country, they were generally hunted out and driven home for fear they should become burdens on rates to which they had no title. Such a condition of things went on with little change for nearly two centuries, but the causes which finally brought about a material alteration in the arrangement of pauper relief will be noticed in the context. The erection of workhouses for the different parishes of the kingdom was sanctioned in 1723 by the legislature, and three years later, as learnt from the following extract out of the minute book of the bailiffs of Kirkham, the inhabitants of that town determined to establish one:—
"22 May, 1726:—Mem. That the town of Kirkham was summonsed from
house to house, and the inhabitants unanimously agreed to the setting up of a
workhouse."
The act which decreed the building of workhouses for the
employment of the poor, stated that if any one refused to enter
those houses, or objected to perform his share of labour, no relief
should be apportioned to him. There can be little doubt that
workhouses sprang up at Poulton and in the other parishes of the
Fylde about that date, as well as at Kirkham, but in their cases
there are no bailiffs' registers, or similar records, to fall back upon
for proof as to the accuracy of the surmise, and consequently we
are unable to speak with absolute certainty. In the twenty-second
year of the reign of George III. (1782), it was enacted that
the guardians of the poor should employ the paupers of their
separate parishes in labour on the land at small remuneration,
and that the poor rate should be used only to increase the payment
to a sum large enough for the subsistence of each pauper
thus employed. Country justices, desirous of standing well in
the opinion of the peasantry, were not over scrupulous in the
discharge of their supervisionary functions, and granted or
sanctioned the granting of relief orders without any minute
inquiry into the merits of the cases. Immorality was encouraged
by an allowance from the poor-rate to the mother for each
illegitimate child. Practical responsibility for the proper
administration of the fund rested on no one, and about 1830
"the poor-rate had become public spoil, the ignorant believed it
an inexhaustible source of wealth, which belonged to them; the
brutal bullied the administrators to obtain their share; the
profligate exhibited their bastards, which must be fed; the idle
