III. The Roundsman System.

BY the parish paying the occupiers of property to employ the applicants for relief at a rate of wages fixed by the parish, and depending not on the services, but on the wants of the applicants, the employer being repaid out of the poor-rate all that he advances in wages beyond a certain sum. This is the house row, or roundsmen, or billet, or ticket, or stem, system.

According to this plan, the parish in general makes some agreement with a farmer to sell to him the labour of one or more paupers at a certain price, and pays to the pauper, out of the parish funds, the difference between that price and the allowance which the scale, according to the price of bread and the number of his family, awards to him. It has received the name of the billet or ticket system, from the ticket signed by the overseer, which the pauper, in general, carries to the farmer as a warrant for his being employed, and takes back to the overseer, signed by the farmer, as a proof that he has fulfilled the conditions of relief. In other cases the parish contracts with some individual to have some work performed for him by the paupers at a given price, the parish paying the paupers. In many places the roundsman system is effected by means of an auction. Mr. Richardson states that, in Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, the old and infirm are sold at the monthly meeting to the best bidder, at prices varying, according to the time of the year from 1s. 6d. a week to 3s.; that at Yardley, Hastings, all the unemployed men are put up to sale weekly, and that the clergyman of the parish told him that he had seen ten men the last week knocked down to one of the farmers for 5s. and that there were at that time about 70 men let out in this manner out of a body of 170.

The following extracts, from the Answers to our printed Queries for the rural districts, are further examples of all these forms of relief:—

"GREAT HENNY, ESSEX.—William Newport, Churchwarden; Edward Cook, Overseer.

"Having so many labouring men, the income from the land will not allow us to give more than a sufficient for the best characters to subsist upon, and we are obliged to give the same to the worst. A man of bad character, on account of which he is not employed, having two children or more, applies to the parish at the end of the week for relief, through loss of time, and has the same money given him as the honest labourer receives of his master for his labour for the same week."

"HARLOW, ESSEX.—Isaac Rogers, Overseer.

"We are obliged to maintain the family if the man is idle."

"CASTLE HEDINGHAM.—Ashurst Majendie, Deputy Lieutenant, Member of Vestry.

"Rent was, at one period, paid by the parish, by which an artificial price was kept up; since the practice has been discontinued, the rent of cottages has fallen."

"GOUDHURST, KENT.—Giles Miller.

"Every man having more than three children upon his hands, comes to the parish for support for all above the third: it is granted as a matter of course."

"The word 'scale' is unknown, but the thing exists as effectually as if it were published by authority at every petty sessions. Every parish officer and pauper knows that a man with his wife and three children is entitled to have his wages 'made up' (such is the phrase) to 12s. a week; and is entitled to 1s. 6d. per week for every child beyond three; and without entering into any very rigid account as to the average of his earnings. Extra receipts are supposed to go for clothes and extra payments: in reality, they too often go to the beer shop."

"NONINGTON, KENT.—W. O. Hammond, J.P.

"There are at this time (May) 12 or 15 able men disengaged in this parish. The thrashing is over sooner than usual, owing to a deficient crop. The woods are cleared, and pea-hoeing is also finished. The men out of work are allowed at the rate of 6s. for man and wife, with 1s. a head for children. Under the circumstances, the following plan has been adopted:—A married man, having two children, receives 8s. from the poor-rate. He takes at the vestry a ticket inscribed with the name of an occupier in the parish. For this person he is required to work four days, and the employer is pledged to set him at no necessary or essential occupation. This reservation must be obviously ineffectual. The remaining two days the man is at liberty to earn anything elsewhere if he can. The tickets are allotted by rotation. The system cannot be justified on principle or practice. So long as it lasts, necessary work will wait for the turn of a ticket man. The land will become foul, the labourer half employed and half paid, and the parish imposed upon."

"PRESTON, near FAVERSHAM, KENT.—Giles Hilton, Preston House.

"No regular system for the attached; when unattached, a man, wife and four children, usually obtain the full weekly wages of the attached; with six children, I have known most undeserving parents get 18s. a week all the winter, and the greater part of the summer. The practice of partly paying for work done for individuals did prevail, but the pauper, learning the practice, could seldom be made to do a fair day's work."

"STOGUMBER, SOMERSET.—Charles Rowcliffe.

"An allowance is made, unhappily; beginning at three children. I consider that nearly all the work is partly paid for by the parish, and that this fact is a crying evil, working great mischief, and distress, and carelessness, and indifference about his family, in the mind of the labourer."

"HOGSTHORPE, LINCOLN.—John Kirkham, late Contractor; Joseph Eldin, Churchwarden.

"The practice of work being done for individuals and partly paid for by the parish has proved more injurious than any measure ever adopted, having brought numbers of the most hale labourers on the list of paupers, who previous to that would have shuddered at the thought of coming to a parish, but are now as contented to receive relief as they were before in a state of labouring independence; the most wages the best labourers could then obtain were no more than from 3s. to 4s per week, the remainder was made up out of the rates, according to their families. This system is now abolished, and the labourer gets fair wages."

"BYFIELD, NORTHAMPTON.—Charles Wetherell, Rector; T. Carter, J. P.

" 'Head money' is given indiscriminately to all families of labouring men with more than two children under 10 years of age, without inquiring into their earnings, at the rate of 1s. each for those exceeding two; latterly many petty tradesmen have laid claim to it, and their claims have, in too many instances, been acceded to. T. C."

"Relief is given generally, according to a scale which the deputy overseer obtains at the magistrates' pettysessions. C.W."

"ENSTONE, OXFORD.—William Gardener, F. Elton.

"All that apply to the vestry for employment have half their money, or more, out of the poor-rates. They allow, with all the earnings, 5s. per week to the man and his wife, and 1s. 6d. per head for the children, many or few; half from the master and the rest from the rates.

"A married man and his wife, with no child, will receive 5s. per week; a single man, perhaps 3s. 6d. and 4s.; half from the master and the rest from the poor's-rates."

"ODDINGTON Parish, and PLOUGHLEY Hundred, Oxford.—Philip Serle, Clerk and J. P.

"I am sorry to say that all our able-bodied labourers who have more than two children receive regular allowance from the parish, and this is the case generally in the neighbourhood. In some of the adjoining parishes it is carried to such a length that I have known a labourer receive 2d. per diem where he worked, and the rest of his wages made up from the poor's book. The children are usually sent round, and paid wholly by the overseer."

"(Vale of TAUNTON,) BAGBOROUGH, BISHOP'S LYDEARD, COMBE-FLOREY, COTHELSTONE, KINGSTON,SOMERSET.—E. J. Esdaile.

"All farm labourers, during the whole or a part of the year, receive a portion of their wages out of the poor's-rates."

"HASILBURY BRYAN, DORSET.—Henry Walter, Rector.

"In 1821-22 the overseers had been in the habit of sharing out the pauper labourers amongst the farmers, (including themselves,) and of paying for the work done by them wholly out of the poor's-rates; and as certain magistrates in the Blandford division (to which this parish then belonged) declined interfering to check this abuse, the answerer felt it his duty to appeal to the two sessions in 1823, and at the July sessions at Shaftesbury he obtained a verdict, which put an end to the practice. The custom, however, of 'making up the pay' of able-bodied labourers from the poor-rates still continues. So lately as the 25th July last, the answerer being told by the overseers that a complaint was lodged against the parish for not affording relief to an able-bodied labourer in addition to his wages, whose family consisted of a wife and four little children, but who paid nothing for living in a house belonging to the parish; he accompanied them to the petty sessions, and respectfully informed the magistrates that he should feel it his duty to advise his neighbours to resist any order requiring the parish to pay such allowance; to which it was replied, that they felt it was theirduty, and should sign the order. Eventually, however, they did not sign it, but their signature was withheld on grounds unconnected with the principle opposed, and that principle was still avowed and maintained."

"WELFORD, GLOUCESTER.—William Welch, Assistant Overseer.

"The labourers changed their service much more frequently when they were paid a part of their money by the overseers (called headmoney), which was an order from the magistrates, and persisted in by them till we established a poorhouse, which has nearly done it away, and the labourers are become more respectable.

"Magistrates, when applied to, always make their orders according to the head-money system, taking the labourer's earnings at the usual day-work price, without regard to the conduct or ability of the labourer."