County-level data pauper statistics from the Poor Law Board/LGB's Annual Reports

Table ID:

PLAW_C     (1252663)

Contents:

County-level data pauper statistics from the Poor Law Board/LGB's Annual Reports

Approx. number of rows:

5,814

Table type:

Raw Data

Documentation Author:

Humphrey Southall

Geography:

Reporting units are identified by:
   Union (Poor Law) County

Chronology:

The data cover the period 1859 to 1919.
Dates and times are identified by:
   Month
   Year

Notes:

1. This is a selective transcription, containing only some of the columns which appeared in the original reports. In general, our concern is with adult able-bodied paupers (a complete transcription for certain years is held in plaw_c_full); adults were defined as 16 or over.
2. The run of data begins in 1859 because the July 1859 report was the first to use a new standard format which was retained without any changes until January 1884. January 1859 is included to provide a complete run of years, but the only figures held for that month are the totals indoor, outdoor and overall. It may be possible to construct comparable data for the remainder of the 1850s, but earlier tabulations emphasise the marital status of adult paupers and the legitimacy of children.
3. For England, the data were always for counties, except that up to and including January 1889 the three parts of London, within Middlesex, Surrey and Kent, were listed separately. These sub-divisions of London do not exist within the AUO. However, we have ensured that there was always an overall London total, which does have a g_unit value, by summing the London rows for each year.
   Welsh data were listed under three groupings - Monmouthshire, South Wales and North Wales - for most of this period. Data for the individual Welsh counties only appeared from January 1905 onwards.
   • 'South Wales' comprised Brecknockshire, Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire, Glamorgan, Pembrokeshire and Radnorshire.
   • 'North Wales' comprised Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, Denbighshire, Flint, Merionethshire and Montgomeryshire.
   These two groupings have been included in the AUO as additional 'counties', and consequently always have g_unit values set.
4. From July 1884, the reports divide adult able-bodied males on outdoor relief into those 'relieved on account of their own sickness, accident or infirmity' and those 'relieved for other causes'.
5. From January 1891, the reports divide adult able-bodied males and females on indoor relief into those 'in health' and those 'temporarily disabled'.
6. From January 1907, the January reports divided adult able- bodied females on out-door relief into Wives, Widows and Others.
7. From January 1913, the division of those on outdoor relief into the able-bodied and not able-bodied was dropped, and the transcription of numbers on outdoor relief is therefore limited to an overall total.
8. See detailed note below for data available during WWI.
9. From 1920 to 1939, county-level statistics can be constructed using tables plaw_iw and plaw_1920_21.
10. The overall total is not necessarily equal to the sum of indoor and outdoor pauperage. For example, in the January 1914 data the overall total also includes the number of lunatics in county and borough asylums and casual paupers, which are listed in the table, plus an adjustment for unspecified numbers who were counted in both the indoor and outdoor totals.

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Checking:

1. The numbers were cross-checked against summed county figures in plaw_u only for places where plaw_u geographical coverage was complete for an individual month in any year. See checking notes on the plaw_u table for more details.

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Columns within table:

Column	Type	Contents
year	Integer number.	Year to which data refer.
month	Integer number.	Month to which data refer (Jan or July).
plu_cnty	Text string (max.len.=24).	County to which data refer.
g_unit	Integer number.	ID number for county, as defined in the AUO.
pop	Integer number.	Population of county, usually at preceding census date.
i_ab_m_h	Integer number.	Indoor able-bodied men in health (only in dataset from Jan. 1891 onwards).
i_ab_m_d	Integer number.	Indoor able-bodied men temporarily disabled (only in dataset from Jan. 1891 onwards).
i_ab_men	Integer number.	Total of indoor able-bodied men (directly input up to 1890, computed as i_ab_m_h + i_ab_m_d from Jan. 1891).
i_ab_w_h	Integer number.	Indoor able-bodied women in health (only in dataset from Jan. 1891 onwards).
i_ab_w_d	Integer number.	Indoor able-bodied women temporarily disabled (only in dataset from Jan. 1891 onwards).
i_ab_wm	Integer number.	Total of indoor able-bodied women (directly input up to 1890, computed as i_ab_w_h + i_ab_w_d from 1891).
in_tot	Integer number.	Total of indoor paupers
o_ab_m_s	Integer number.	Outdoor able-bodied men relieved because of sickness, etc. (only in dataset from July 1884 onwards).
o_ab_m_o	Integer number.	Outdoor able-bodied men relieved for other causes. (only in dataset from July 1884 onwards).
o_ab_men	Integer number.	Outdoor able-bodied men relieved (directly input up to Jan. 1884, computed as o_ab_m_s + o_ab_m_o from July 1884).
o_ab_w_v	Integer number.	Outdoor able-bodied wives (only in dataset from Jan. 1907 onwards).
o_ab_w_i	Integer number.	Outdoor able-bodied widows (only in dataset from Jan. 1907 onwards).
o_ab_w_o	Integer number.	Outdoor able-bodied women other than wives and widows (only in dataset from Jan. 1907 onwards).
o_ab_wm	Integer number.	Total of outdoor able-bodied women (directly input up to July 1906, computed as o_ab_w_v + o_ab_w_i + o_ab_w_o from Jan. 1907).
out_tot	Integer number.	Total of outdoor paupers
total	Integer number.	Grand Total
id_no	Floating point number.	Number giving order of county within the individual report; values broadly correspond to the numbers used in the reports, but decimal fractions are used to ensure that components of London and individual Welsh counties appear in the correct order.

Additional Notes:

After January 1915, county- and union-level data ceased to appear due to the war; the final tabulation for that month appears in BPP 1914-16 LIV, 925- and 957-. In 1919, a further return was made to Parliament, titled Statement of the number of persons in receipt of poor-relief in England or Wales on or about the 1st day of January, 1919 (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper No. 433 of Session 1914-16), with some particulars of the numbers in receipt of such relief at various dates during the war (BPP 1919 XLII, 1053-.). This states (p.2):

... the special returns formerly obtained by the Central Department from the local poor-law authorities were discontinued after January, 1915, with the view of relieving the pressure on the local staffs, greatly depleted on account of the war. Much briefer returns, designed to include, in total, all the classes of persons who had been included in the discontinued returns, were, however, made every month by the local authorities to the General Inspectors of the Central Department, for administrative purposes, and from those brief monthly returns the present statement is compiled.

"... The present statement, like the earlier statements, relates to the number of persons in receipt of relief on a single day in mid-winter, but whereas the date to which the earlier statements of the series related was uniformly the 1st January, on the present occasion the date is the 28th December, 1918, that being the nearest date for which particulars were available."

The table therefore contains indoor, outdoor and overall totals for 28/12/1918, labelled as 1/1919 to simplify construction of time series. It also includes figures for 1/1916, 1/1917 and 1/1918, giving national totals for population, overall pauperage, and outdoor pauperage, and London totals for population and overall pauperage. These data appear on p.11 of the 1919 report, which also contains estimates of the civilian populations of England and Wales and of London; all figures are apparently stated to the nearest thousand. To simplify construction of time series, there are records for all other counties for these dates, but all fields are null.