Poor Relief 1767

The 1767 rating list

Some information about rating for poor relief before the nineteenth century can be obtained from a manuscript rating list dated 1767. This list also gives more general information about the town; in particular it provides a limited guide to rental values.¹1. The 1767 list has been bound and forms a slim volume in the Goulding Collection in Louth Library with the reference GL LOUT 360.

The printed nineteenth century rating lists dealt with on this website were designed to value properties to enable demands for rates to be made (typically half yearly) to the rateable occupiers. The 1767 list was fundamentally different in that it showed calculations of the amounts payable by each occupier for one six month period, May to October 1767, to cover expenditure on poor relief in that period. The rating list was signed by the two churchwardens and the two overseers of the poor, who were collectively responsible for making the rate; In addition it was signed by four other leading inhabitants, presumably to signify their agreement as members of the “vestry”, a meeting of ratepayers. The rate was formally “allowed” by the town’s two magistrates, whose signatures were dated 16 November 1767. The amount of the rate was a shilling in the pound (ie 5%). The shilling rate was designed to raise just under £163.

Format

The 1767 list may have been based on a list of properties street by street but the list itself was of rateable occupiers mainly arranged alphabetically, though within each letter of the alphabet the more prominent ratepayers usually came first. The format is illustrated by the following table, which shows the beginning of the assessment.

It may be seen from the table that, compared with the nineteenth century lists, the information provided by the 1767 list had a number of limitations. In particular the absence of locations presents problems. To take the first entry as an example, it is unclear whether the entry related to Atkinson’s main residence, Fanthorpe Hall, a “24 room Palladian country house”. If so, the rental value of £6 a year must indicate gross under-valuation.²2. The description of the house is taken from Fanthorpe – People and Place Rod & Jean Fanthorpe 2013. Atkinson’s activities were described in the Lincolnshire Archives Committee Archivist’s Report for 1954/5 pp 8-9. (It is possible that ill-health had caused Atkinson to move to a small house in Louth: his 1767 signature was shadow of his signature as a younger man and he died in 1770. However Fanthorpe Hall was not recorded in the rating list as occupied by someone else or as vacant.)

At the time Louth had about 1700 acres in its three open fields but acreages were not given for most of the open field land nor for any of the numerous enclosed fields, generally called “closes” or “pingles”.³3 .The pre-enclosure position is summarised in Robinson 1979 pp 79-85. In the rating list the acreages were given for land totalled only about 200 acres. The entry for Atkin has a marginal note, perhaps addressed to the rate collector, “You are desired to set down the number of Acres of Mr Bennetts Arable – also of Cracrofts heirs.”

The list gave little information about the character of buildings except for houses, shops and barns. There were references to 79 shops, including at least 33 that were apparently separate from living accommodation, but some of these must have been workshops, rather than retail units. Other building type references include three malt kilns, two “candlehouses”, one lime kiln, one brickyard and one “cold bath house”. Inns and public houses were not identified; for example, James Allison, known to be the licensee of the Blue Stone Inn, probably the town’s largest inn, appeared as the occupier of a “House &c”.

Number of Ratepayers

In total the list showed 509 rateable occupiers. This can be compared with approximately 1,300 listed in R1823. However in the 1767 list 156 of the occupiers appeared under the heading “Such as are not likely to pay but collect what you can”; and the financial summary at the end of the list assumed that nothing would be collected from them. In principle all occupiers were liable to pay rates unless exempted by the justices on the ground of poverty, but the wording quoted does not suggest that any formal exemptions had been granted. Some of the 156 must have been in receipt of poor relief themselves. More generally, the concessionary non-collection may have represented a recognition that a casual labourer living in a mud and stud house valued at £1 might have difficulty in finding even an extra shilling.

Although the 156 non-payers were mainly the occupiers of the lowest value houses, there was no automatic cut-off point. Approximately 56% of the occupiers of houses valued at less than £2 were non-payers, but the others were evidently expected to pay. This points to some sort of informal assessment, perhaps of income, perhaps of resistance to payment. The list of non-payers was headed by Widow Appleby with a house and shop valued at £3. Possibly the rate collector’s experience was that money could not be extracted from her without legal proceedings, which were not thought to be worthwhile.

The alphabetical organisation of the 1767 list sometimes caused occupations to be specified where names were duplicated; for example, it was necessary to distinguish between Richard Chapman, butcher and Richard Chapman, glover. No other information is given about occupations, except that two of the town’s doctors, Dr Clarke and Dr Hardy, were named as such; and some occupiers of agricultural land must have been farmers.

Houses and Population

With three exceptions the 509 potential ratepayers were individuals, rather than partnerships.⁴4. The exceptions were Thorold and Julian, millers, Trollop and Barton, booksellers and stationers, for whom see Goulding’s Louth Printers and Booksellers of the Eighteenth Century (1917), and “Messrs Walesby”, probably Elmit and Thomas Walesby, known from apprenticeship records to be grocers and mercers, though the rating list does not show them to be occupying a shop. Fourteen of the listed ratepayers were not Louth householders; they may have been living as lodgers, or with relations or had houses just outside the parish boundary. Four ratepayers occupied a second house. For example, George Jolland, an attorney, was the owner-occupier of a house valued at £10 and also the tenant of another house valued at £2; presumably the actual occupier of the second house was his groom or other employee. There may well have been a few other such cases concealed by general wording.

In total 499 occupied houses were shown. This figure includes five “chambers”, presumably living accommodation above a shop or stable. I have assumed that each unit described as a “farm” included a farmhouse. In addition to the occupied houses three houses and a chamber were stated to be empty (and so not liable for rates) and two houses were under construction.

In the absence of census information, rough estimates of population can be made by multiplying the number of occupied houses by an assumed average number of persons per house. This subject is dealt with on a separate page: see Eighteenth Century Population.

A rating list dated 1749 has survived.⁵5. Lincolnshire Archives reference GOULDING PAPERS/4/A/1/5. This is a rather scrappy document and some entries are not easy to follow, but it was organised in a completely different way: street by street, but with some streets unnamed. Comparisons between the two lists are generally difficult. It seems that in 1749 there were approximately 515 houses, but a small minority were empty. It seems likely that in the mid-eighteenth century the population of the town was more or less static.

Landowners

Although it was occupiers that were liable for rates, there was a convention that owners should also be listed. It is clear that land ownership was widely diffused: 80 of the houses were owner-occupied and the houses occupied by the 156 non-payers belonged to well over 50 different people. The proportion of owner-occupied houses was slightly lower than in 1823: about 16% compared with 18%. However, the exact number of landowners is uncertain, because most entries were simply of surnames and more than one person may have been meant. Also, many listings of owners were vague (eg “Cracroft’s heirs,” “Stanthorpe’s heirs”) and a few were left blank.

By value, the largest landowner (about 6% of the total recorded value) was the Corporation. In 1767 the members were as follows.

Poor Relief in 1767

Information about the working of the Old Poor Law in Louth in the eighteenth century is very limited. Eighteenth century poor relief in the Louth area has been briefly described in Painter 2000 the main purpose of that work was to tell “the story of the Louth Union Workhouse which opened in 1838 for the paupers of the town and surrounding parishes”. For the previous century some parishes have detailed records of decisions on poor relief taken by the ratepayers collectively at vestry meetings or by the elected overseers of the poor. Such records are almost entirely lacking for Louth, although the there are a few references to poor relief in the Churchwardens’ accounts. The situation in Louth was probably similar to that in Horncastle, dealt with in J N Clarke The Shadow of the Workhouse (2006). A lucid, detailed examination of some Old Poor Law records for a parish fairly near to Louth is contained in Chapter 7 of Martin Watkinson’s thesis The Microhistory of a Lincolnshire Parish: Humberston, 1750-1850. ⁶6. 2017 – available on the University of Leicester’s website.

The shilling rate was designed to raise just under £163 to cover expenditure on poor relief in half-year period May to October 1767. This expenditure in the warmer months suggests annual expenditure in the vicinity of £350. The money is likely to have been spent wholly or mainly on small cash grants to paupers and on paying the rents of houses that they occupied. No information is available as to whether this level of expenditure was typical in Louth in the 1760s, For expenditure in the years 1774-95 see Frederic Eden on the Poor).

It is doubtful whether in 1767 anything in the nature of a workhouse for adults existed in Louth. In 1734 the Vestry agreed to take out a loan of £180 to purchase a house “for the lodging, relief and maintenance of the poor of the parish”; and in the following year it was agreed that a piece of land should be taken out of the South Field and reserved for the use of the inmates of the house; but this house may have been abandoned before 1767. Eden referred to the existence of a “common poor-house” in 1774-6, but this may have been mere accommodation, rather than a place of work. Goulding found evidence of an establishment for children, a “spinning school or workhouse” in the period 1729-48.⁷7. Churchwardens accounts January 1733/4; GOULDING PAPERS/4/A/1/1/40 (documenting the land agreement); Goulding 1891 p 68.

Records of receipts and expenditure are lacking and so it cannot be known whether all of those expected to pay did pay; but the surviving records of separate rates relating to church matters indicate that arrears were a very minor problem. Church rates had to be approved by the vestry and the accounts incorporated some vestry minutes but said nothing about poor relief in or near 1767. The church rate in 1767 was 6d in the pound and expenditure was about £85.

In view of the inequality of eighteenth-century society, it is not surprising to find that most of the rates were payable by a minority of the ratepayers. The position may be summarised as follows.

The Burden of Rates

Expenditure of £163 for a half year does not look like a heavy tax burden for a town the size of Louth. The statutory expenditure on poor relief must have been reduced by the existence of some town charities for the poor, including the Butter Feoffees and the Coal Feoffees, both of which drew rents from various small houses.⁸8. These charities dated from the seventeenth century: Gurnham 2007 p 72. By the end of the Old Poor Law, when the population of the town had approximately trebled, average annual expenditure was said to be £3,200.⁹9. Third Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners (1837) p 255, giving the average annual expenditure for 1834/35/36. The figures in the appendix to R1838 yield a slightly higher average.

For the wealthier inhabitants the rates would not have been a significant expense. For someone around the middle of the property scale, paying a rate bill of four shillings, the cost would have been significant but far from oppressive. A comparison might be made with the typical cost of the meat consumed by a family of five in a fortnight. The average price was perhaps 3½d per pound and (according to a later adviser on household management, Rundell) the quantity would have been about 14 pounds (6.35 Kg): 3.5d x 14 = 49d = 4s 1d.¹⁰10. The assumed quantity of consumption is based upon estimate V in the appendix to Rudell. The assumed average price follows prices quoted in a report in Mercury 2.4.1767, but prices fluctuated considerably. Those at the bottom of the property scale may have had little meat, but they mostly did not pay rates.

Values in 1767

At all times rating values were intended to relate to the open market rental values of properties. The difficulty lies in establishing what the open market rental values were. For Louth the only significant evidence of rental values in the second half of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century is provided by the Corporation’s accounts. These are often not easy to follow and are missing for some years, but they do give a broad indication of rising rents.

Fortunately detailed accounts survive for 1766/7. Most of the Corporation’s properties included in the rating list can be identified in the accounts, though the recorded tenant was not always the same as the rating list occupier. It appears that the valuations used for rating purposes were intended to be estimates of the open market rental values and were sometimes exactly the same as the annual rents that were being paid. Examples are given below.

Increases in Rental Values

The Corporation’s income was mainly drawn from agricultural rents or from commercial properties likely to be influenced by the prosperity of agriculture. The national picture¹¹ 11. See Turner et al Agricultural Rent in England 1690-1914 (1997) Appendix 2 was that agricultural rents were subject to only minor fluctuations in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, rose significantly in the last quarter and then rose faster to reach a peak in 1815, when they averaged about two and a half times the 1750 level.

The Corporation’s accounts were divided into King Edward’s Rental, which related to property intended to support the grammar school and bedehouse (for elderly women) and Queen Elizabeth’s Rental, which covered the Corporation’s other expenditure. Of the two Queen Elizabeth’s is the more useful for the present purpose, because it related mainly to properties in Louth. King Edward’s was smaller and related mainly to properties in villages to the east of Louth. Many of the rents payable in Louth had their origin in manorial rights; their distinguishing feature was that they could not be increased; most of these were very small and probably difficult to collect.

Rental figures for selected years are given in Goulding 1891 but I have been unable to reconcile Goulding’s details with the original accounts; for some years he treated loans as income. The position appears to be that Queen Elizabeth’s Rental was due to produce about £211 in the financial year 1747/8, £306 in 1767/8, £430 in 1794/5, £476 in 1800/1, £674 in 1805/6 and £725 in 1812/3. In this period the Corporation neither bought nor sold significant land, though there was some renovation or replacement of shops. Thus the increase in rents was broadly similar to the national increase referred to above. In Louth there was a special factor: the enclosure of the open fields, which explains the large increase in 1805/6 as compared with 1801/2. (The redistribution of land by the enclosure largely took effect on 6 April 1802 but the practical implementation by the erection of fences etc must have taken a year or two longer.)

Corresponding Changes in Values for Rating

For the the values used for rating after 1767 and before the the revaluation of 1823 see the information gleaned by Eden and referred to above. The overseers of the poor must have produced accounts, but they have not survived. The churchwardens’ accounts give for many years the church rate levied and the approximate amount raised. In theory this should enable the total rateable value of the town to be calculated; but the results are inconsistent. For example, expenditure of £100 in 1783 was said to be financed by a rate of 6d in the £, but expenditure of £177 in 1785 was financed by a rate of 1s 3d in the £.¹²12. I have taken the figures from a summary (Archive reference LOUTH ST JAMES PAR/7/4) prepared by William Wrangham, a churchwarden in the 1820s, because his interpretation of the obscure originals was likely to be better than mine. By 1822 the churchwardens were evidently using a rating list with a total valuation much below the one used for poor law purposes.