in Bulskamp changed drastically over time.
If we first focus on the evolution of the number of in-parish poor, one sees a remarkable drop between 1774 and 1780, which had been preceded by a slight increase between 1768 and 1770. After the plummet in 1780, the numbers slowly rose again finally to double in 1796.
The downfall of in-parish poor of 1780 coincided with a peak in the out-parish numbers. The accounts of 1778–80 actually witnessed a higher number of out-parish poor than in-parish poor. The out-parish trend was ever upwards, peaking in 1780 and staying at a relatively similar level as the in-parish poor in the following decades. The numbers slightly dropped in the accounts of 1794–6, which relates to the regime change in 1795, when the French occupants abolished all existing customs and local legislation. From 1795 onwards, the out-parish poor of Bulskamp were no longer registered: the Concordat was abolished and apparently, so was the registration of out-parish relief.
The in-parish and out-parish trends concurred with the evolution of the total number of poor table members. This number slowly rose between 1768 and 1782, to drop suddenly in the accounts of April 1784 and continue increasing until 1796. The overall trend was one of increase: the number of recipients amounted to nineteen entries in the accounts of 1770, but rose to thirty-nine recipients in 1796. Although this coincides with the general trends of population and poverty growth in Flanders, the population numbers of Bulskamp actually remained relatively stable, indicating a relative expansion in poverty in the parish.Footnote 29 Such trends in relief recipients and settlement practice were also witnessed in England and Wales over this period.Footnote 30
Comparing the total number of relief recipients to the total population, and using a multiplier of 3.43 to account for the family sizes, the relief recipients made up about 23 per cent of the total Bulskamp population in 1796.Footnote 31 This is relatively high compared to the pauper population spectrum, as an 1808 enquiry into poor relief showed that most parishes had a share of 4.5 per cent to 12 per cent of the population dependent on poor relief.Footnote 32 We should however note that Bulskamp, a little polder village with fertile land suitable for arable farming and pasture, does not represent the entirety of the Coastal Flanders area. Great diversity existed between these parishes, let alone between other regions in the economically and ecologically more diverse area of the Concordat. This is also reflected in other migration data. According to a 1759 count of those who had to pay milling rights in the Furnes chatellany, Bulskamp had 324 residents subjected to these taxes, and thirty-eight table members exempted from the tax, as well as nine ‘foreign day labourers’Footnote 34 who were also exempt from paying these taxes. The Furnes counts of ‘vremde cortsittende personen’ (foreign non-agricultural labourers) in 1771, as illustrated in Figure 2, however show that Bulskamp received an average number of immigrants compared to the surrounding parishes.Footnote 35 Perhaps the balances of emigration and immigration in the parish tended to favour emigration numbers. Further comparative research is needed to apprehend the local migration patterns. For now, we can confirm that the area was indeed highly mobile, and that out-parish relief was a considerable part of the poor relief system.
Immigrant labourers per parish in Furnes district in 1771, excluding seasonal labourers. Data for several parishes is missing.Footnote 33
The high levels of out-parish poor, and thus high levels of mobility of the Bulskamp poor also demonstrate that more research into ‘les sentiers invisibles’,Footnote 36 or daily micro-scale mobility is necessary to understand the changing boundaries and significance of belonging. The Bulskamp migrant numbers, albeit only derived from out-resident poor and thus not showing short-term mobility patterns of itinerant seasonal migrations, are higher than the estimations made by Jan Lucassen.Footnote 37 Based on the 1811 enquiries of the French Empire, Lucassen did not consider West Flanders a mobile area.Footnote 38 However, these enquiries only take migration between provinces into account. As discussion on the geographical spread of Bulskamp's out-parish poor will show, Flemish labouring poor usually moved small distances and often remained within the boundaries of the rural district. Lambrecht has likewise demonstrated that intra-rural levels of migration were high in Flanders, because of the agrarian capitalist labour market in need of seasonal labourers.Footnote 39 The Bulskamp case shows that a substantial number of the poor table recipients actually lived outside of the parish, which indicates high levels of out-migration. The early modern mobility levels thus deserve more attention. We are in dire need of more detailed research to develop Lucassen's study.
Mapping the mobility of the Bulskamp out-parish poor
The spread of the out-parish poor has been calculated by plotting cartographically each migrant's place of residence throughout the researched period. The database then allows a count of the number of individuals per parish and shows the evolution of these mobility patterns through time.Footnote 40 Out-parish poor were generally registered in the accounts as ‘Lucia Minne tot Veurne’ or ‘Caerel Marquette tot Duinkerke’.Footnote 41
Considering the distribution pattern of the out-parish poor, it is striking that they remained relatively close to Bulskamp. As Figure 3 shows, on the other hand, most out-parish poor remained within a fifteen-kilometre radius of the parish, residing in the rural parish of Adinkerke, in the nearby city Furnes (the capital of the Furnes district comprising the nearest market place and urban labour market), or in rural parishes such as Izenberge, Stavele, Alveringem and Eggewaartskappelle. Only two persons moved relatively far away to Bruges and Ypres, but they were in a hospital and a prison. As expected within the context of the Concordat as a cross-border treaty, several Bulskamp parish members also resided in northern France. The city Dunkirk and the rural parish of Uksem both received out-parish poor from Bulskamp.
Parishes of residence of Bulskamp out-parish relief recipients (1768–96).
With a main distance generally not exceeding 15 km, the emigration of the Bulskamp poor and labouring poor corroborates Redford's theory on labour mobility. Redford argued that most internal migration was short-distance in nature. His theory was corroborated by findings for nineteenth-century Lancashire. There, over 40 per cent of migration did not even exceed a distance of 10 miles (15 kms).Footnote 42 Moreover, Redford stated, migrants mostly chose their place to stay based upon their skills or labour specialisation. That is, migrants would rather move a little further away if this would mean finding employment in the sector they were experienced in. Although this last hypothesis cannot be confirmed or disproved within the scope of my research, the distances do fit with Redford's hypothesis. The only two out-parish poor so far who lived further away than the near vicinity of Bulskamp, were confined in a prison or hospital in a more distant city. These short distances corroborate findings for the residence places of the out-parish poor of the nearby parish Loker, as well as the origins of migrants in marriage data. In both researches, barely any migrants moved a distance of more than 15 kilometres.Footnote 43
This leads us to another remarkable observation: the Bulskamp out-parish poor mostly settled in rural areas. Forty-six per cent of the out-parish poor even settled in rural parishes within a ten-kilometre radius of Bulskamp. Most out-parish poor lived in nearby rural parishes such as Adinkerke (six individuals), Wulveringem (three individuals) and Houtem (two individuals). The hypothesis that the labour market was one of the main factors determining migration regulation however still stands. Intra-rural migration levels were higher than rural-urban migration levels in coastal Flanders. This related to the high demand for labourers on the large farms that dominated the area.Footnote 44 Establishing a reserve army of labourers was one of the interests of the local elites in this agrarian capitalist region. But immigrant labourers did not necessarily traverse large distances. Instead, micro-mobility, or rather short-distance sojourners and itinerants, were an important share of migration patterns. Mobility as part of the economy of makeshifts and short-distance migration in the context of ‘sentiers invisibles’, both concepts that have been developed for France, were also relevant in the Bulskamp border area.Footnote 45 Although other factors, like the availability of hospitals and prisons in cities also played a role, migration mostly occurred in short distances to other rural parishes. Of course other factors might have been significant as well, like morality, family ties and social networks, but the impact of these factors cannot be analysed due to the limitations of the selected sources.Footnote 46
The above analysis has only focused on the places of residence of the emigrants. However, if we also take the period in which these emigrants possibly resided in Bulskamp into account, the picture changes completely. This is clearly shown in Figure 4. The map represents the places of residence of the thirty-nine relief recipients of the Bulskamp parish who received out-parish relief during their lifetime. Those who solely received relief while resident in Bulskamp are not included in the figure. Each dot, then, represents an individual's place of residence. Larger dots imply that more people lived in that place.
Places of residence of the Bulskamp out-parish relief recipients, including Bulskamp parish (1768–96).
The large lighter coloured dot especially stands out. It represents Bulskamp parish. Fifteen out of the total thirty-nine out-parish poor also spent time in Bulskamp while receiving relief. Each line in the illustration moreover illustrates an act of moving elsewhere. This indicates that a great deal of the out-resident poor were actually sojourners, not necessarily permanent settlers, who moved back and forth between Bulskamp to other places. However, the account books only mention paupers who were resident in another parish for a fixed period of time – short-term mobility, like itinerant migration, is not represented in these sources. Someone resident in Bulskamp but, for example, working seasonally in the polder areas would probably be considered as in-parish poor, because his or her fixed place of residence was in Bulskamp. There are thus many limitations to using the source as a representation of migration patterns; but for understanding the mobility of the people receiving relief from Bulskamp parish, the source does indeed show that mobility levels were significantly high, and so were the balances of out-parish relief.
Following the downfall of the Concordat in 1776, when several members left the convention, a downfall in the share of out-parish poor in the Bulskamp accounts could have occurred. Theoretically speaking, the poor residing in the leaving regions (inter alia the district of Franc de Bruges and Courtrai) would then be able to obtain a settlement in their place of residence and thus disappear from the Bulskamp relief sources. The parishes leaving the Concordat had to adhere to the central legislation, which stated that three years of residence conveyed settlement status to a newcomer.Footnote 47 The Bulskamp out-parish poor resident in, for example, Bruges, or Courtrai, could thus (theoretically speaking) become no longer dependent on Bulskamp after 1776 because of gaining a settlement elsewhere.
Consequences of out-parish relief
These evolutions in scale and scope of out-parish relief had implications for Bulskamp and for the poor themselves. In order to estimate to what extent out-parish relief was financially beneficial to Bulskamp, I will first analyse the expenses on in-parish and out-parish poor table members and their evolutions through time. Taylor and King suggested, after all, that expenses on out-parish relief were lower than those on in-parish relief. Secondly, I will consider how this out-parish relief actually took shape. For example, did the poor have to return to Bulskamp to demand their pensions, or was relief provided by their parish of residence and subsequently reimbursed? This last option appears to have been common in England. It does imply, however, that the relations and power balances between parishes were of crucial importance to the provision of out-parish relief. A lack of trust between parish overseers would, theoretically speaking, impeach the provision of out-parish relief in this case, whereas relief directly distributed to out-parish poor could more or less circumvent the parish of residence and was thus less influenced by local power balances. Before concluding on these matters, let us first discuss the expenses on in-parish and out-parish relief.
Expenses
The expenses of the Bulskamp account books were organised per individual, and also included general expenses for the poor.Footnote 48 Relief receivers were often handed money in cash by the overseer, but also received, for example, dairinck (peat) and lijnwaet (textiles). The overseer also reimbursed artisans for having made clothes or having repaired houses where these poor lived. Burial costs and coffins were another common expense. The main difference between the expenses for the in-parish and out-parish poor relates to the payment of taxes. Bulskamp reimbursed its out-parish poor for having paid pointynghen and cortghezetenen taxes, which can be understood as taxes paid by everyone resident in a parish.
Despite this slight difference in types of expenses, the levels of expenses per in- and out-parish pauper were relatively similar. Both trends show an increase. The general level of expenses rose from about 100 pounds per individual in the 1768–70 accounts to 150 pounds per individual in the 1794–6 accounts (Figure 5). Apart from the peak and subsequent downfall in expenses in 1774 and 1776, this rise was mostly from 1784 onwards. In these years, the numbers of relief recipients also expanded in Bulskamp. The rise in expenses per individual may be related to similar causes as the rise in pauper numbers, namely inflation. The general rise of grain prices in the last part of the eighteenth-century induced poverty and augmented costs of relief.Footnote 50 This inflation partially explains the rise in total expenses in the 1780s and 1790s. Although the two trends of expenses were similar, the expenses per out-parish poor were generally lower than those for the in-parish poor in the 1780s, and conversely higher than the expenses for the in-parish poor in the 1790s. These variations are not so easily explained. The peak in expenses on out-parish poor in the accounts of 1772 to 1774 and 1776 to 1778, and the subsequent downfall in the account of 1776 to 1778, for example, relate to the high payments in cash (rising up to over two times the general expenses) to Caerel Marquette, residing in Dunkirk, and to Joannes van Cassel, residing in Nieuwpoort. Caerel Marquette did not receive any relief in 1776–8, which explains the downfall in expenses to out-parish receivers. Similarly, several of the out-parish paupers died in the late 1780s and 1790s, which generally meant higher expenses per individual because of the high costs of coffins and burial ceremonies. These differences thus do not necessarily imply that the costs of out-parish relief were higher or lower than those of in-parish relief.
Expenses in pounds parisis per in-parish and out-parish individual relief receiver, Bulskamp Account Books (1768–96).Footnote 49
The findings on comparative levels of in- and out-parish relief expenses are striking in relation to those for England. King, for example, estimated that the out-parish poor of Lancashire, who made up about 40 per cent of recipients, only received about 25 per cent of all financial resources.Footnote 51 Taylor found that the immigrant poor in Manchester received less relief per head than Manchester's settled poor.Footnote 52 The expenses for out-parish relief in Bulskamp nevertheless were not strikingly low. One possible explanation lies in the provision of relief for the payment of residents’ taxes, such as the pointinghen and cortghezetenen taxes, by the Bulskamp poor table. English overseers did not reimburse such taxes, but these were not commonly paid by the poor in England. The Bulskamp accounts show that by comparison, the settlement parish paid for residents’ taxes of their out-parish poor, an issue that further research on Bulskamp and other rural parishes in Flanders needs to elucidate.
English research suggests that out-parish relief was also financially beneficial for both residence and settlement parishes, and that expenses for out-parish poor were lower than for in-parish poor. In Bulskamp however, the expenses were similar. Resistance to the Concordat grew among several members over the course of the agreement, and one of their main arguments against it was the growth in relief expenses. The city council of Bruges, for example, argued that they should not pay relief to those born in the city but who resided all their life elsewhere.Footnote 53 Whether out-parish relief was considered a positive or beneficial option at the time remains to be seen.
The distribution of out-parish relief in daily practice
Having analysed the evolution of out-parish poor in Bulskamp, we should discuss this out-parish relief in daily practice, using individual case files or ‘pauper conflicts’.Footnote 54 These contain discussions between parish overseers on an individual's request for relief, his or her settlement status and whether or not to ‘remove’ this individual to the settlement parish. If the parish overseers did not manage to solve the conflict, city councils and chatellany boards were asked to intervene. Whereas such conflicts would earlier have been solved in court, the Concordat had installed an internal system of arbitration.Footnote 55 From the series of conflicts, spread over different archives, I selected only those with multiple letters per individual to have variegated views on the issue. This adds up to a total of forty individuals, or about a hundred letters. These files have not been analysed quantitatively for this article, because of the lack of trustworthiness and representativeness of these conflicts as a source for out-parish relief. After all, they rather tell us something about the extreme cases.
Both removal and out-parish relief occurred in these individual case files. It was the subject of discussion in the case of Joseph and Frans Verbeke, two brothers who had been sent back to their birth parish of Wervick with their respective families because they were unable to provide for their families. The parish overseer of Wervick argued against this forced removal because he believed that ‘de woonsten libre syn’ (‘the choice of residence is free’).Footnote 56 In other cases, the poor tables of the place of residence provided relief to the needy immigrants, and only then started contacting the assumed place of settlement for reimbursements.Footnote 57 This seems to have been a common procedure. Especially in conflicts where the chatellany boards intervened, residence parishes were urged to pay relief in advance to be reimbursed by the settlement parish.Footnote 58 The practice was somewhat codified by the chatellany of Furnes in 1752.Footnote 59 The chatellany administration urged parish overseers to provide relief to those in need, and only check their settlement status for possible reimbursements by another parish as a second step. Of course, this was only possible because the Concordat acted as a common guarantee ensuring settlement status in the birthplace – this was unchangeable and supposedly easily identifiable.
Despite this common example of advances and reimbursements, there was no standard procedure for the transfer of relief to an out-parish pauper within the Concordat. Instead, the sources show that there were different scenarios. The widow of Louis de Clercq, resident in the neighbouring parish Adinkerke, for example, received money in cash (227 pounds parisis 3 shillings) from the Bulskamp overseer. But those were not the only expenses made for her. The overseer also noted having paid ‘L. J. Lippeel for buying “plantsoenen” [parks or plantations] (8 pounds, 12 shillings); similarly 3 pounds, 3 shillings and 11 deniers to Joanes Tornelle for the pointingen [residents’ taxes]; having paid Frans van Loo for daerynck (peat) (10 pounds); and that the overseer had paid for two ‘voeren’ peat (34 pounds)’.Footnote 60 Most Bulskamp out-parish poor resided in Adinkerke, but the parish was so close that intervention of the Adinkerke poor table might not have been necessary: the parish overseer of Bulskamp could indeed pay the pauper himself. The mentioned conveyance of payments for pointingen to Joannes Tornelle, as well as payments for peat to Frans van Loo (who was himself also listed in the accounts as part of the Bulskamp poor relief recipients) does imply that middlemen, or messengers, were used to pay for the expenses of the out-parish poor. Such payments were, however, fairly similar to those for the in-parish poor, which also mentioned payments in money to the paupers and payments to others concerning, for example, rent – although many expenses for the in-parish poor were also noted down as general expenses. Moreover, the account books of the mentioned widow's parish of residence, Adinkerke, do not show proof of the intervention of the Adinkerke poor table in the transfer of this relief. These account books did not mention any payments concerning the widow of Louis de Clercq, nor was there any other mention of paying relief to the non-settled paupers of Bulskamp (nor any other parish, for that matter).Footnote 61
Whereas Louis de Clercq's widow residing in nearby Adinkerke was indeed relatively close to Bulskamp in distance, and could thus indeed have met the Bulskamp overseer to receive money, such direct payments were also mentioned for out-parish poor who lived further away. Joes Worme, for example, lived in Nieuwpoort, about 14 kilometres from Bulskamp. The books mentioned: ‘Assistance to Joes Worme in Nieuwpoort: The “rendant” [overseer, MS] has given him in money and noted in the income book xxix lb; viy s; 0 d.’. This direct payment wasn't always the case. When another Nieuwpoort resident, Johannes van Laethem fell ill in the 1770s, his birth parish of Herzeeuw had sent some money on its way with a local pharmacist travelling to the region.Footnote 62 The distance between Nieuwpoort and Herzeeuw however far exceeded the distance from Bulskamp, and Van Laethem, being ill, was considered unfit to travel the distance himself.
These different scenarios thus point to the overseers trying to find practical solutions to transfer relief to a non-resident pauper, not necessarily with intervention by the parish of residence. Direct payments to individuals also occurred, as in the case of Jacobus de Wiert, a naval carpenter in Hondschoote, northern France, who had taken Jacobus Willem, born in Houtem, Furnes district, into his house because he considered him too ill to continue on his way home to Flanders. De Wiert consequently took care of Willem until he died a couple of days later. The district board of Bergues St Winoc, to which Hondschoote resorted, therefore urged the chatellany of Furnes to induce Houtem parish to reimburse De Wiert for the costs incurred.Footnote 63 This case therefore also points to the diversity of practices of transfers of non-resident relief.
Conclusions
Historians have recently called for further investigation into out-parish relief, a practice whereby local poor tables provided welfare to poor residing in a different parish. I have analysed the account books of Bulskamp to assess the quantitative and spatial significance of out-parish relief in Flanders, and to see how relief was distributed to non-resident poor in practice. The parish of Bulskamp adhered to local settlement legislation, the Concordat of Ypres, which was somewhat ambiguous concerning the removal of poor migrants to their settlement parish: on the one hand, it asked the poor to return to their birthplace if they became destitute, to be relieved there; on the other hand, it advocated free mobility and argued that people should be allowed to settle in the place that best suited their interests. Both removals and out-parish relief could thus be justified within this framework. Research on the Bulskamp out-parish poor adds new insights into the history of poor relief practices on the continent, as well as to the mobility patterns of the ‘labouring poor’.
Out-parish relief was institutionalised to a large degree in Bulskamp specifically, and there are convincing signs that it was well established within the Concordat of Ypres as a whole. The Bulskamp accounts often mentioned poor table recipients residing elsewhere. Why the overseer registered this occurrence of out-parish relief is still unclear, as the Bulskamp accounts are among the only accounts found so far that register the occurrence and places of residence of out-parish relief. Many local account books, if they have survived in the archives at all, do not mention any different places of settlement or residence. Perhaps Bulskamp simply had a very enthusiastic and structured overseer. Some judiciary files of the courts of Franc de Bruges, for example, also comprised more information than was strictly required. Or perhaps the registration started after a conflict over the settlement or removal of an out-resident pauper, or was simply a continuation after enquiries concerning non-resident relief from the district board of the chatellany of Furnes. More comparative research is needed in order to answer these questions. Nevertheless, although we don't know the numbers for the entire Concordat area, we can conclude that out-parish relief was a commonly established practice in Bulskamp. The accounts show that the out-parish poor over this period made up a share varying between 9 and 52 per cent of the total recipients of the Bulskamp poor table.
The results of the quantitative analyses differ significantly from findings in the historiography. Focusing first on the evolution of numbers of out-parish and in-parish poor, the accounts show how the ratio of out-parish poor rose. In 1780, they even overtook the in-parish poor in total number and made up 52 per cent of the total recipients of the Bulskamp poor table. This is remarkably higher than figures calculated for Lancashire and Manchester. On average, the Bulskamp out-parish poor throughout this period made up 30 per cent of all recipients. This corresponds to the calculations of research on English poor relief practices. The strong variation in numbers over the years, as witnessed here, invites further investigation into the long-term evolutions and seasonal variations of in- and out-parish balances.
Focusing on the mobility patterns, the Bulskamp data showed that the poor had high levels of mobility and often moved. Although there are unknowns concerning itinerant migration, the mobility mostly towards nearby rural polder areas does argue for labour mobility as one of the main motives. This polder area was known for its large labour-hiring farms and demand for seasonal labourers. Bulskamp might then be interpreted as a rural version of the ‘industrial Speenhamland’ system Taylor analysed. Out-parish migration of the poor was not necessarily directed at urban and industrial areas, but the poor rather moved to polder areas and nearby cities. The hypothesis of the labour market being one of the driving forces behind the out-migration of the poor then stands ground, although more research is needed to analyse the implications of labour mobility. Perhaps demand on the labour market elsewhere stimulated Bulskamp natives to migrate, even cross-border to France. The findings of this study cannot be generalised for the entire area, but they suggest that more research is needed on the hypotheses of Lucassen and others about mobility patterns in the coastal regions. According to this view, the North Sea coast was a hub for seasonal labourers, arriving mostly from inland Flanders. However, my research shows that mobility levels were also high internally in the coastal regions. This regional economy benefited from the regular movement of labour from one place to another according to the demand for labour. Mobility formed part of survival strategies and migrants mostly moved small distances.
What consequences did these high levels of non-resident relief and mobility of non-resident poor have for Bulskamp? Out-parish relief was not necessarily less expensive than in-parish relief. Although the general expenses rose slightly towards the last decade of the eighteenth century, the expenses for in-parish and out-parish poor were relatively similar. The main difference was the relief provided to pay for residents’ taxes. In contrast to findings for England, out-parish relief did not necessarily result in lower expenses. However, as yet, no conclusions can be made on whether non-resident relief was beneficial to Bulskamp or not, as this would involve speculation on possible economic motivations concerning the costs of removal, or the benefits of the reserve labour supply theory of non-resident relief, or even moral considerations of belonging.
We cannot conclude about the motivations of Bulskamp for out-parish relief or removal, and an unknown number of the poor would actually have come back to Bulskamp to receive relief. Yet the accounts do explain more on the daily practices of out-parish relief. Most importantly, they show that although out-parish relief was institutionalised to a large degree, there was no standard practice of how to transfer the relief to paupers. Direct transfers of cash from the overseer to pauper occurred, but so did reimbursements to artisans, merchants and other individuals. Additional research into pauper conflicts moreover demonstrated that the transfer of relief via middlemen also happened. In other cases, the parish of residence intervened, as in the case of Van Laethem. The findings in the Bulskamp account books, however, do not suggest intervention of the residence parishes of the Bulskamp out-parish poor. The account books of the parish of Adinkerke, one of the main ‘receivers’ of Bulskamp paupers, for example, do not mention any of the Bulskamp migrants who resided there. In that respect, Bulskamp's non-resident relief functioned differently from the practices described by historians in England, where migrants’ residence parishes often provided relief to be reimbursed later by the settlement parish. Instead, multiple practices of out-parish relief coexisted.
The Bulskamp case thus shows that further research into continental out-parish practices is necessary and feasible, although sources have not always been saved as in Bulskamp. Further research into the practices of the Concordat of Ypres, such as the discourses of belonging, changing mobility patterns and the more quantitative aspects of everyday functioning of relief, will help to advance further our understanding of these issues.
This article has stressed the differences between the Bulskamp relief and the English and Welsh Poor Law, but has also laid bare many similarities in local practices. Poor relief administration in Bulskamp was comparable and possibly more elaborate than in many English parishes. This highlights the questions of whether there was such a phenomenon as a north-west European early modern welfare system, and how this related to wider developments such as the north-west European marriage pattern, the earlier Reformation, connections between north-west European political elites and forms of governance, and the rise of a capitalist labour market. The economic and administrative importance of these issues – especially in the context of present-day debates regarding migration, national inclusion and welfare in the European Union – need hardly be stressed here.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this article was presented at the Conference of Rural History in Leuven, September 2017. The author would like to thank Anne Winter, Thijs Lambrecht and Keith Snell for their comments and suggestions.
