Recent research at Carlisle has revealed that, in addition to our first group of three target parishes, the Small Bills project will also be able to use overseers’ vouchers from additional places including Dalston.  This means that, on a trip to Lady Gillford House earlier this month, I was drawn to the published volumes of the Dalston parish registers.  The preface to the second volume of the registers includes a transcription of a document concerning the Dalston workhouse and its management by local man Thomas Martin.   The workhouse contract was devised in 1822, but Martin had probably been managing aspects of parish business for some years by that time.  He was the signatory to parish legal bills by 1816, and a full reading of the vouchers will probably reveal additional references to him.

In the contract Martin offered (for a flat fee) to maintain all of the poor of the parish including illegitimate children, medical bills, apprenticeship costs, legal expenses and other forms of outlay for poor-relief.  This was relatively unusual; parish contracts of this kind might relate exclusively to the workhouse poor, but less often encompassed the really pricey aspects of relief, like mending broken bones.  But the quirky features of the Dalston contract keep coming.  Martin also specified that he was emphatically not willing to collect the poor rates, or have anything to do with other parish responsibilities (associated with the Church, highways, valuations, vestry meetings – all of which he specified).  The final and I suspect unprecedented aspect of the contract is that he undercut himself: the first agreement was signed on 13 June 1822 and netted Martin an income of £924 for twelve months of service, but by 20 June 1822 he was offering to do the work for £880!  He had allowed the parish to revise the contract downwards, when they apparently asked to exclude two components: they were no longer paying up front for legal bills, and they were  not prepared to pay him anything in addition to the contractual fee as a basic salary, hence the reduction by £44. If we assume the document of 13 June was legally valid, then the parish were depending on Martin’s good will in reducing his total fee.

Sources: J. Wilson (ed.) Dalston Parish Registers volume 2 (1679-1812), xvii; Carlisle archives, SPC 44/2/49, Dalston parish legal bill for 6 February 1816 to 17 March 1817.