Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The project aimed to reconstruct the lives of paupers using the unusually rich poor law records for St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster across the long-eighteenth century. The main objectives were: 1. To discover and analyse the characteristics of recipients of both indoor and outdoor relief with a view to understanding their total life situation, the frequency with which they received relief, and the duration of that relief. 2. To analyse the changing experience of children and old people within the welfare system. 3. Wherever possible, to uncover the familial and life-cycle circumstances of the pauper population, and how alterations in these circumstances were related to poor law payments and interactions with the institutions of relief. 4. To produce some basic statistical measures of poor relief including long-run patterns of expenditure on the poor. 5. To compare material derived from the pauper biographies of Westminster with those from other settlements and parishes, both in the capital and elsewhere.

Main Topics:

Five Access databases and one spreadsheet derived from the poor law records of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster, covering the period 1724-1824 relating to the life histories of c. 56,000 paupers in the parish. These record a variety of measures of poor relief, including all admissions and discharges to the large parish workhouse, outdoor pensions paid to various categories of paupers, many instances of outdoor relief (in cash and kind), and over 12,000 settlement examinations, providing rich and diverse biographical details of paupers who had a right of settlement in St. Martins.

No sampling (total universe)

Transcription of existing materials

Compilation or synthesis of existing material