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Archiver > ENG-LAN-LEIGH > 2006-06 > 1149165359


From: <>
Subject: Re: [(ENG-LEIGH)] Re: need help with 1699 document
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 8:35:59 -0400


You sir, are a wealth of information. I enjoy reading your responses to others' queries. Best regards. -Steven Leigh
>
> From: Peter Wood <>
> Date: 2006/05/31 Wed PM 04:31:58 EDT
> To:
> Subject: [(ENG-LEIGH)] Re: need help with 1699 document
>
> Hello Linda
>
> Settlement was far from being a social service designed to help poor people
> become settled. It was in effect a system of forcible transportation
> designed to remove poor people from a parish who were likely to be a burden
> on the parish poor rate resources.
>
> There are plenty of sites to find info about Poor Law Sttlement, but the
> following from an Oxford University site sums up Settlement up. I have
> found a couple of Settlement papers for ancestors of mine, and they are
> valuable documents that provide written records of ordinary people who
> would otherwise have passed through life unnoticed apart from baptism,
> marriage and burial.
>
> "In 1662, another highly significant piece of legislation An Act for the
> better Relief of the Poor of this Kingdom (13&14 Car. II c.12) — otherwise
> known as the Settlement Act — was passed. In fact, the principle behind
> this Act was not really new and had its origins in the 1388 Statute of
> Cambridge. The new Settlement Act allowed for the removal from a parish,
> back to their place of settlement, of newcomers whom local justices deemed
> "likely to be chargeable" to the parish poor rates.
>
> A child's settlement at birth was taken to be the same as that of its
> father. At marriage, a woman took on the same settlement as her husband.
> Illegitimate children were granted settlement in the place they were born —
> this often led parish overseers to try and get rid of an unmarried pregnant
> woman before the child was born, for example by her transporting to another
> parish just before the birth, or by paying a man from another parish to
> marry her.
>
> Settlement could be acquired in various ways, for example by renting a
> property for at least £10 a year, but this was well beyond the means of an
> average labourer. If a boy became apprenticed, which could happen from the
> age of seven, his parish of settlement became the place of his
> apprenticeship. Another means of qualifying for settlement in a new parish
> was by being in continuous employment for at least a year. To prevent this,
> hirings were often for a period of 364 days rather than a full year.
> Conversely, labourers might quit their jobs before a year was up in order
> to avoid being effectively trapped in a disagreeable parish."
>
> Peter Wood
>
>
>
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