Surviving Hard Times

For most working families in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Armitage and Handsacre, security was fragile. A death, an illness or the loss of work could quickly turn independence into hardship, bringing them into contact with the parish officials responsible for poor relief.

The system responsible for providing that support became known as the Old Poor Law. Every parish was responsible for caring for its own poor, raising money through the Poor Rate and administering it through the Churchwardens and Overseers of the Poor. They decided who should receive assistance, who should be found work, which children should be apprenticed and, sometimes, whether newcomers belonged in the parish at all. Their decisions affected almost every aspect of village life until the introduction of the New Poor Law in 1834.

The articles below explore different aspects of that story. Some follow the lives of individual villagers whose experiences can still be reconstructed from surviving records. Others explain the systems of poor relief, charity and mutual support that shaped everyday life in Armitage and Handsacre for more than two centuries.

Articles in this section

• Hannah Greatrix – A young widow and her baby removed to a parish she may never have seen.
• William and Jane Waltho – One family’s struggle with poverty, apprenticeship and separation.
• William Marklew – A seasonal brickmaker caught between settlement law and the search for work.
• James Conway – How a ten-year-old parish boy was apprenticed to a key maker in Willenhall.
• Working on the Roads – When repairing the parish roads became relief for those needing employment.
• The New Poor Law and the Workhouse – How welfare changed after 1834 and what it meant for Armitage families.
• Friendly Societies – How villagers protected themselves against illness, injury and death.
• Village Charities: Helping Those in Need – Bread, coal and other charitable gifts that supplemented parish relief.
• The Rev. Edward Samson’s Almshouses – Providing homes instead of relief.