Those Places Thursday - The State of the Poor

This isn't about a particular place, but about a very useful source for family and local history. I was completely unaware of this until the summer school I attended last week in Oxford.

 'The State of the Poor, or An History of the Labouring Classes in England, from the Conquest to the Present Period; in which are particularly considered, Their Domestic Economy, with respect to their Diet, Dress, Fuel and Habitation; And the Various Plans which, from time to time, have been Proposed and Adopted, for the Relief of the Poor'  by Sir Frederick Morton Eden was published in 1797, in three volumes. I have only been able to find Volume III on Google Books, but original and facsimile copies are widely available in libraries, according to Worldcat.

It is not a comprehensive survey of every parish in England (and Wales - despite the title it includes some Welsh places), but Sir Frederick selected a few parishes from each county for detailed examination. The counties and parishes in Volume III are:

Surrey: Epsom, Esher, Farnham, Reigate, Walton
Sussex: Burwash, Chailey, Peasmarsh, Winchelsea
Warwickshire: Alcester, Birmingham, Coventry, Mollington, Southam, Sutton Colefield (sic)
Westmoreland: Kendal, Kirkby Lonsdale, Orton, Underbarrow
Wiltshire: Bradford, Seend, Trowbridge
Worcestershire:  Evesham, Inkborough, Worcester
Yorkshire: Bradford, Burton, Ecclesfield, Great Driffield, Halifax, Kingston upon Hull, Leeds, Market Wrighton, Settle, Sheffield, Skipton, Southowram, Pocklington, Stokesley, Thornton

Denbighshire: Llanferras, Wrexham
Pembrokeshire: Narberth
Radnorshire: Knighton, Presteigne

Winchelsea, Sussex

Although most of the parochial reports are concerned with describing the occupations and incomes of the inhabitants, there are some lists of names, too. The entry for Kendal includes a list of the 'out-poor' in 1795, amounting to several dozen individuals and families, as well as the amounts they received. There is an even longer and more detailed list for Bradford in Wiltshire, Epsom and Halifax.

 

Parish registers online

FamilySearch is the biggest and best-known site for parish register indexes, but it isn't the only one.

A number of English counties have Online Parish Clerks, volunteer transcribers who 'adopt' parishes and  put the results online, free of charge.

They are all works in progress, but worth a look if your county of interest is listed here.

Cornwall
Dorset
Essex
Hampshire
Kent
Lancashire
Somerset
Sussex
Warwickshire
Wiltshire

The Online Parish Clerks have are separate sites for each county, but another site worth searching is FREEREG, which includes transcriptions from many counties in England, Wales and Scotland.

Many printed parish register transcripts can be downloaded from The Internet Archive including publications by Phillimore and Co, and some parish register societies.

Better yet are free digitised images of parish registers, and you will find these for some parishes in Kent and Essex. They are not indexed, although you may find indexes elsewhere, such as on FamilySearch or Online Parish Clerks. History House - dip into the history of Essex links to digitised images of some parish registers in the Essex Record Office. Registers from the area round the Medway Towns in Kent are on the Medway Archives CityArk site. This is not the most user-friendly site I have ever used, to say the least, but given the choice, I'll take inconvenient but content-rich over pretty but empty every time! For anyone not familiar with the term 'Medway Towns', it is the area round Rochester and Chatham; Chatham includes not only Chatham Royal Naval Dockyard, but is also a garrison town, so it is interesting for anyone with ancestors in the Army, Navy and Royal Marines, who may have been stationed there at some time. The Mid-Kent Marriage Index 1754-1911 is a useful resource for another part of the county.