Healey selects Lancashire for his case study not because of the number of
overseers of the poor accounts, but rather because of the large number of petitions to the Lancashire Quarter Sessions that exist.
It argues that without a strong central government, white male residents from all walks of life, from merchants to silversmiths, created an decentered system of local governance that dispersed authority for policy and services among governmental commissions, churches, and private civic associations where they participated as churchwardens, visiting Friends, street commissioners, constables,
overseers of the poor, fire fighters, and in other civic roles.
For example, Massachusetts passed a Poor Law in 1735 that states: "That where persons bring up their children in such gross ignorance that they do not know, of are notable to distinguish the alphabet of twenty-four letters, at the age of six years, in such case the
overseers of the poor are hereby empowered and directed to put or bind out in good families such children, for a decent and Christian education ...
The
overseers of the poor dragged their feet for several years before being forced to build workhouses in Almondbury, Honley/Holmfirth at Deanhouse, Golcar, Kirkheaton and Crosland Moor.
Overseers of the poor: Surveillance, resistance, and the limits of privacy.
Such records include the
overseers of the poor's records, churchwardens' accounts and records of the local manorial courts.
At one point in the 1830s the
overseers of the poor (during one of their economy drives) attempted to stop payments altogether, and for a time the debtors literally starved, until the magistrates intervened to force the parish to maintain them.
(27) Increasingly, towns and their
overseers of the poor turned to indoor support, building almshouses and hiring administrators who emphasized order, discipline, and routine.
Subsequently, he had his legs amputated but was expelled four years later, after the
Overseers of the Poor decided that the village could no longer afford to care for the invalid.
The ongoing rural nature of the area was emphasised in 1821 when the Guardians and
Overseers of the Poor of Birmingham were concerned about the "strong able-bodied men who were still applying weekly for paro-chial relief".
During 1801 William was regularly receiving payment from the parish
overseers of the poor as a 'roundsman'.
The eighteenth-century records of the Boston
overseers of the poor.
