A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



attention of the London police.' The parish estabhshed a night patrol, and 

 paid a special constable in winter and erected a double cage for temporary 

 confinement.'* 



The expense of the system set up in 1662 became very heavy after 

 1782. Parishes used the most economical system — that of contracting for 

 the removal of vagabonds. The proposals for contracts for 1784 have 

 survived. The farmer offered to undertake the parishes of Sawbridgeworth 

 and Bishop's Stortford for ^^34 a year, to take all vagrants from the 

 Hertford road for ^C^o, and to clear the road from Waltham Cross to 

 Royston for j^85 a year. But this last offer must have been risky, as the 

 passes carried in the last six weeks numbered 104." 



When the Hertfordshire vagrant was ' passed ' back to his parish he 

 had to be employed in a house of correction, according to the Elizabethan 

 statute. For the support of these houses or bridewells the different parishes 

 and hundreds united. There was one such at Buntingford,'" and one for 

 Hertford, Braughing and Broadwater Hundreds." By 1656 this last was in 

 great decay and required repairs to the value of £s°-^^ This union seems 

 to have been divided about 1693, when jr2o was raised within the 

 half-hundred of Hitchin and part of Broadwater Hundred to set up a 

 bridewell." It is probably from this time that there was one house at 

 Hitchin and one at Hertford. As late as 1763 there was no house of 

 correction for the hundred of Dacorum, though one was needed.'* 



By the end of the i8th century the justices thought it better to send 

 all vagrants to a central county bridewell than to treat them in local 

 establishments. One was in building next the county jail in Hertford in 

 1790." But some of the country justices cannot have agreed to this, as the 

 local houses were maintained in use. In 1807 the bridewell of the hundred 

 of Edwinstree and Odsey was still used."* In 1833 a committee reported to 

 the quarter sessions that the bridewells at Buntingford, Great Berkhampstead 

 and Hitchin should be abandoned " as expensive and inefficient, but no 

 action can have followed, for in 1836 the justices declared that the 

 Berkhampstead house was of the greatest service.'* The opinion of the 

 committee of 1833 that vagrants could be better dealt with at the county 

 bridewells finally prevailed. In 1843 *^^ °^^ houses at Buntingford, 

 Hitchin and Berkhampstead were disposed of." 



The employment of the workhouse and of the bridewell inmates was 

 usually the same. The earliest information about it comes from St. Albans 

 in 16 1 8. One Stephen Langley, a clothier, made proposals to teach the 

 poor to manufacture ' curious woolwork and excellent yarns.' '" Even 

 earlier a scheme was drawn up under which eight towns were to unite to 

 have their poor instructed in cloth-making by a teacher from Hatfield." 

 In 1630 J. Hockley, a flax-dresser from Ware, who was apparently also 

 keeper of the house of correction, contracted with the borough overseers to 

 teach wool and flax dressing, the spinning of woollen and linen threads 

 and the making of straw hats both to the paupers and to those in the house 



« Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), ii, 353. » Ibid. 153. «> Ca/. S. P. Dom. 1625-49, P- S^S- 



'1 Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec.), i, 1 1 7. 22 ibj^ 23 jbid. 409. ^ Ibid, ii, 99. 



« Ibid. 168. 2« Ibid. 214. " Ibid. 344. 28 Ibid. 363. 2s Ibid. 418. 



•0 A. Gibbs, Hiit. Rec. i/St. Albans, 282, »i Ibid. 



220 



