Early Civil Registration - registrars at last for Huddersfield

Huddersfield was one of the places most actively hostile to the imposition of the New Poor Law in 1834, and this in turn delayed the implementation of civil registration there. By 1837 Huddersfield had already held out for three years, and it was not until early in 1838 that a Clerk to the Guardians was finally appointed and the business of the Union and the Registration District could begin at last. The delaying tactics of the Huddersfield guardians did not take the form of mere passive resistance. Time and time again the guardians met and adjourned their meetings without electing a clerk, but the participants did not merely shuffle their papers and file out, the meetings ended in uproar.

At the meeting in June 1937 when a Clerk to the Guardians was due to be elected, a large hostile crowd assembled outside the Druid's Arms. Fearing a riot, the High Constable had applied to the magistrates for the military to be called in, but the application was refused. The protesters were addressed by Richard Oastler, a leading figure among the opponents of the new law. Another speaker, Mr Buchanan, suggested that they all march to the workhouse, where the meeting was being held, to confront the Poor Law Commissioner who was due to attend, then return to the Druid's Arms. This did not turn out well. The crowd forced open the workhouse gates, missiles and abuse were thrown, and some of them tried to force the chairman of the Guardians into the river. Others searched part of the house, looking in vain for the Commissioner, and when they were unsuccessful removed a quantity of food instead.
Mr Oastler tried to restore order and get them to return to the Druid's Arms, without success.

Meanwhile inside the meeting, the Guardians again voted not to elect a clerk, which news elicited a cheer from the crowd. They also agreed to adjourn yet again, to ask the Poor Law Commissioners if they could elect a clerk and divide the Union into districts for registration purposes only. Eventually the crowd dispersed, reconvened in the Market Place, and brought the day to a conclusion by burning an effigy of the chairman of the Guardians, Mr Swaine.

In the event the Clerk to the Guardians, who was also Superintendent Registrar, was not appointed until the following year. This was not by any means the end of all opposition to the New Poor Law, as testified by the Clerk, Cookson Stephenson Floyd, in his long and detailed account to the Poor Law Commissioners of the meeting held in May 1838. One man tried to pull the chair out from under the chairman, and the minute book was pulled from the clerk's grasp, and at the time of his writing was in the custody of the Constable of Huddersfield. Mr Floyd wrote

'My situation as Clerk is anything but a Bed of roses as you must be aware for in addition to a heap of round abuse I am now charged by the opposition of gross partiality, and consequent unfitness for the office'           

The account of the first meeting appeared in the Leeds Mercury of 10 June 1837, and Cookson Stephenson Floyd's letter is part of the second volume of Poor Law Union Correspondence for Huddersfield (MH 12/15064), which also contains the poster above.

 

Early Civil Registration - the Huddersfield registrars

In my last post I mentioned a letter from an aspiring candidate, hoping to be appointed registrar of births and deaths for Holmfirth. At the time I had only looked at the first page of the letter, so I didn't know the man's name, and whether or not he was appointed. Well, the wait is over, and I can report that the man in question was Richard Harrison, a grocer - registrars often combined registration duties with their existing occupations, which in his case was that of grocer. He had previously written to the Guardians offering his services in June 1837.

There is a great deal of correspondence in the file (Ref MH 12/15063 - Poor Law Union Correspondence: Huddersfield 1834-1837) including several letters regarding registrars' appointments. Quite a number of people were keen to become registrars, especially for the sub-district of Huddersfield itself. The file contained some letters from the applicants themselves, and many testimonials with long lists of signatures from local residents in support of the candidates. Richard Harrison had written his first application in June 1837, but the Guardians had refused to elect a clerk at their meetings in June and September so may have thought that a reminder was in order when he wrote for a second time in November.

The four men who competed for the Huddersfield registrarship were Joseph Battye, parish clerk, William Reed, linen-draper, Thomas Pitt (occupation unknown) and the successful candidate William Bradley, auctioneer. William Bradley and Richard Harrison were also appointed as the two registrars of marriages for the whole of Huddersfield registration district.

There were nine other sub-districts in Huddersfield, and when the Guardians finally appointed registrars of births and deaths, the following men were the successful candidates:

Almondbury - Joseph Dean, master of the poorhouse
Kirkheaton - George S Dyson, schoolmaster
Kirkburton - James Binns, clothier
New Mill - John Ibberson, wool weaver and spinner
Honley - Charles James Lancaster, relieving officer
Meltham - Joseph Taylor, clothier
Lockwood - Rev Francis William Dyer
Slaithwaite - John Roberts, surgeon
Golcar- John Wilkinson, clothier


 

Civil Registration in Yorkshire - update

TNA Ref: MH 12/15063

I haven't had time to do any real research on this yet, but yesterday I mentioned what I had found to some colleagues, including the wonderful Dr Paul Carter, who knows a thing or two about the Poor Law! If you haven't already discovered this for yourself, try listening to his podcasts. He confirmed that Huddersfield was one of the places kicking hardest against the imposition of Poor Law Unions. Once they had been forced to set up a Union, they simply refused to elect a Clerk to the Guardians, which effectively meant that the Union could not conduct any business. It seems that there was nothing in the Act that compelled them to do so. Ingenious.

I managed a quick peek at the first volume of Poor Law Union Correspondence for Huddersfield (Ref: MH 12/15063) and I immediately came across this letter from an applicant for the post of registrar of births and deaths for Holmfirth:

'Understanding that it is your intention to appoint Registrars of Births and Deaths for the Districts within the Huddersfield Union, I beg leave again most respectfully to offer myself as a Candidate for the Holmfirth District'

The letter is dated 29 November 1837! I only had a few minutes to spare so I just had time to make a quick copy of the letter - I didn't even have time to turn it over and find out the name of the writer, or whether he was successful - oh, the suspense! I will go back and have a proper look as soon as I can.

As an addendum to my previous post, when I checked my notes I found that for the March quarter of 1838 there is only ONE birth entry for Huddersfield, but that has the volume reference 19, while Huddersfield is in volume 22. This is quite clear in the index page itself (the indexes for this quarter are typed) but I think it is probably a mistake, either on the part of the typist, or of the clerk who wrote the original index page in 1838. Volume 19 includes the registration district of Macclesfield, and the page reference (99) does indeed relate to Macclesfield. According to FreeBMD, there are nine entries on that page giving Macclesfield as the district, and since there can be up to 10 entries on a page, my theory is at least plausible. There is also a rogue entry for Bolton, but I don't know what explanation is for that!

 

Civil Registration - early problems in Yorkshire

York - Bootham Bar

Every new system takes some getting used to, and as new systems go, the introduction of Civil Registration in England and Wales was a pretty big one. Most of us know that a number of births went unregistered in the early years, for a variety of reasons. There was some under-registration of deaths, too. People went to church to get married just as they had always done, and may not even have been aware that the paperwork was different from 1 July 1837 onwards. Going to a registrar to give details of a birth or death was a completely new experience, however, and it took a while before everyone got the hang of it.

Some people actively refused to register the births of their children, claiming that a Church of England baptism would suffice, and the law was certainly a little unclear on this point. This disobedience was encouraged in a few places by parish clergy, and the registers of Home Office correspondence contain many letters from exasperated registrars complaining about them. They usually emphasised that these were isolated cases, and that they had no problems with other parishes in their districts.

Whatever the reasons for the low rate of registration at first, things picked up after a shaky start in the first two quarters, as this table from the First Annual Report of the Registrar-General shows:

The 'difficult' parishes were spread around the county, although Yorkshire had its fair share, but there was another problem that was particularly relevant to Yorkshire; registration districts were based on the Poor Law Unions that had been established in 1834, but in some areas the unions had still not been formed by 1837, many of them in Yorkshire. Home Office correspondence also includes the following:

'Draft of proposed letter from S M Phillipps, Home Office, to each of the magistrates of the Huddersfield Division about the non-implementation of the legislation for the registration of births, marriages and deaths, resulting from the failure to elect a clerk to the guardians. The Registrar General will ask the Poor Law Commissioners to appoint registrars and assign registration districts and he will put the created districts under neighbouring superintendent registrars. The Home Secretary wishes the magistrates to act in their ex officio capacity as guardians and participate in the election of a clerk (Ref: HO 73/54 ff29-32)'

As it happens, Huddersfield was also one of places where the registrar, once appointed, had problems with a number of people refusing to register. In fairness to the clergy, he does not mention that the opposition had anything to do with the Church, but it certainly was organised, with a number of men defying the law, because '...and several others, now believe nothing can be done to compel them' . One of them, Charles Horsfall, even threatened him:

'Horsfall G-d d--med the Act and those who made it - d--med my soul to Hell, threatened to knock my d--m'd soul out of me, and to throw me neck and heels out of his Castle and held his fists in my face &c &c &c...I think he, of all the refusers, ought to be persecuted, for he is quite a great man among the disturbers of this neighbourhood' (Ref: HO 39/5)

Now that parish registers from the West Yorkshire Archives Service are online at Ancestry.co.uk I thought that it would be interesting to compare baptisms with entries in the GRO birth indexes to see who didn't register births, and to see if there was any pattern to it. Yes, this is the kind of thing I think is a fun pastime for a damp bank holiday weekend, sad but true. I had barely started on this when I discovered something rather surprising - there are some registration districts for which there are NO ENTRIES in the first one or two quarters of Civil Registration, and nearly half of them are in Yorkshire. This is probably due to the late formation of Unions, enforced by the Registrar General for registration purposes, but it will take quite a bit more research to find out for certain. I also noted a few districts where only a tiny number of events were registered. Here are the details of what I found for Yorkshire registration districts:

Huddersfield - no births or deaths for Sep or Dec 1837
Rotherham - 1 birth and no deaths for Sep 1837
Sculcoates - no births or deaths for Sep or Dec 1837
Skirlaugh - 4 births and 8 deaths for Sep 1837
Thorne - 2 births and 10 deaths for Sep 1837
York - no births or deaths for Sep 1837

There were five districts in the rest of England:

Kensington - 1 birth for Sep 1837
Matlock  - no births or deaths for Sep or Dec 1837
Seisden - no births for Sep 1837
West Ward - 1 birth for Sep 1837
Wolstanton - no births and 1 death for Sep 1837, 1 birth and 3 deaths for Dec 1837

The remainder were in Wales:

Corwen - no births for Sep 1837
Knighton - 2 births and 3 deaths for Sep 1837
Longtown  - no births or deaths for Sep or Dec 1837, no deaths for Mar

There are  no problems with marriages - well, actually there are, but that's a different story altogether. But marriages were recorded from day one, and copies were collected by Superintendent Registrars to be sent on to the GRO. They did not involve the registrars of births and deaths,  the absence of whom seems to be at the root of the missing quarters detailed above.