POOR RELIEF IN A WEST COUNTRY VILLAGE, 1786-1906
A STUDY AND A CONTRAST
The Poor Law is in the melting-pot. Experts, of widely divergent views, are struggling for the handle of the ladle, and no one can guess what will come out. Meanwhile the volume of articles, pamphlets, and disquisitions of all sorts upon social subjects is growing at a prodigious rate, and there is some danger lest, in the clash of opinions, we should lose sight of plain facts. The ordinary man, with whom the decision must ultimately rest, is inclined to be weary of the conflict of authorities, and to say: "Who will show us any good?" The need of the moment would appear to be to escape from the tangle of conflicting sociology and economics by which the whole matter is overlaid, and to return to the simpler aspects of the question, which must be intelligible even to the "man in the street."
A study of the question in a single village, where the issues are simple and direct, and the facts concrete and clear, would appear to meet this need to some extent. And it is with that object that the following short sketch has been traced and put together.
The village in question is situated in a purely rural district in the West Country, and contained a population of about 800 at the end of the eighteenth century. The earliest poor-book still extant dates
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