Pauper housing was mainly outside the workhouse.

Housing in and out of the Workhouse

Most studies of poor relief in the Victorian period (including the one particularly relevant to the Louth area, Painter 2000) tend to concentrate on the workhouse, as its most controversial feature. Less is known about poor relief outside the workhouse, (“out-relief”) which affected many more people and cost more money.

Housing was a critical issue, since a homeless pauper was likely to be driven into the workhouse. At the bottom end of the housing scale were the houses reserved for paupers. Before 1834 in many rural parishes it had been the practice to provide houses for paupers. For Lindsey the subject has been discussed in detail in an article by J A Perkins.¹ That article is very informative about the position before the New Poor Law and in the decade following, but may suggest that pauper housing declined more rapidly than was really the case.

In the rural parishes it appears from evidence given by John Lambert, a poor law inspector whose area covered several counties, to the Select Committee on Poor Relief 1862 that many pauper houses survived:

In the Louth Union I ascertained some time ago that there were no less than 197 of these parish houses, and in the Lincoln Union as many as 96…. These are miserable cottages, belonging to the parish, in which the overseers place paupers who are in receipt of out-door relief; they are the worst possible description of houses; I have had occasion to inspect several of them, and I found that they were so much out of repair that they were scarcely habitable.²

Lambert went on to explain that the houses could only be sold if the sale was approved by the ratepayers of the parish concerned; but that consent was often not forthcoming. His evidence did not deal with the question of why the paupers preferred to stay in their “scarcely habitable” dwellings, rather than seek admission to the workhouse.

The issue of parish houses is not directly relevant to the town of Louth, where, as was noted by Perkins, the practice was to not to provide houses but instead to pay or subsidise the paupers’ rents paid to private landlords. However the broader issue of preferring out-relief to admission to the workhouse is relevant.

An Accidental Death in 1861

The following two paragraphs, consecutive, but on the surface unrelated, appeared in Advertiser on 23 February 1861:

An aged woman, named Dixon, was found last evening, in her house in Healey’s Court, Chequergate, burnt to death. It is expected that a coroner’s inquest will be held over the deceased to-day.

At the board-room of the Louth Union on Monday last, from the returns presented it was found that there were in the house 198 paupers, out of the house 1,676 and the out-relief for the week amounted to £193.

The deceased, Elizabeth Dixon, had been one of the 1,676. She was a long-term resident, appearing as “Widow Dixon” in the R1851. The inquest was reported in Mercury 1.3.1861.

An inquest was held before T. Sharpley, Esq., coroner, on Saturday last, on the body of Eliz. Dixon, aged 87, who on the previous day was discovered by a neighbour suffocated or burnt, and quite dead, in her house in Healey’s-court. She had during the winter been in a very infirm state of health, and had suffered much from asthma and cough, and it is supposed that her dress accidentally catching fire she was very soon suffocated by the smouldering timber, and utterly unable to cry for assistance. Verdict accidental death. Upwards of £2 was found concealed in various parts of the house, doubtless penuriously saved from the small weekly parish allowance. [Emphasis added]

Identification of Paupers

The instructions to census enumerators in 1851 and 1861 (but not in other censuses) required the identification of “persons in receipt of parish relief”. This instruction was normally understood to relate to heads of households or other adults that might be expected to have employment. In contrast the weekly returns of out-relief made from poor law unions to the central authority (the Poor Law Board in 1847–1871) covered all persons whose needs were taken into account. So the figure of 1,676 given in the second paragraph quoted above from the Advertiser included young children; and the weekly payment per household must have been considerably higher than £193 divided by 1,676.

Healey’s Court

Healey’s Court was a short street off Chequergate.³ On the west side there was a terrace of 12 houses owned by a single landlord, built at some date before 1808, probably of mud and stud construction; Elizabeth Dixon occupied the best of these, which had a rateable value of £2.5s. On the east side were six brick houses including four superior ones valued at £3.5s; these were equipped with pig sties and probably individual privies.

(The terrace of western houses is shown on Espin 1808. It was probably built by Jeremiah Healey (c 1770–1825), whose tannery was immediately to the north, or his father Robert Healey (1739–1807). The eastern houses were not recorded in R1823 and only four of them were in R1838. On the method of construction: brick walls were a selling point for cottages and an advertisement for the sale of the western houses (Mercury 24.10.1851) did not say that they were built of brick, whereas other properties in the same advertisement were so described. For the eastern houses brick construction was stated in an advertisement in Mercury 4.11.1870. OS 1889 shows the whole street as it was in 1888. Numbers 1–12 must have been demolished soon afterwards, as they did not appear in the 1891 census.)

In the 1851 census one of the 18 houses in Healey’s Court was apparently missed by the enumerator, but the other 17 were occupied. Of the 17 householders 12 were identified as paupers with stated ages of 72 (Elizabeth Dixon, with pauper lodger age 70), 72, 77, 58, 75 (with pauper sister age 67), 67, 77, 72, 80, 76, 75 and 72. All but one of the paupers lived in the western terrace.

Payment of Rent for Paupers

If we translate this picture to the present day, a modern housing officer would have no difficulty in identifying Healey’s Court as a group of poor-quality houses maintained by the owners with a view to attracting tenants that could claim housing benefit. The problem in 1851 was the question of legality. The provision of out-relief was regulated by an order of the Poor Law Commissioners made in 1844, which included the following general rule, but also a loophole.⁴

Article 5 – It shall not be lawful for the Guardians, or any of their officers … to pay, wholly or in part, the rent of the house or lodging of any pauper…

… Provided always, that nothing in this Article … shall be taken to prevent the said Guardians, in regulating the amount of relief to be afforded to any particular person, from considering the expense to be incurred by such person in providing lodging.

The concentration of paupers in Healey’s Court cannot have been merely coincidental. It is likely that there was a tacit understanding with the landlords that out-relief would be given on a scale less niggardly than usual, so that the paupers could pay their rent with money that was nominally given for other purposes.

Better off in the Workhouse?

To revert to Elizabeth Dixon: it is of course arguable that she would have been better off in the relative security of Louth workhouse, where she would have received medical attention and would certainly not have burnt to death. There was plenty of room for her, because on the night of the 1861 census the workhouse was little more than half full. As was often the case, most of the resident paupers were children aged 14 and under. However, it must be assumed that Elizabeth and her pauper neighbours preferred the independence derived from living in their own homes.