Poverty in an industrializing town: deserving hardship in Bolton, 1674–99

Abstract

The question of what kinds of people were relieved by England's Old Poor Law is one of the most pressing in early modern social history. Most of our knowledge about the social characteristics of the relieved poor comes from studies of rural communities in the south and east of the country, where old age and the problems of being ‘overcharged with children’ have been emphasized as key causes of hardship. This article uses three exceptionally detailed censuses (1674, 1686, 1699) to reconstruct the social and economic characteristics of relieved poverty in the industrializing town of Bolton (Lancashire), examining the way in which local economic conditions helped determine the configuration of poverty. It finds that family breakdown and sickness were more common characteristics of the pauper community here than old age and large families. In addition, the importance of cotton-using textile industries to the town's economy rendered it especially vulnerable to periodic economic crises, one of which, that of 1674–5, is analysed in detail here.