Poor Relief – Miscellaneous records of Inspectors of poor

The inspectors were responsible for all paupers in their parish, whether or not they were entitled to relief there. If an inspector believed that a pauper’s settlement was elsewhere, he would write to his counterpart in that parish and invite him to admit liability. These were called ‘other parish claims’. Normally this would be agreed, but disputes and even litigation were always possible. The records of this process are recorded in registers of other parish claims, which may relate to claims by or against the parish, or possibly even both. The question of where a pauper had a settlement (and so a right to relief) was a purely legal one, to be settled by a sheriff, but the Board of Supervision might be referred to as a mediator, to prevent parishes from being involved in the costs of legal action. This was regarded as a last resort, but was quite common, and the resulting cases were often reported in the Poor Law Magazine, the professional journal for poor law inspectors, which is itself an important source for the poor law. Bound sets of the magazine occasionally survive among the records of a poor law authority.

Records of criminal prosecutions may also survive, mainly of absconding fathers, but sometimes also of various types of fraud.