The poor in crisis: price shocks, mortality surges, economic depression, bankruptcies – and warfare: London “crises” and

a parish workhouse, 1725-1824

Jeremy Boulton (jeremy.boulton@ncl.ac.uk) , 'Coping with Crisis Conference: Re-evaluating

the role of crises in economic and social history', Durham University, 26th July 2013.

‘Crisis’?A vitally important or decisive stage in the progress of anything; a turning-point; also, a state of affairs in which a decisive change for better or worse is imminent; now applied esp. to times of difficulty, insecurity, and suspense in politics or commerce

Historians tend to define a crisis more loosely as an unusually stressful or disrupted state of affairs.

Many types of historical crisis don’t involve any imminent turning point (such as crisis mortality) and don’t necessarily serve as a decisive stage in progress or development...

Historians love crises

They can’t get enough of them

1773 hits on a title word ‘crisis’ in the Bibliography of British and Irish History (and another 189 for ‘crises’)

Historical ‘crises’ can be political, financial, ones of identity, agrarian, demographic, professional, sexual, philosophical, religious, military, femininity, humanitarian, parliamentary, dynastic, subsistence, feudalism, constitutional, mercantile, economic, industrial…

Short term crisis shocks are the subject of this paper

To what extent do the workhouse admission registers reflect the various crises that best eighteenth-century London?

Might they provide historians with another way to measure the incidence of crises in the past?

Horwood’s map 1799: detail of workhouse siteRocque’s Map, 1746

Number of workhouse inmates over time

17251729

17331737

17411745

17491753

17571761

17651769

17731777

17811785

17891793

17971801

18051809

18131817

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Average number of inmates in workhouse

Average number of inmates in workhouse

Front of Workhouse Hemmings Row 1871

Front of Workhouse, Dukes Court 1871

The poor in crisis...The idea here is to use the detailed admission register for the workhouse to attempt to measure the responsiveness to ‘crisis’ in Georgian London

Treating the register as a time series which records the personal crises that afflicted 86,489 individuals and caused them to be admitted to the workhouse between 1725 and 1824

The workhouse was, throughout our period, a mixed general workhouse -admitted a cross section of men, women and children

Workhouses were multi-functional: medical services, shelter, food and drink but also disciplinary, deterrent, restrictive and moralistic

It must be remembered that we are here talking only about ‘indoor relief’ – thousands of payments were made each year – in most years – to the ‘outdoor poor’ and the balance between the two forms of relief was not constant

Why were individuals admitted?How? Individuals were admitted by individual churchwardens and overseers, by JPs and local vestrymen, by the Board of Guardians or were brought to the House by other parish officers

When? Admissions were rare on Sundays, but otherwise spread evenly across the week

Why? Only 18% of admissions have some reason or comment against their admission

%Pregnancy or born in workhouse 5,678 36.3%Settlement related 5,848 37.3%Admitted by parish officers 997 6.4%Foundling or abandoned 348 2.2%Medical condition 1,069 6.8%Inmate personal details 1,639 10.5%Admitted for diet or lodging 79 0.5%Total 15,658 100.0%

Reasons for admission to the workhouse suggest a host of different variables

17251728

17311734

17371740

17431746

17491752

17551758

17611764

17671770

17731776

17791782

17851788

17911794

17971800

18031806

18091812

18151818

18210

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600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

WH admissionsFive year moving av-erage

Annual admissions into St Martin’s Workhouse 1725-1823 (i.e. The flow, as opposed to the stock)

17251729

17331737

17411745

17491753

17571761

17651769

17731777

17811785

17891793

17971801

18051809

18131817

18210

200

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0

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WH admissionsBricklayer's labourer RW index

No close correlation between long term movements of ‘real wages’ of London building labourers and the annual totals of admissions...

Nb. Falling RW after 1760 are associated with a rise in WH admissions (facilitated by the 1770-2 rebuilding) but then with a fall in admissions until the early 19th century - i.e. increasing hardship in the late eighteenth century was associated with fewer, not more, WH admissions...

We are interested in short term crises... Crises are (most commonly) expressed as annual fluctuations

The trick here is obviously to identify relatively sharp fluctuations – usually expressed as large deviations from an average figure

This is the approach taken by most London historians...

A summary table of the various types of annual ‘crisis’ helps to sort out possible annual fluctuations

Arguably some of the ‘crises’ (particularly the mortality crises) would have been scoffed at by people living in earlier periods...

Many had no immediate impact on WH admissions

Identifying the responsiveness of annual WH admissions to the multiplicity of metropolitan ‘crises’ is complex

Different streams - or perhaps ‘pipelines’ - of human misery could easily be submerged beneath others

As an exercise, for example, consider the impact of military recruitment

London was an important recruiting ground for both the army and the navy... And the period was one of frequent large scale warfare

Warfare tightened the London labour market and clearly impacted on WH admissions of males of military age

17251728

17311734

17371740

17431746

17491752

17551758

17611764

17671770

17731776

17791782

17851788

17911794

17971800

18031806

18091812

0

100,000

200,000

300,000

400,000

500,000

600,000

0

10

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Navy borne

Army Establishment

Five year average of Males 16-29

Dips during war and modest peaks during demobilisation...

17251728

17311734

17371740

17431746

17491752

17551758

17611764

17671770

17731776

17791782

17851788

17911794

17971800

18031806

18091812

0

100,000

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600,000

0

5

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Navy borne

Army Establishment

Five year moving average of SR admissions 16-29

The impact is clearer still when one looks at the changing SR of WH admissions – the heavy female advantage increases during the four periods of warfare

Hardship and the chance of personal crises were – of course – seasonal. This truism is also reflected in WH admission registers...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 120

50

100

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Admissions per day by month, 1740-1823

Admissions per day by month, 1740-1823

However, the fine grained nature of the WH admissions data allow us to investigate whether we can detect significant monthly ‘crises’

172517291734173817411745174917531756176017641768177117751779178317861790179417981801180518091813181618200

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

Workhouse admissions per monthFive month moving average

172517281733173617391743174617491752175617591762176517691772177517781782178517881791179517981801180418081811181418171821-60%

-40%

-20%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Monthly admissions - percentage deviation from five month moving av-erage

Clearly a lot of stochastic noise

Technique does allow us to identify some monthly peaks in admission

Temperature extremes...

JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC0.00

2.00

4.00

6.00

8.00

10.00

12.00

14.00

16.00

18.00Chart Title

CET average monthly temperatures 1725-1825

Table 1 Months of unusually large variation from five monthly moving average of admissionsAdmission peaks of 40% or more Admission troughs of 40% or moreNovember 1725 January, 1795* July, 1727January, 1740* May, 1805 April, 1805June, 1745 November, 1805 June, 1822April, 1759 October, 1821October, 1760October, 1766January, 1767*May, 1769January, 1776*January, 1793*Unusually low average monthly temperature in CET data. Nb. Not all relatively cold months produced surges in the admissions data. Of 14 sharp monthly admission peaks, four were corresponded exactly with unusually cold January months.The November 1725 peak is an artifact of the opening of the workhouse, the reasons for the other monthly peaks are not as yet clear.

Conclusions:

To say that the pattern of personal misfortune superimposed on annual and monthly crises produces a complex mix is an understatement

Some variables had little tangible effect – local rainfall had little impact (there seems no obvious link between monthly admissions and monthly rainfall data)

Some variables are difficult to reconstruct – surges of local regulative activity or changes in local admissions policy

Finer-grained analysis might well throw up more associations

Cold winters, high prices, local mortality and warfare have relatively clear impacts on workhouse admission totals

That said, it was rare for all types of ‘crisis’ to coincide in any one year

Some crises had little immediate measurable impact on workhouse admissions – some might have had a lagged effect (e.g. bankruptcies) on sub sections of the population)

Warfare could reduce the number of people/alter the gender balance of those admitted into the workhouse