A Hastings gentleman takes parish office

In December 1827, the parish of St Clements in Hastings decided that it was ‘absolutely necessary’ to appoint an assistant overseer. This salaried official would be asked to take over all of the day-to-day drudgery associated with relieving the poor, namely to relieve all paupers, pay all bills, superintend the management of the poorhouse under the governor, removal all paupers and do all the other duties of a managing overseer. This freed the annually-elected overseers to do the really important work of collecting the poor rates.

Candidates for the office wrote to the parish in early April asking to be considered, but they had been pipped to the post by the interim ‘internal’ candidate. Mr Solomon Bevill had been provisionally appointed in January 1828. He remained in post subject to annual reappointments until 1833 when (presumably) declining health prompted him to retire. Bevill died in 1834, leaving goods and property to his children and grandchildren.

East Sussex Record Office, PAR 367/37/2/17

Thus far, Bevill’s story fits with the outline for a number of assistant overseers around the country. Men of apparently declining fortunes or towards the end of life secured this sort of post to provide an income in otherwise lean years. What is surprising is the additional detail we can glean from genealogical and other sources about the career that was coming to an end in Bevill’s case.

He had been born in the mid-eighteenth century and was therefore in his late 70s when he took on the parish job. Solomon Bevill was married to Lydia Blackman in 1775. In their early lives, the family members were sufficiently poor to warrant the attention of parish officers: Solomon, Lydia and their daughter Elizabeth were the subject of a settlement certificate issued in 1777. Thereafter their fortunes lifted: Solomon Bevill the elder acquired property in Hastings, and either he or his son, Solomon Bevill the younger, became Comptroller of the Port of Hastings. Most intriguing of all, one of the Solomons (I’m assuming the elder) can be found listed as the commander of a privateer in 1812, during the war against America. A letter of marque was made out to this name as the Commander of the ship Eclips out of Hastings, owned by Thomas Mannington.

The Beach at Hastings, c1812-1815

Elderly though he may have been, Bevill certainly brought something of a swashbuckling approach to parish affairs. At first appointment, and without asking the vestry, he summarily pulled down the wash house attached to the parish poor house and began rebuilding it with contractors of his choice. The tone of the vestry minutes in recording this realisation is, though, quite conciliatory rather than reproachful or outraged. Presumably Bevill’s long history in the town, or his age, conferred a protective veneer.

Sources: The Keep, East Sussex Record Office: PAR 367/12/2/8, Hastings St Clement Minutes of the Vestry concerning the poor 1827-33; PAR 367/12/5 Hastings St Clement vestry minute book 1823-58; PBT 1/1/78/562; National Archives HCA 25/206.

The Price of Bread

An interesting letter has come to light among the Poor Law records and receipts being examined by the East Sussex project, Small Bills and Petty Finance 1700-1834; it is dated 12 October 1834 and is directed to the members of the East Hoathly Parish Council.[1] The letter is from one Richard Gardiner, who will be absent from the autumnal Vestry Meeting, but who wishes to communicate to the Council strong feelings about the market price of wheat and the consequent price of flour, which he can prove is unfairly set in favour of the producers and to the detriment of the consumers; consumers in this rural village being mainly agricultural labourers and the Gentlemen addressed, mainly their employers, the farmers.

These Gentlemen may be his friends and colleagues, but nevertheless, Mr Gardiner states his arguments very firmly, beginning by demanding that at the very least in these difficult circumstances,  the workers should suffer no pay cut:

I appeal to such of you  –  Gentlemen as are Growers, whether, under the depressed and as may be apprehended – the declining State of the Corn Markets, the present general Rate of two Shillings daily Wages, can, without Disadvantage to yourselves be continued to the agricultural Labourer, . . .

This against a back story when for decades the English countryside had known only poor harvests, bad winters and foreign wars. The lawmakers had unashamedly drafted the laws and passed the Acts that ensured the comforts of their own class, while the poor became poorer they suffered under the Enclosures (measures to facilitate new farming methods by consolidating holdings, but cruelly implemented, eradicating the old peasant class), the Corn Laws (measures that protected the farmers from bad harvests and cheap imports but caused a rise in the price of bread), and the Game Act (vicious anti-poaching law: no feeding the family with a rabbit for the pot; 7 years transportation for owning a trapping net, while Man Traps were lawful until 1831). In this way the labouring classes were impoverished, stripped of hope and criminalised.

However, the main impact of the letter concerns the Millers’ excessive prices for flour, a problem which is presented in tabulated detail. And even more seriously, Mr Gardiner writes,

I am credibly informed – that at Lewes, Hailsham, and the other Corn Markets, it is normal with the Millers who meet there to fix by their own Law of Assize, the Price of Flour for the ensuing Week. This, in itself illegal, is in Reality a Conspiracy against the Consumers, which they are unquestionably warranted to counterattack by such Measures as they may think most conducible sic to a Supply of Flour proportioned to the actual Average Price of Wheat . .

Having clearly stated the case, the letter concludes:

In common Candor sic and Justice to Mr John Marten, to the Sons of the late Mr Holman and many others of the Trade who may be in the Habit of supplying Flour to the Inhabitants of East Hothly sic you will, I feel confident, coincide with me in the Propriety of communicating to them whatever may be the Result of your Consultations on this Subject and you will I am equally confident, allow them a reasonable Time to consult with each other – with their Friends, and maturely to determine on their Answer – whether to reject – or satisfactorily, by Explanation, or otherwise – to meet – the Inquiry, which you may think proper to make and continue making – with a View to establishing a more equal…sic than the present Charge for Flour, when compared with the Market Price of Wheat –

                     I am,

                               Gentlemen,

                                           Your obedient Servant

                                                             Richard Gardiner

P.S. The penny – to the £1 – I consider a most unfavorable sic Scale to the Consumer . .

It is good to know that East Hoathly had one voice in support of the disadvantaged classes; that it is a calm, measured and reasonable voice ensures that it is particularly persuasive.

[1] ESRO: PAR378/31/3/ (to be confirmed)

Written and transcibed by Anne White

Elizabeth Overing, sent to Bedlam (1746- 1815)

Elizabeth Overing was probably the Elizabeth, daughter of John and Mary Overing, who was baptised in Wilmington on 21 September 1746.  Her parents had married in Wilmington in 1740 and she had three siblings also christened there: Thomas (1741), Mary (1743) and John (1745).  Her father died in 1773, leaving a will which reveals that he was a bricklayer and glazier in Wilmington who held several copyhold properties of the manor of Wilmington.  The will acknowledged all four children and left £3 a year for Elizabeth but only after her mother’s death. 

View of Bethlem hospital from Moorfields
Most of Bethlehem Hospital by William Henry Toms for William Maitland in William Maitland’s History of London, 1739.

Things seem to have gone wrong fairly soon afterwards as she was admitted to Bethlem Hospital, colloquially known as Bedlam, on 17 May 1774 by Wilmington parish. Originally founded as the Priory of the Church of St Mary of Bethlehem near Bishopsgate in 1247, Bethlem was being referred to as a hospital to house the insane by 1403.  Patients came from across the country and were often poor.  In the 17th century it moved to new premises in Moorfields, and it was to this incarnation of the hospital that Elizabeth Overing was admitted.  It was usual for new patients to spend about a year in the hospital’s general ward after which, if they were not cured, they were assessed as to whether they were ‘fit’ to receive the hospital’s charity in the incurable ward.  Elizabeth Overing was discharged ‘not fit’ on 19 May 1775.

Removal order, Wilmington in Sussex, 1775. East Sussex Record Office: QR586/19

She returned to Wilmington and by 3 September 1775 she was the subject of a removal order from Wilmington to East Hoathly.  The order records that Mary Overing, Elizabeth’s mother, was examined as to her daughter’s settlement.  Since Elizabeth would by now have been 29, this suggests that she may not have been considered able to answer for herself.  East Hoathly appealed the removal order at Quarter Sessions in October 1775 but the order was confirmed.  There is no explanation as to how she had gained a settlement in East Hoathly but gain it she did.  From this time, Elizabeth appears regularly in the East Hoathly overseers’ accounts, where payments record her maintenance by John Tampkin and John Watford at 3s 6d a week, later increasing to 5s. 

By November 1781, Elizabeth was beginning to prompt additional activity: John Burgess, innkeeper, incurred expenses in travelling to Uckfield on business concerning her, probably with the local magistrates.  By January 1782 the process had begun to admit Elizabeth Overing to Bethlem Hospital once more and the timeline can be traced from the East Hoathly accounts and Bethlem archives. 

John Watford’s maintenance payments for her ended on 12 January 1782, which was the original date for her planned admission to Bethlem.  Instead, she was conveyed from Uckfield to Hoxton, where she was maintained by a Mr Robert Harrison from 12 to 26 January at 10s 6d a week.  A London Fire Insurance Policy register places a Robert Harrison, gentleman, in a business property near the Jewish burial ground in Hoxton in 1781.  The burial ground was next to Hoxton House, one of a number of mad houses for private mental health patients situated there at the time.  Hoxton was also known for its houses to which London parishes could send their poor if they did not run workhouses, a system known as farming.  It may be, therefore, that Elizabeth was accommodated in one or other of these institutions until Bethlem was able to accept her. 

Meanwhile, on 17 January, Robert Hook, shoemaker, obtained a settlement certificate for Elizabeth Overing from the Uckfield magistrates, acknowledging East Hoathly as her place of settlement and this was lodged with Bethlem Hospital when she was finally transferred there from Hoxton and admitted as an incurable on 26 January 1782. 

East Hoathly Overseer’s Voucher, East Sussex Record Office: PAR378/31/3/19/18.

The parish appears to have appointed representatives to act on its behalf since on the same day of her admission, a bond was entered into between the Bethlem authorities and two residents of the City, Robert Morphett, hosier, and Frederick Smith, gentleman, stating that they had requested Elizabeth Overing’s admission to the hospital as an incurable and obliging them to pay 2s 6d per week for her board and to cover clothing bedding and funeral expenses.  That these expenses were passed on is clear from the East Hoathly vouchers, which show that the parish paid deposits of £4 1s 0d towards her board and £3 3s 0d towards her bed, bedding and funeral if she were to die at the hospital.  In 1789 the parish seems to have changed its local representatives as a second bond was taken out with the Bethlem authorities, this time by John and Thomas Russell, carpenters.  By now the weekly fee had gone up to 5s. 

Bethlem Hospital, printed list of apparel for patients, c1790. East Sussex Record Office, Parish of East Hoathly, PAR378/31/3/21/24.

Invoices for expenses were regularly passed on to East Hoathly.  For example, in the year ending 28 December 1784, the parish was invoiced £6 10s 0d for board and £2 15s 0d for clothing, which included shoes and stockings, a gown, petticoat and undercoat, shifts, caps, aprons, handkerchiefs and buckles, provided at Bethlem’s standard charge.  In the year ending 31 December 1793 the costs had risen to £15 2s 2d for board with £2 10s 11d for clothing, a rise of almost 100% in nine years though the sums involved were not, in terms of board, any higher than the parish had been paying Tampkin and Watford.

Nothing else survives to indicate how Elizabeth was treated at Bethlem.  However, we know that patients were held in cells in the wings of the hospital off long galleries.  Until 1770, when the practice was ended, these galleries were open to visitors and the inmates were something of a tourist attraction. At least Elizabeth did not have to suffer that indignity.  However, witness statements given to the Committee on Madhouses in England in 1815 reveal that many patients were kept in bed, especially women; that some patients were found naked and covered only by straw on the floor of their cells; that there was inadequate medical supervision; and that some were kept in chains.  The Matron reports that she had 66 women in her care, four or five of whom were restrained.  She continues:

One of the female patients has been confined a long time, chained by the leg, as much as five or six years, I have been told; and we have another constantly chained by the hands, that came in about two months since, two of the other blanket patients are only chained at times. I have them loose, to walk about occasionally.

In August 1815 Bethlem’s patients were transferred to new premises in Southwark (on the site of what is now the Imperial War Museum) because the old building was considered beyond repair.  Elizabeth did not live to see it: she died on 2 June.  Her burial place has not so far been identified.  It was not generally the responsibility of the hospital to bury its deceased patients and it did not have its own dedicated burial ground.  Her burial is not recorded at either Wilmington or East Hoathly.

Senna and Prunes for Dame Trill

When parishes agreed to meet the costs of medicines for the parish poor, they might require medical practitioners to submit an itemised bill for the raw materials, procedures and travel involved in delivering treatment.  Many of the items were commonly known to contemporaries, but are less familiar to us: therefore when writers abbreviated entries for repeated supplies, they stored up a problem for twenty-first century readers.  It is notoriously difficult (and perhaps unwise) to try to decipher the abbreviated Latin prescriptions of physicians.  It is a little easier to understand the medical interventions involved when the original language was English, and/or the substances remain part of formal or informal treatments.

Eighteenth-century woman perched on public convenience.
National Portrait Gallery. ‘National Conveniences’, James Gillray, 1796. NPG D13021.

Dame Trill from East Hoathly had a problem we can recognise – she was constipated.  We do not know the background to her story; she may have suffered a dietary deficiency of roughage or, if struggling with piles, she might have found relief in additional stool softener.  Whatever the cause, the problem was stubborn.  The parish bought senna and prunes for Dame Trill repeatedly 1770-4, usually at a cost of six and a half pence per treatment.  Raisins were sometimes offered as an alternative to prunes.

Other treatments issued to the sick poor were more general.  The purpose of diuretic balsam is made clear in the name, in that it was designed to remedy the retention of urine, but the specific diagnosis is less easy to divine.  Medicines for the poor at this date still relied on humoural understandings of the body for their rationale.  Humoural medicine construed ill health as the imbalance of humours or fluids within the body.  The four humours of blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile had a unique blend or balance for each individual, and the restoration of health demanded the removal of any humour that was overly prevalent.  For this reason vomits, purges, diuretics and bleeding were among the most frequently used medicines throughout the eighteenth century.

In addition to generic remedies there was a willingness by parishes to pay for the equivalent of brand-name medicines, known at the time as patent medicines.  Widow Cane of East Hoathly was given Hooper’s Pills in 1773.  The patent for this medicine was first issued in 1743  and was one of the most successful and long-lasting products of its type, being sold well into the twentieth century in England and elsewhere.  It pledged to tackle female ‘irregularities’ and so was assumed by some customers to be a viable solution to an unwanted pregnancy.  It is important to say, though, that we don’t automatically suppose that this was the purpose of the parish in buying the pills for Widow Cane!  This medicine also offered to treat stomach problems, hysteria, and menstrual concerns: perhaps Widow Cane was menopausal?

Lists of medicines and treatments for the parish poor have presented a problem to historians thus far: how are we to use them, if we cannot work out the ingredients of items listed simply as pills, powders or mixtures, and if the recipients are not always obvious?  This is one of the problems this project is hoping to address.  Do get in touch with the project team if you have any ideas about how we might use these intriguing vouchers to ask historical questions.

The parish of East Hoathly

East Hoathly tithe map, 1839. East Sussex Record Office: TDE 48/1.

East Hoathly is a small village located in the English county of East Sussex. It lies just over four miles south east of Uckfield, off what is now the major route running south east towards Eastbourne and the coast. To the north and east the landscape is dominated by the rolling hills of the High Weald and to the south the South Downs. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the parish encompassed some 2,000 acres of woodland and mixed agricultural land together with numerous ponds. Most of the parish was divided into small farms occupied by tenants renting from local landowners including the wealthy and politically influential Pelham-Holles family.

East Hoathly tithe map, 1839. East Sussex Record Office: TDE 48/1.

During the eighteenth century the village was clustered around the conjunction of roads in the centre of the parish, small groups of houses together with the church and several businesses formed the heart of this small village. The parish, however, also incorporated a scattering of hamlets, including Grays, Whitesmiths, the Nursery, and part of the Halland estate. By 1801 the whole of the parish contained only 56 domestic houses, occupied by 76 families. Over the next forty years the number of houses doubled, so by 1841, 119 houses were recorded in the parish. During the same period, 1801-1841, the population of the parish rose from 395 to 607. In 1841 only 31 out of the 607 inhabitants were recorded as having been born outside of the county, suggesting a reasonably stable population with relatively few in-comers.

The Rector

Country Characters No 7, Vicar, Thomas Rowlandson, 1799. Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, PID:
digcoll:3996479.

The church and the rector were central to village life, but the clerical living was not particularly generous. By 1872 it was worth only £261 per annum. In addition, the church was in increasingly poor repair and in 1856 it was demolished in favour of a new building. From 1752 to 1794 the rector was Thomas Porter. Porter had followed his brother, Richard, into the living and remained there until his death at the age of 74. He also held the nearby living of Ripe. According to the diarist Thomas Turner, Porter was an outgoing-man fond of entertaining his neighbours, and was often the centre drinking parties that went on into the small hours of the night. At the same time, Porter was apparently assiduous in performing his clerical duties, although these were admittedly light. There were no more than a dozen baptisms a year during the eighteenth century and sometimes as few as four. Marriages remained fairly constant at two to four a year, while burials amounted to less than a dozen per year. Porter was also diligent in pursuing his extra-clerical business, acquiring significant parcels of land and property in the area.

Thomas Turner (1729-1793)[1]

While in many ways East Hoathly was an unremarkable rural parish in southern England, it is notable as the home of Thomas Turner, shopkeeper and prolific diarist of the mid-eighteenth century. Turner was twenty-one when he first came to the parish in 1750. He married Peggy Slater in 1753 and the first of his surviving diaries date from 1754. Turner initially came to the parish in order to run a small general shop. At first he rented premises in the centre of the village, purchasing the property shortly after 1765. But Turner was much more than just a shopkeeper. He threw himself into parish life and administration. His meticulous accounting was put to good use in service of the village. He briefly kept the local school and later became both a churchwarden and overseer of the poor. He also acted as occasional surveyor, assisted the local tax collector, wrote wills, gave advice and acted in law on behalf of many of his neighbours. All of this was carefully noted in his diaries, together with vivid accounts of the everyday life of the parish. The last surviving volume ends in July 1765.

Occupations

Other than the church, the parish supported the general shop run by the Turner, a small private school and at least two public houses, one of which was the King’s Head. The overseers’ vouchers, however, make it clear that several businesses and craftspeople were operating in the parish, including shoemakers and cobblers, a butcher, a miller, carpenters, builders and blacksmiths, together with tailors and seamstresses. These were augmented by local petty officials: for instance the excise officer, postmaster and schoolmaster, most of whom had dealings with Thomas Turner in his capacity as churchwarden or overseer of the poor. In the early nineteenth century there was a slight drift away from the agricultural occupations that dominated the parish workforce, with a growing number concerned with ‘trade, manufacture or handicrafts’. The numbers recorded in this census category grew from 15 families in 1801, to 35 families out of 97 in 1831.

Halland House and the Duke of Newcastle

West front of Halland House drawn in 1783 by S.H Grimm. BL Add MS. 5671 f.47 (no 82)

The largest house in the parish belonged to Thomas Pelham-Holles, the 1st Duke of Newcastle. Halland House and its estates, straddled the parish boundary with Laughton and acted as the Duke’s family seat in Sussex. By the later 1760s, however, the Elizabethan house was very dilapidated and was partly demolished. What remained, continued to be used as a generously sized farm house.

Through most of the eighteenth century there were regular public open days or celebrations at the house, where both the local gentry and parishioners of all classes enjoyed the hospitality of the Duke of Newcastle and other members of the Pelham-Holles family. Thomas Turner recounted in his diary,

About four p.m., I walked down to Halland with several more of my neighbours, in order for a rejoicing for the taking of Cape Breton, etc., where there was a bonfire of six hundred of faggots, the cannon fired, and two barrels of beer given to the populace, and a very good supper provided for the principal tradesmen of this and the neighbouring parishes,[2]

Despite the attendance of notable members of the aristocracy, judiciary and political allies of the Duke at such events, Turner commented in his diary that the celebrations ‘might be more properly done by distributing something to the poor.’[3] Charitable donations by the aristocracy were commonplace in the eighteenth century and often distributed through the local overseers of the poor including gifts of food and fuel.[4] Thomas Turner was assiduous in noting their distribution in East Hoathly.

The ‘Old Poor Law’

In common with many small rural parishes East Hoathly did not maintain a workhouse and cared for its poor in the community. Pensions were paid to a small group of regular, often elderly or otherwise infirm paupers. Food stuffs, clothing, footwear and fuel formed regular components of parochial support.

The village doctor besieg’d, Thomas Rowlandson. Wellcome Library no. 10978i .

The parish also provided medical care and medicines for the needy poor. A local apothecary or surgeon provided treatment and dispensed medicines when called on to do so by the overseer of the poor.  Occasional ad hoc payments were made for specific items and small sums given to the itinerant poor. At least one parishioner was supported in Bethlem Hospital, an institution for the ‘insane’ poor in the City of London. A number of illegitimate children and babies were maintained by East Hoathly parish. These infants were boarded out locally (often with members of the child’s extended family) and subsequently placed in some form of apprenticeship. In addition, the parish ensured that repairs were made to cottages and other dwellings that housed their impoverished men and women. At least one cottage, at Scallow Bridge on the outskirts of the village, was used to house the poor. This ‘poorhouse’ was owned by the parish and accommodated two families, in 1834 William Hutson occupied the lower dwelling and William West the upper. Both paid an annual rent of one shilling.[6] Labouring work was given to the able poor particularly when these cottages or the church required maintenance.

In the year ending Easter 1776 East Hoathly raised £199 through the Poor rate.[5] By Easter 1803 this had more than doubled to just over £418. Of this, £358 was spent on relieving the poor and a further £13 on the removal of paupers, overseers’ expenses and legal costs. In 1803 the parish was permanently caring for 22 adults, 3 children under 5 and a further 13 children between the ages of 5 and 14. In years of extreme stress, particularly when the harvests failed, many more agricultural workers were thrown ‘on the parish’. In 1801, after two consecutive years of crop failure, men from East Hoathly joined those from the neighbouring parishes of Chiddingly, Framfield and Buxted in order to march to Lewes. This hungry crowd of nearly 300 demanded that the Sussex Bench order some form of poor relief for themselves and families.[7] It is difficult to say if a parochial ‘wage subsidy’ was adopted in East Hoathly but, in common with many other Sussex parishes, it seems likely.

[1] For a fuller biography see David Vaisey. 2004 “Turner, Thomas (1729–1793), diarist and shopkeeper.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 14 Aug. 2018. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-48266.

[2] Thomas Turner, The Diary of Thomas Turner, 1754-1765, ed. David Vaisey, New edition (East Hoathly: CTR Publishing, 1994), 161.

[3] Turner, 161.

[4] Naomi Tadmor, Family and Friends in Eighteenth-Century England: Household, Kinship and Patronage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 85–89.

[5] To the nearest whole English pound.

[6] ESRO: PAR378/31/3/30/13B/1, 13C/1.

[7] Sussex Weekly Advertiser, 24 Feb. 1801 and 21 Apr. 1801. Cited in Griffin, Carl J. The Politics of Hunger: Protest, Poverty and Policy in England, C. 1750-C. 1840. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020.

Ringmer Workhouse

Like many parishes in the second half of the eighteenth century, Ringmer had a small workhouse to accommodate the poor. Unlike many such houses, it has an interesting array of surviving sources, even before we start to unfold the overseers’ vouchers.

The overseers’ accounts for Ringmer contain sporadic (if not consistent) evidence about the occupancy of the house and its layout/contents.  The number of peepill/peapell in the workhouse in 1766, for example ranged from 17 to 34 inhabitants at any one time, always including a count of two for the master and mistress.  An series of inventories surviving for 1790-1806 indicate the structure of the building, which was described as a poorhouse in 1790: at that date it had a governor’s room, Kitchen, back kitchen, brewhouse, bakehouse, pantry and storeroom, plus beds in a ‘chamber’ and in the ‘garret’.  There were thirty occupants at the time suggesting there was little attempt to separate the inmates (men from women, adults from children) at this date.

There is also evidence of the way in which the house was managed. In 1758 John Pring was a salaried master, paid thirty shillings per month for his custodianship in looking after the workhouse. This means that Pring did not have a personal interest in recruiting more workhouse poor, since he was paid a flat rate rather than per head of the pauper residents.  By 1773, though, the parish had changed its approach to workhouse management.  In that year the vestry made an agreement with Jos Peckham, a cordwainer, to keep the poor in the workhouse at the rate of two shillings six pence per head per week.  From this sum Peckham was charged with feeding the poor, and washing or mending their clothes, but not with the purchase of new clothing.  In additional recompense, Peckham could keep whatever earnings or benefit from the labour of the poor he could extract.  This second sort of contract encouraged workhouse masters to fill their house to capacity, and find a form of productive work for the paupers to perform.  We have no record yet of what the paupers thought of the masterships of either Pring or Peckham.

 

Sources: The Keep, PAR 461/31/1-3, Ringmer overseers’ accounts 1754-1821; M. Diggle, ‘Ringmer Workhouse 1787-1806), Sussex History 1:8 (1979), 15-18.

Example East Sussex Post

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque nec augue quis augue rhoncus blandit sed nec nibh. Proin eleifend, metus at congue lobortis, libero nulla pharetra lacus, at mattis sem diam eu ex. Sed est eros, vehicula at dictum placerat, maximus sit amet velit. Vestibulum finibus dapibus justo quis bibendum. Nunc convallis nulla ac libero rutrum maximus. Vestibulum lorem elit, pulvinar quis consectetur quis, hendrerit in neque. Suspendisse potenti. Curabitur iaculis ut erat sed egestas. Orci varius natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Maecenas sollicitudin enim metus, nec iaculis arcu ultrices in.

Donec aliquet vel dui et interdum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec sagittis ante ut nulla laoreet, at pellentesque erat bibendum. Aenean at eros sit amet erat condimentum accumsan. Donec varius fermentum eros, ac congue mi condimentum in. Nullam dui nibh, sodales non lorem ac, fringilla convallis nisi. Praesent et turpis quam. Aenean metus ligula, gravida sed vestibulum quis, fringilla non quam. Mauris interdum lacinia elit, sed pellentesque ligula dapibus a. Ut nec lectus magna. Pellentesque consequat varius molestie.

Nullam arcu urna, scelerisque a massa vitae, dignissim egestas elit. Fusce nec libero eget sapien ultrices fermentum non et quam. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Phasellus pharetra est eu elit vulputate condimentum. Ut laoreet interdum sem, egestas imperdiet neque porta sit amet. Duis consectetur consequat elit, sed ultrices sapien elementum quis. Nunc ligula nunc, scelerisque vel lacus non, ultricies luctus sapien. Aliquam efficitur augue sem, vel suscipit nisi dignissim vel. Sed mi arcu, interdum in lobortis sed, maximus vel justo. Donec magna erat, varius eget venenatis sit amet, dapibus et erat. Pellentesque efficitur quam in orci auctor egestas. Suspendisse bibendum, massa quis scelerisque iaculis, urna ex semper risus, eu efficitur dolor leo vitae magna.

Sed sed molestie eros. Nam tincidunt mollis nulla ac malesuada. Vestibulum eu elementum leo, eu molestie justo. Pellentesque tempus sagittis odio, in malesuada lacus suscipit non. Curabitur interdum id ligula et volutpat. Nam non mattis mi. Nullam in quam id quam molestie auctor non ac mi. Interdum et malesuada fames ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus. Curabitur semper diam sed dui viverra, et volutpat turpis vulputate. Quisque quis justo et nisi ornare convallis. Pellentesque ut libero lacus. Fusce efficitur a nunc at vehicula. Vestibulum sed metus auctor, varius sem at, pulvinar metus. Nulla pharetra sodales molestie. Integer aliquam metus vitae justo pellentesque, sed viverra nibh consectetur.

Duis nec bibendum velit. Sed eget semper odio. Fusce aliquet tortor sem, id maximus tortor scelerisque sed. Fusce convallis hendrerit turpis, vel vestibulum arcu dictum id. Donec sed feugiat orci. Aenean viverra, magna in pulvinar iaculis, massa ligula sodales risus, in posuere arcu lectus ut ipsum. In imperdiet quam sit amet nibh imperdiet pretium. Donec rhoncus tristique pulvinar.