SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



road daily, and in 1826 the total coaching receipts amounted to 100,000 a 

 year, 60,000 being taken by the sixteen permanent coaches, and the 

 remaining 40,000 by the 'butterflies.' Between 1823 and 1838 the first 

 'steam-carriages' were seen upon the road, but in 1833 upwards of four 

 hundred and eighty persons still travelled to Brighton by coach on a single 

 day in October, and it was not for another six years that any serious falling 

 off in the numbers was noticed. In 1839, however, the numbers had decreased 

 appreciably and fares rose : in 1841 the Brighton railway was opened, and the 

 day mail ceased, and in the following year the night mail ceased also. 800 

 Hastings station was opened in 1846, and Eastbourne followed in 1849. 

 The third-class fare from Brighton to London at this time was js. 6d. and 

 the first-class 15^. or by express igs. id., and for many years the third-class 

 carriages were open to the weather and not provided with seats. 801 In spite 

 of all drawbacks, however, the innovation proved the death-knell of the old 

 coaching system. 



Sussex was not exempt from the general distress which resulted from 

 the maladministration of poor relief in the late eighteenth and early 

 nineteenth centuries. As early as 1730 the vestry of Hastings was ready to 

 supply clothes and shoes to such ' persons belongen to the poore ' 302 as applied, 

 and in Hailsham a great number of persons were in receipt of relief and a 

 great variety of relief was required and granted. 303 By 1776 the total expendi- 

 ture of the county on account of the poor was 54,734 8j. yd., 3,915 19^. 

 being expended on rents of workhouses and 1,235 los - 5^- on litigation 

 chiefly in connexion with the settlement of paupers. 304 Within the next 

 decade the poor rate had risen nearly 20,000, the average expenditure for 

 the years 1783, 1784, and 1785 being 72,877 los. lod. The average 

 expense of overseers' journeys was 839 3.1-. 2d., their entertainments cost on 

 an average 457 ys. yd., law business 1,445 os - 6</., and setting the poor 

 to work 2,124 1 3 S - 3^- 305 The succeeding ten years saw the adoption of 

 the policy of the Speenhamland magistrates, and a consequent further increase 

 of pauperism and expense. In 1799 the vestry of Rye 'having taken into 

 their most serious consideration the distress of the poor of their parish from 

 the present high price of corn ' ordered 



that such poor families whom it shall be thought have not, or cannot supply, the means of 

 support, shall be relieved out of the poor's rate, so far as to be supplied in proportion to the 

 numbers of their families and of their distress, as per schedule .... with brown flour, the 

 bran and pollard being taken out. 



The consequence was that between 1795 and 1832 the rates in that parish 

 alone rose from 803 is. nd. to 4,656 31. yd. 30 " 



About the same time that is during the closing years of the eighteenth 

 century Gilbert's Act was adopted in several parts of the county. The total 

 number of unions formed under the Act was six, Eastbourne including sixteen 

 parishes, Thakeham six, West Hampnett eleven, Yapton three, East Preston 

 five, with which another fourteen were incorporated between 1793 and 1806, 



500 C. G. Harper, Brighton Road, 43 et seq. * 01 J. C. Wright, Bygone Eastbourne, 224-6. 



M> Suss. Arch. Coll. xxiii, 98. 

 ** L. F. Salzmann, Hist, of Hailsham, 56. 



*" Accts. and Papers, 1777, ix, 539. ' m Ibid. 1787, ix, 730-1. 



506 Holloway, Hist, of Rye, 444. It should be noted that the year 1795 was one of scarcity. 



205 



