Poor Relief – Poor Law in Scotland 1579-1845
Parliamentary legislation concerning the poor began in the 15th century. Early statutes were mostly for the suppression of idle beggars, but gradually two important principles emerged. All parishes were to be responsible for their own poor, but only certain categories of poor were proper objects of poor relief. A statute of 1579, which remained the basis of the poor law until 1845, firmly established these rules. Its twin aims were that ‘the puyr aiget and impotent personis sould be as necessarlie prouidit for’, and that ‘vagaboundis and strang beggaris’ should be ‘repressit’. Those entitled to relief through age, illness or otherwise, were to go to the last parish in which they had lived seven years or failing that the parish of their birth.[1]
In rural parishes, the authorities responsible for the poor were the kirk sessions and the heritors and in burghs it was the town council and magistrates. For the most part the parishes relied on church collections, seat lettings, charitable mortifications and other sources of income. Most poor relief was provided through what was known as outdoor relief: people were supported with an allowance or clothing or food and expected to live in the community. However, some burghs did have town hospitals which provided indoor relief, such as the James VI Hospital in Perth, established in 1569. In 1672, legislation decreed that poorhouses were to be built in thirty named burghs, with regular payments of 500 merks to the commissioners of excise until these poorhouses were built.[2]
The 1579 act permitted parishes to levy a poor rate, but in practice this was unusual and only used when voluntary contributions were insufficient. Even in the 1790s fewer than one hundred of the 878 parishes in Scotland imposed a compulsory rate, although by then the number was growing.[3] The system suited rural society reasonably well but was ill-adapted to the large industrial towns of the early 19th century, where the poor tended to be congregated in slum areas.[4] The established church acknowledged that they could not cope with the numbers of poor in large urban parishes and that the loss of members to secession churches reduced the poor funds.[5] This was compounded by the Disruption in 1843 when over a third of the ministers and congregations left to form the Free Church of Scotland. The Industrial Revolution also brought cyclical trade depressions, with large numbers of able-bodied unemployed, who were not entitled to poor relief. In 1843 a Royal Commission of Inquiry was appointed, whose recommendations led to reform two years later.[6]
Church records and heritors records are the responsibility of the National Records of Scotland (NRS). Many church records are held by local authority archives services under charge and superintendence agreements with NRS. Town council records are held by local authority archives services.
Compilers: SCAN contributors (2000). Editor: Elspeth Reid (2021)
Related Knowledge Base entries
Bibliography
Cage, R. A., The Scottish Poor Law 1745-1845 (Scottish Academic Press, 1981)
Levitt, Ian, ‘Living Standards 4: the old and new Poor Laws’ in Oxford Companion to Scottish History, ed. by Michael Lynch (Oxford University Press, 2001) pp. 394-95
Mitchison, Rosalind, The Old Poor Law in Scotland: the experience of poverty, 1574-1845 (Edinburgh University Press, 2000)
Tyson, R. E., ‘Poverty and Poor Relief in Aberdeen, 1680-1705’ Scottish Archives, 8 (2002), pp. 33-42
Wilbraham, Kevin and Christine Lodge, ‘Responses to Poverty in Ayrshire, 1574-1845’ Scottish Archives, 8 (2002), pp. 57-70
References
[1] Act for punishment of the strong and idle beggars and relief of the poor and impotent, 1579. The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707,[RPS] ed. by K.M. Brown and others (University of St Andrews, 2007-2021), 1579/10/27 <http://www.rps.ac.uk/trans/1579/10/27> [accessed 23 July 2018].
[2] Act for establishing correction-houses for idle beggars and vagabonds, 1672. RPS, 1672/6/52 <http://www.rps.ac.uk/trans/1672/6/52> [accessed 7 October 2021].
[3] Report by a Committee of The General Assembly on the Management of the Poor in Scotland, Parliamentary Papers, 1839 [177] Appendix Table 1.
[4] R. A. Cage, The Scottish Poor Law 1745-1845 (Scottish Academic Press, 1981) pp. 152-57.
[5] Report by a Committee of the General Assembly on the Management of the Poor in Scotland, Parliamentary Papers, 1839 [177] pp.4-5.
[6] Report of the Royal Commission for Inquiring into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws in Scotland, 1844.