Resettlement orders (18th and 19th centuries)

Post date: Oct 01, 2012 8:56:13 PM

Resettlement orders, issued by two J.P.s, were a means of moving impoverished people back to their parish of legal settlement which became liable for their maintenance rather than the parish into which they had "intruded". The Poor Relief Act of 1662 (or Law of Settlement and Removal) explicitly made legal the existing practice of removing people before they had actually started claiming poor relief. This was not then reversed until 1795.

The right of legal settlement arose from birth, marriage (women only) or renting property worth more than £10 p.a. From 1691 settlement was also obtained from

• holding parish office

• paying parish rates

• serving an apprenticeship

• being hired into service for a year.

At Kent Archives there is a file reference: P385/13/64-154 in which are to be found some 90 orders in respect of the settlement of people from other parishes into Wateringbury. These are listed in the attached spreadsheet in the order they appear in the file rather than a chronological order. It is of course possible to resort this file in chronological or other (e.g. surname order,parish of origin, etc.).

They cover the years 1741 to 1848 and are unlikely to be fully comprehensive. The 90 orders cover 48 women (without men, sometimes characterised as a "single woman" or "widow" ) and 42 men (26 of whom had wives) and 53 children so making a total of 169 people affected. Most (81 of the 90 orders) of the originating parishes are in Kent with parishes geographically close to Wateringbury, particularly prominent. The 9 orders from other counties are all counties in the South East.

Several family names appear more than once. Most of the orders follow a pre-printed form with blanks filled in by hand. Many give limited background but some, the later ones in particular, give background details (which if there are any are in column M along with names of children, if given). "Single woman" is a frequent description; the description "single woman with child" appears 3 times; and Ann Mitchell is described as "being big with child which is likely to be born a bastard".

Cases which sound interesting include:

• Swan family in 1781 and 1789- is this the same family referred to in Wateringbury Poor resettled in Ditton (1815) ?

• Newman family -is this the Henry Newman (unrelated to George Newman of Wateringbury Revisited ) who was a bell ringer?

• Lamb family- see Wateringbury emigration to Australia

A file at the Kent archives , reference P385/13/155-294, includes some 129 records whereby people then in Wateringbury, whereby people were resettled out of Wateringbury and back to the parish of their last legal settlement. These, together with 9 cases included in the file reference P385/13/64-154 (making 138 orders in total) are shown on a second sheet of the spreadsheet ("From Wateringbury").

The 138 Resettlement orders out of Wateringbury cover 92 men (65 with wife) and 46 women plus 126 children making a total of 329 people all together. The time period covered is from 1723 to 1863 but are possibly not comprehensive. There is a skewing of orders to the winter period with less in summer.

In the year 1830 some 28 people were resettled away from Wateringbury as a result of 12 separate orders. This was nearly 3% of the 1831 census population of 1,109. 1830 was the peak year of rural misery and resulted in the Swing riots in many places in Kent although no riots are known to have affected Wateringbury.

The resettlement orders are summarised in the bar chart below in 5 year periods :

Overall the 329 people ordered out of Wateringbury in this period was nearly double the known number, 169, ordered back by other parishes. This could be due to

• the lack of complete records.

• the greater energy/harshness of Wateringbury's churchwardens.

• the greater attractiveness of Wateringbury as a place for migrants to come.