A HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX 



In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Middlesex was not 

 exempt from the enormous increase of pauperism due to the demoralizing 

 effects of the unreformed poor law. 



In 1798, in his report on the county, 187 Middleton draws attention 

 to the 



numerous efficient and comfortable funds raised for the support of the idle poor in 

 this county, which operate against the general industry of the labouring poor. The 

 thriftless pauper in the workhouse was better housed and fed than the industrious 

 labourer and his family. In some parishes the paupers cost 15*15 guineas a head, 

 while their earnings did not reach 8*., at a time when the ordinary labourer's family 

 of five or more persons had to subsist on thirty. Charity added to the evil by raising 

 voluntary contributions during every temporary inconvenience, and by the constant 

 clothing of upwards of ten thousand of the children of the labouring poor in this 



county 



158 



The report on the Poor Laws of 1834"' states the cost of the 

 workhouse poor in the rural districts of the county at from 4*. to $s. a head, 

 whether farmed or not. Not very much seems to have been done towards 

 the sixteenth-century ideal of ' setting the poor on work.' At some 

 workhouses the inmates cultivated a garden ; at Harrow the paupers 

 were employed in picking oakum and at a corn-mill ; at Isleworth any 

 parishioner could have a pauper out of the house to work at is. a day: 

 but in general the report states that no parish was in a situation to put 

 able-bodied paupers to profitable work. 



The standard of comfort in the workhouses was high. At Sunbury 

 the paupers had beer every day, and at Isleworth the victuals and com- 

 fort were so excellent that people went in, especially for the winter, and 

 it was very difficult to get them out again. Here in 1821, 28 out of the 

 130 persons in the house were children. At Staines the children went 

 out to school, and here also a successful trial of allotments had been 

 made to stop the increase of out-door pauperism. 160 The apprenticing of 

 children to trades was hardly practised at all. The annexed table gives 

 the poor law expenditure of the hundreds and of the county from 

 1776-1841. 



POOR LAW EXPENDITURE, 1776-1803 161 



"' Rep. to the Bit. of Agric. (1798). 



Poor Law Rep. 1834, App. to 1st Rep. pp. 530, 531. 



61 From State of Population and Poor and Poor Rates in Middlesex, 1805. 



158 Agric. in Midd. 63. 

 Rep. p. 576. 



100 



