Occasional Magazine Vol.3 No.5 (June 1926)
Poorhouses in England by Dr. V. D. Harris. Subtitled “With special reference to Milford Poorhouse and the Relief of the Poor in the Parish”. Read to the Society January 1924 and revised November 1925. Excepting times of famine or plague, extreme poverty was not normal among the largely agricultural population of England till Henry VIII’s reign. The Church and large landholders were providers of charitable assistance. Monks established “Houses of God” of three kinds: leper houses; hospitals and hospices; and houses for the aged, infirm or friendless. From his accession in 1509 the King steadily impoverished the country. He squandered fortunes on personal expenditure, a mania for building and futile wars, replenishing the treasury by the Dissolution of the Monasteries and robbing the Guilds. Depreciating the currency caused unemployment to grow and with it vagrancy and begging, on which increasingly harsh laws had no effect. Twelve Acts of Parliament passed after 1541 failed to stimulate charitable poor relief and an Act of 1601 finally applied compulsion. Overseers of every parish could raise what money they needed by local taxation. With this they provided materials to the poor to allow them to work and support themselves. The overseers also organised apprenticeships for children, relief for people with disabilities, and the erection of poorhouses for the aged and infirm. The earliest surviving local Overseers’ Accounts (1791) point to a long-established poorhouse in Milford. Its final location was near the bridge over the Danes Stream at the western end of the village in the former Bridge House, now [1926] Lloyds Bank [today’s Bay Trees] together with adjacent thatched cottages. A set of 25 regulations on workhouse lines dated 1799 gives the fine detail of administration and every aspect of life for inmates. The poorhouse had to be rebuilt in 1825 following storm damage. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 centralised relief of the poor nationwide and allowed parishes to group as Unions for economies of administration. For the destitute the authoritarian-style workhouse was substituted for the poorhouse, now catering for children, the aged and the infirm. At the end of 1834 Milford joined with neighbouring parishes to form a Union Workhouse at Lymington. The former poorhouse property was sold to Mrs. Whitby in 1836 and subsequent owners are detailed. [Note. Miss Chandler re-examined the source documents on poor children and vagrants in 1955.]
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