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Emigration Learning Resource 3

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Poor Relief problems in a West Sussex parish lead to a radical solution: 38 local people paid to emigrate to America in 1832   

Suggested age groups: KS3, Lifelong learners

Subject areas: History, Literacy, Numeracy, Drama, Art

CONTEXT

Below is a summary from West Sussex Record Office’s Sussex Poor Law Records printed catalogue (ref. Lib 5616):

  • Laws passed during the 16th and 17th centuries made the parish responsible for looking after the poor.  Each parish (the area served by the parish church) had to appoint an Overseer of the Poor.  It was the job of the Overseer to collect money from residents, called the Poor Rate. The resulting money, Poor Relief, was given to local people who needed it. 
  • In 1601 the Poor Relief Act was passed and remained in place for over 200 years.
  • Each year an Overseer of the Poor was elected.  It was this person’s responsibility:
    • to set the children and able-bodied poor to work
    • raise a tax on the parishioners to buy stock and tools for this purpose
    • help those poor paupers unable to work
  • Poor children were apprenticed.
  • Poor houses for the aged and infirm were built on parish waste ground.
  • In the 18th century various amendments to the laws were passed to address issues caused by growing numbers of poor people and increasing amounts needed to fund their relief.
  • The parish rate was paid for by the middle and upper classes raised locally. These classes had growing suspicions that they were paying the poor to be lazy and avoid work.
  • On 27th April 1832, the Aldingbourne Parish Rate Book and Vestry Minute Book recorded “An Account of the expenses attending the Emigration to New York in America”.
  • Aldingbourne is a parish 5 miles east of Chichester and just north of of South Bersted. Westergate, Lidsey and Norton were hamlets within Aldingbourne parish.
  • In 1801 Aldingbourne had a population of 725 and by 1831 this had grown to 833.
  • In 1826 Aldingbourne paid out £305 13s and 6d in Poor Relief. By 1832 this had grown to £386 0s and 0d.
  • In the 1830s parishes tried to reduce the burden of rural poverty by assisting poor parishioners to emigrate. Aldingbourne was one such parish.