ALIFE on benefits?

Scandalous. A national disgrace.

Time it was stamped out and we return to the work ethic of the old days.

Let’s go back to 1793 and Phillis Ransome. In that year, this single-mother pauper in Stokesley was awarded threepence a week by the parish. A modest sum – but wait. On the birth of each of her four children, she received a so-called “lying-in”

payment.

Assistance was also given when one of her children contracted smallpox, and again during three spells of personal illness. At other times of difficulty, her children were clothed and her cottage rent paid by the parish. At the age of 72, she received unspecified “relief”

from a church charity, and, still a pauper, she appears, aged 94, in the census of 1851.

If the level of support given to Phillis two centuries ago comes as a surprise, consider a contemporary male pauper in the same market town. Parish records suggest Adam Brittain was the Beau Brummel of paupers.

In 1810, at the height of a great depression during the Napoleonic Wars, Adam was awarded “4½ yards of velveteen, 3½ yards of calico silky”, two shirts, a new “hatt” and new shoes. Within months his wardrobe was renewed with a further two shirts, plus two waistcoats, stockings and a pair of trousers – all new.

For ten years the parish dressed him virtually as a gentleman. In 1818 it paid for “calico, fustin, pockets, tape and buttons”. Within months there followed “trimmings for A Brittain’s britches” and yet another pair of shoes and a new hat.

Phillis and Adam emerge from the mists of time in a fascinating account of poverty in the Stokesley district in late Georgian England – 1755-1834. Doubtless painting a picture common to most rural areas, which means virtually all England at that period, it forms a well-researched booklet by two members of the Stokesley Local History Study Group – Irene Ridley and Daphne Franks.

Aided by vigorous line drawings by a third study group member, Estelle Scott, the booklet records much hardship, hunger and “acute need”. But the prevailing impression is of a community- based welfare state.

Jobseeker’s allowance? One E Pinkney was given a sickle to help him take work. Jane Appleton was supplied with “half a dozen skins to make gloves”. Very impressively, the parish provided a horse and cart for William Webster, “to lead him ling to make brooms”. Other villagers received aid to buy cows and one, already employed at local alum mines, was loaned money for a shovel. At four shillings it surely must have been a silver ceremonial specimen!

The medical aid for Phillis Ransome signals health care. Doctors tendered to provide care for the destitute, one paying the parish £7 a year. But others still couldn’t afford treatment.

Twelve shillings were paid for attention to one man’s “out of joint shoulder”. Surprisingly, “cancer of the breast” was named as such when the large sum of £1 17s 4d was paid to a Darlington doctor for “curing” a Rounton woman of the condition.

Alas, she died the following year. But the concept of “carers” was also well established.

An 1821 award of clothes and other items to a blind man states that Mary Codling “is to have 6s for cleaning him and 9d per week for waiting on him and washing him”. Another woman was reimbursed “for waiting on T Robinson’s wife when she was ill”.

The booklet’s authors estimate that 15 per cent of Stokesley’s residents – just a few hundred – were in receipt of poor relief, a heavy burden for the ratepayers, who provided the money.

Terms such as “great distress”, “great afflictions”

Darlington and Stockton Times:
No help for war veterans

and “almost starving” litter the records of awards. The ranks of the local poor were swollen by an endless stream of vagrants “who passed through Stokesley in their misery”. For these, including discharged, sometimes- wounded soldiers, there was no support.

But the authors also recognise that then, as now, some claimants milked the system.

Noting “one or two” instances where “relief” had been provided “for an inordinately long period, or had appeared more than generous,”

they declare: “That there were those who appear to have come to the conclusion that the world owed them a living.”

In particular, the frequency of “lying-in” payments to mothers bearing a succession of illegitimate children prompts the reflection: “Maybe these girls thought this a way of making a living.”

At least some of the help given to Phillis Ransome bore good fruit. Found an apprenticeship, for which he was given £2 to buy clothes, her son Thomas became a successful farmer.

  • Deprivation & Poverty in Stokesley & District 1755- 1834 by ID Ridley and D Franks (Stokesley Local History Study Group, £6.50 plus £1p&p, from Christine Bainbridge, 44 Cleveland Avenue, Stokesley, Middlesbrough, TS9 5HB)