Wateringbury in debt (1838)

Post date: Oct 04, 2011 5:16:39 PM

Transcription of Parish minutes held at Kent Archives Office.

Parish of Wateringbury . At a meeting of rate payers and owners of property whose claims to be entitled to vote have been duly registered in the rate books of the said parish held pursuant to notice duly published and given at the vestry room in the said parish on Saturday the 30th day of June 1838.

Ian Woodbridge Chairman

It was resolved:

that the sum of £100 be forthwith borrowed by the Churchwardens and Overseers as a fund in contributions for defraying the expenses of the emigration of poor persons having settlement in this parish and being willing to emigrate to be charged upon the rates raised or to be raised for the relief of the poor in this parish and applied under such rules orders and regulations as the Poor Law Commissioners for England and Wales shall in that behalf direct.

And the said Churchwardens and Overseers were directed by the said meeting to borrow such sum of £100 accordingly to be repaid by five equal annual instalments of [£20] each with interest not exceeding 5 per cent per annum.

This was the second recorded occasion of the parish subsidising emigration from Wateringbury.

According to Helen Atkinson's book 'Farewell to Kent: assisted emigration from Kent in the nineteenth century' the people whose emigration to Australia was subsidised by this loan were: John Lamb, his wife and 2 children; John Fielder; and Henry Clout, his wife and children.

The Poor Law Commissioners established by the 1834 Poor Law had in 1835 set out instructions concerning the financing of emigration by parishes: ratepayers of a parish were allowed to borrow funds not exceeding half the yearly rate for the preceding 3 years; money had to be repaid within 5 years; and it could be borrowed from individuals or the Exchequer; the permission of the commissioners was nevertheless required for each scheme.