Poor Relief in Barwick PART 1 THE BARWICK-IN-ELMET GILBERT INCORPORATION Back to the Main Historical Society page
Back to the Barwicker Contents page

Poor Relief in Barwick
PART 1 THE BARWICK-IN-ELMET GILBERT INCORPORATION


Barwicker No 28
December 1992


For two centuries and more, the relief of the poor was administered under a system set up in the reign of Elizabeth I by an Act of Parliament passed in 1601, whereby each parish or township was made responsible for those people unable to support themselves. Each Easter the township appointed 'overseers of the poor' who collected a tax (the poor rate) from all occupiers of land and property and they used the money "for and towards the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind and such other among them being poor and not able to work". The overseers submitted written accounts of their work but those that remain for Barwick give little idea of the number of poor people relieved and the size of the payments made to them. The poor were relieved in their own homes, that is by 'out relief', but later the townships were allowed to house them communally in 'workhouses' or 'poor houses', often specially built for the purpose.

This option was considered in Barwick when a vestry meeting on 21 April 1765 empowered "four parishioners to take a house and make it a proper place for a workhouse". Nothing appears to have been done however until 22 April 1781 when the question was raised again.

"We find that the Poor rates of the township have of late years greatly increased, by which we find ourselves greatly oppressed. Therefore we do hereby agree and with the consent of the Lord of the Manor, and owners in the parish, to take in 5 acres of common at a proper place between the Town of Barwick and High Rake beck for the benefit of the poor; and for to build a workhouse upon, which seems to us, that it would be of great advantage to help to lower the Poor rates of the Parish. And as the Lord of the Manor has subscribed 10 guineas, other principal owners we hope will subscribe towards building the said poorhouse, by being applied to by the parishioners. And we do finally agree that the land be taken in; and that the house be built immediately by the Overseers of the Poor ."


The house was built and the overseers' accounts show that the total cost of the building was £145.18.2. Of this sum £54.12.0 was voluntarily contributed and the remainder was raised by an assessment on the rates. The building is situated on the south side of Rakehill Road, opposite Rakehill Farm which was built many years later. Over the intervening years, the building has undergone many alterations and extensions, and recent renovations have converted it into three dwellings. We know very little about the workhouse in the first forty years of its existence. The church records show the death of old people and the baptism of children of single mothers living at the workhouse, so it must have housed these categories of the poor.

A radical change occurred in the method of poor relief in the district when in 1822, the Barwick-in-Elmet Gilbert Incorporation was formed. This took advantage of an Act of Parliament introduced in 1782 by Thomas Gilbert M.P. which allowed parishes and townships to unite to organise their poor relief. Each of these incorporations or unions had a workhouse administered by a Board of Guardians, who were elected by each township and confirmed in office by the local Justices of the Peace. The Gilbert Act required that out-relief also should be administered by the Board of Guardians but by the 1830's this function was left to the individual townships. The Act envisaged that able-bodied paupers (what we should now call the unemployed) should be found work in the township, but this was found impossible to implement.

Only a small proportion of parishes in the country united under the Gilbert Act and by 1834 the number of Gilbert unions was only 68. However in the districts to the north, east and south of Leeds there were four very large Gilbert unions namely Great Preston (established 1809), Carlton near Otley (1818), Barwick-in- Elmet (1822) and Great Ouseburn (1828). They contained more than 160 townships with a population of 110,041. Before a township could be admitted to a Gilbert union, the ratepayers had to show support for the change at a vestry meeting. The agreements were then presented in legal form at the West Riding Quarter Sessions. Almost all of the submissions for the four large West Riding Unions were presented by Richard Lumb, then living in Swillington but of an old Barwick family, who was the Constable of one of the Skyrack divisions of the West Riding.

In the early 1830s, the Barwick-in-Elmet Gilbert Incorporation contained 43 parishes and townships, namely:

Acaster Selby,Ackton, Alwoadley, Appleton Roebuck, Askham Bryan,
Barkston Ash, Barwick- in-Elmet, Bilbrough, Bilton (in Ainsty), Bolton Percy, Bramham-cum- Oglethorpe,
Cattal, Catterton, Cawood, Clifford-cum-Boston,
East Keswick,
Featherstone, Ferry Fryston,
Great Ribston-with-Walshford,
Hunsingore, Hutton Wandesley,
Kirk Deighton, Kirk (Church) Fenton,
Long Marston,
Newton Kyme-with-Toulston, Normanton,
Pontefract Park, Purston Jaglin,
Ryther,
Seacroft, Shadwell , Steeton, Sutton,
Tadcaster East, Thorneville, Thorp Arch, Tockwith,
Ulleskelf,
Walton, Whitwood, Wigton, Wike, and Wilstrop.

The list shows that the townships did not form a compact group but were scattered over a wide area and were interspersed with townships in other Gilbert unions, particularly that of Great Preston, or no union at all. By no means could it be described as a geographically-convenient union.

There was a meeting of the Board of Guardians every month at the workhouse to inspect the accounts and to enable each township to pay its contribution to the running costs of the workhouse. Every six months there was a special meeting when business of more than usual importance was transacted. The records of resolutions passed at these meetings have been preserved along with the workhouse accounts in the archives of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society. The 'Visitor' or Chairman of the Board of Guardians from when the union was established in 1822 until his departure from Barwick in 1852 was the Rector, Rev. William Hiley Bathurst.


Rev. William Hiley Bathurst


He appears to have been most conscientious in carrying out his duties. It is a sign of the importance of the post that three influential men in the community were proposed for his successor: John Squire Gray of Morwick Hall; Thomas Crosland, the Scholes farmer and prominent Methodist, and the new Rector, Rev. Charles Augustus Hope, who was elected to the post.

David Pickles, the master or governor of the workhouse had served in the Huddersfield workhouse before coming to Barwick in 1832, following the death from cholera of his predecessor, William Gibson. He and his wife were in charge of the day-to-day running of the house and they were paid £25 per annum with rations. They supervised the cooking, washing, cleaning and other activities of the inmates. They kept the nominal roll of the inmates and checked the supply and use of provisions. He resigned in 1851, presumably on grounds of age and the guardians appointed first John Heptonstall, but on receipt of unfavourable reports about him, they cancelled the appointment and selected Richard Bustard in his place.

The Board of Guardians appointed one of their number, George Booth, a Seacroft farmer, to act as the treasurer and to collect the contributions from the townships, pay the salaries and bills, and keep the books. A salary of £10 per annum was allowed under the Act. The account books were inspected by the guardians, signed by the visitor but not audited by the magistrates as was required by the Act.

At the monthly meetings, the guardians paid their townships' contributions to the upkeep of the workhouse. The workhouse account book shows that the expenditure which was recorded monthly, was divided into two types, namely 'general' and 'provisions'. The former included the rent of the workhouse, salaries, repairs, replacement of fittings and furnishings, legal expenses and the repayment of loans. To cover the general expenses, each township paid a sum in proportion to its average expenditure on the poor for the three years before it joined the union. This provision was included in the agreements which established the unions. For Barwick township, this sum was 13s-5d per month. If expenditure rose, the amounts paid by the townships could be increased to one-and-a-half times, twice or occasionally three times the normal monthly sum. It was a system which did not put much strain on the arithmetical skill of the treasurer.

The provisions total covered the monthly expenditure on food and fuel. This was paid only by those townships with inmates in the workhouse during that month. It was of the order of 2s-6d to 3s-0d per inmate per week. Tenders were sought and contracts were made for the supply of meat, flour, groceries and coal. On several occasions, the contracts were withdrawn because the goods supplied did not come up to specification.

Much of the information concerning the Barwick workhouse has been obtained from the records of a parliamentary committee of 1844-5, at which evidence was presented by Rector Bathurst; George Booth' David Pickles Christopher Todd, the Guardian of Steeton; and Randall Gossip, the lord of the manor of Thorp Arch. The latter was a local magistrate and his activities provide us with important information about poor relief at that time. As the only local critic of the Barwick Incorporation to give evidence, he raised many issues, particularly with regard to the treatment of the inmates of Barwick workhouse, which might have been ignored but for his intervention. The parliamentary report contains the following extract:

The Governor (of the Barwick workhouse) appears to have been placed on several occasions in very great difficulties whilst dealing with the extraordinary proceedings of a neighbouring justice, (who) was the one person in the district that had shown any hostility to the Incorporation. The Governor stated that very great irregularities had been committed by the magistrate during one of his visits to the Workhouse which might have led to the most serious riots and disturbances among the inmates."


The workhouse was leased by Barwick township to the Incorporation at the latter's foundation in 1822, when small additions were made. In 1845, the workhouse had five bedrooms and a small chamber in which a bed could be put if required. Access to these was by two staircases, one for men and one for women. In the 1820's and 1830's, the number of inmates rarely exceeded 40, but by 1844 the average number was 52 and the greatest number recorded was 70. At the time of the 1843 enquiry there were 27 men, 17 women, one grown boy and 21 children sleeping in 27 beds. In 1849, following a report by the Medical Officer, it was recommended that no more than 56 adults and 12 children should be admitted. There were two large day rooms for men and women inmates and a kitchen with two 'furnaces' (probably stoves). Some of the bedrooms were used as day rooms also. The master and his wife had another kitchen and other accommodation. There was no bath or laundry, but the workhouse had a brew house and a 'dead house (mortuary). It had about one and a half acres of garden attached and a single open yard. It was not fenced in until 1844.

In 1834, parliament made a much-delayed change in the laws by which the poor of the country were relieved when the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed. This brought in the New Poor Law, by which parishes and townships were to be grouped into geographically-convenient unions, administered by a board of elected guardians and operating a system of regulations laid down by the Poor Law Commissioners in London. Each union was to have a workhouse where the inmates led a spartan existence, designed to deter others from seeking relief.

In the north, there was much opposition to the new laws, particularly in the textile areas of Lancashire and the West Riding but after a few years much of this resistance crumbled. The Poor Law Commissioners had no power to dissolve the Gilbert unions but they attempted to persuade or bully the unions into dissolving and the number was reduced from 68 in 1834 to 14 in the early 1840s. However, in this area the four large Gilbert Incorporations of Barwick, Great Preston, Great Ouseburn and Carlton successfully opposed this blackmail and they refused to be dissolved. Parliamentary enquiries and committees investigated the situation, pro- and anti-Gilbert petitions were circulated but the unions stood firm. No further attempts at reform was made for many years. The Barwick-in-Elmet Gilbert Incorporation had won its fight to keep poor relief in local hands.

ARTHUR BANTOFT


Back to the top
Back to the Main Historical Society page
Back to the Barwicker Contents page