A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE to them a settlement in the parish, and these children had come from London and various other parts of the country. In course of time the numbers of those who had once been appren- , tices had become very great, and it was said that these people were constantly streaming in from Nottinghamshire and Lancashire to Tamworth, their place of legal settlement, to the great annoyance of that town and the burdening of the ratepayers. Tamworth had unfortunately been in the habit of giving relief in aid of wages, but was now discontinuing this practice. In Darlaston the distress had been so great that but for private charity the gross rental of the parish (4,213 in 1815) would have been insufficient for the support of the poor. 166 With the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 the evils of the old system were largely remedied. Rigorous control of parochial affairs by a central board, a uniform system of account-keeping and general adminis- tration, the grouping of parishes in unions with a common workhouse, and the establishment of the workhouse test for the able-bodied these were some of the chief means by which reform was effected, and both expenditure and pauperism declined in Staffordshire as in all other parts of the country. When the commissioners issued their fifth annual report in 1839 they recorded a great improvement in the state of things. New workhouses were completed and in operation at Burton on Trent, Stafford, and Walsall. Others were being built at Leek, Newcastle under Lyme, Uttoxeter, and Wolverhampton, whilst old ones were in operation at Penkridge, Madeley, Seisdon, Stoke upon Trent, Tamworth, and Stone. 167 The treatment of pauper children is now much improved, and very few are being educated in the workhouse itself. The only instance of this at present is the case of Newcastle under Lyme. Wolverhampton is an example of a town where the children are educated in poor-law schools, but under a separate administration from that of the workhouse. At Walsall, West Bromwich, and Lichfield they are taught in poor-law district schools, and in the other parts of the county they attend the ordinary elementary schools. 168 By the middle of the nineteenth century Staffordshire had become thoroughly established as an industrial county, with an ever-increasing population and growing riches, and with the special social and industrial problems presented by such a densely-populated community. The towns grew rapidly, especially in South Staffordshire too rapidly for the provision of adequate machinery to cope with the new conditions as regards sanitation and decent living. In the report of the Midland Mining Commission of 1843 U9 there is a vivid description of the southern coalfield district and its inhabitants as it appeared at that time, a description which with some changes might hold good at the present day : In traversing much of the country included within the above-mentioned boundary of red sandstone [says the writer] the traveller appears never to get out of an interminable village, composed of cottages and very ordinary houses. In some directions he may travel for miles and never be out of sight of two-storied houses, so that the area covered by bricks and mortar must be immense. These houses for the most part are not arranged in "* Rep. on Poor Laws, as above, App. A, 271. 147 fifth Ann. Rep. of Poor Law Commissioners (1839), pp. 1 16-17. Thirty-fourth Ann. Rep. of Local Govt. Board (1904-5), p. 487. 1M Rep. i, vol. xiii. 300
