SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



Thomson and Sons, Huddersfield, the founder of which earned Ruskin's sympathy and admiration, 

 have an assurance and pension scheme. Messrs. J. I. and J, Taylor, of Batley, have instituted 

 many plans for breaking down the rigid lines of demarcation between employers and employees. 

 The parental supervision exercised by the firm of Rowntree has made the old cathedral city the 

 Mecca of the employer of labour with philanthropic tendencies. There is hardly a scheme of 

 industrial betterment with which their name is not more or less intimately connected. 



A surprising amount of unchronicled work on quasi-philanthropic lines is being done, especially 

 in the large Yorkshire towns, which escapes attention from the dislike of the promoters to any form 

 of advertisement. Work of this kind, where individual enthusiasm is a main factor, is easier for small 

 firms, with the management in the hands of the founder of the business or his immediate 

 descendants, than for large firms under directorate control. By the exertions of Lady Bell, 

 Middlesbrough has a winter garden for its workpeople ; but the firm of Bell Brothers, in spite of the 

 number of its employees, belongs to the class of family as' opposed to trust businesses. The club 

 house in connexion with the firm of Sir Bernard Samuelson and Co. was the last enterprise into 

 which that Cleveland pioneer ironmaster threw his inexhaustible energies. It is, however, inevitable 

 that the gradual substitution of businesses managed on trust lines, of absentee directors working with 

 capital gathered from ignorant investors living at a distance, eager only for high percentages for their 

 capital, should lay a dead hand on all attempts to foster a strong feeling of good-fellowship between 

 masters and men. The firm with a staff of five thousand men, all of them staunch members of 

 unions, can hardly feel answerable for the individual well-being of such a heterogeneous mass. The 

 ever-encroaching fectory legislation, too, tends to shift responsibility from the master to the 

 inspector. 



TABLE OF POPULATION, 1801 to 1901 



Introductory Notes 



Area 



The county taken in this table is that existing subsequently to 7 & 8 Vict., chap. 61 (1844). 

 By this Act detached parts of counties, which had already for parliamentary purposes been amalga- 

 mated with the county by which they were surrounded or with which the detached part had the 

 longest common boundary (2 & 3 Will. IV, chap. 64 — 1832), were annexed to the same county for 

 all purposes ; some exceptions were, however, permitted. 



By the same Act (7 & 8 Vict., chap. 61) the detached parts of counties, transferred to other 

 counties, were also annexed to the hundred, ward, wapentake, &c. by which they were wholly or 

 mostly surrounded, or to which they next adjoined, in the counties to which they were transferred. 

 The hundreds, &c., in this table are also given as existing subsequently to this Act. 



As is well known, the famous statute of Queen Elizabeth for the relief of the poor took the then- 

 existing ecclesiastical parish as the unit for Poor Law relief. This continued for some centuries 

 with but few modifications ; notably by an Act passed in the thirteenth year of the reign of 

 Charles II which permitted townships and villages to maintain their own poor. This permission 

 was necessary owing to the large size of some of the parishes, especially in the north of England. 



In 1801 the parish for rating purposes (now known as the civil parish, i.e. ' an area for which 

 a separate poor rate is or can be made, or for which a separate overseer is or can be appointed ') 

 was in most cases co-extensive with the ecclesiastical parish of the same name ; but already there 

 were numerous townships and villages rated separately for the relief of the poor, and also there were 

 many places scattered up and down the country, known as extra-parochial places, which paid no rates 

 at all. Further, many parishes had detached parts entirely surrounded by another parish or parishes. 



Parliament first turned its attention to extra-parochial places, and by an Act(20 Vict., chap. 19 — 

 1857) ^^ was laid down (a) that all extra-parochial places entered separately in the 1851 census returns 

 are to be deemed civil parishes, [b) that in any other place being, or being reputed to be, extra-parochial, 

 overseers of the poor may be appointed, and (c) that where, however, owners and occupiers of two- 

 thirds in value of the land of any such place desire its annexation to an adjoining civil parish, it may 

 be so added with the consent of the said parish. This Act was not found entirely to fulfil its object, so 

 by a further Act (31 & 32 Vict., chap. 122 — 1868) it was enacted that every such place remaining on 

 25 December, 1868, should be added to the parish with which it had the longest common boundary. 



The next thing to be dealt with was the question of detached parts of civil parishes, which was 

 done by the Divided Parishes Acts of 1876, 1879, and 1882. The last, which amended the one of 

 1876, provides that every detached part of an entirely extra-metropolitan parish which is entirely 

 surrounded by another parish becomes transferred to this latter for civil purposes, or if the population 

 exceeds 300 persons it may be made a separate parish. These Acts also gave power to add detached 

 parts surrounded by more than one parish to one or more of the surrounding parishes, and also to 



48s 



