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SAFFRON WALDEN HISTORICAL JOURNAL |
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Article
from Saffron Walden Historical Journal No 1 (2001) The
Story of Widow Mowl Parish
politics in Late Eighteenth Century Rural England by
Shirley Wittering I
came upon this story whilst researching for my Master of Studies degree in
English Local History with the University of Cambridge Board of Continuing
Education. I was researching the cost of Poor Law Relief in the Hundred of
Thriplow, South Cambridgeshire in the second half of the eighteenth
century. The overseers’ accounts for the parish of Thriplow covered a
bare thirty years, 1760–1790, but were extremely detailed and it was
mainly these accounts backed up by the parish registers, settlement
certificates and removal orders that provided the stark details of the
story of Elizabeth Moule or Mowl (the spellings were interchangeable). For
the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with the structure of parochial
government, I will give an outline of how the poor were cared for before
the introduction of the New Poor Law in 1832. From the time of Elizabeth I
until 1832 each parish was responsible for caring for the poor and
unemployed within its own boundaries. Two officers called Overseers of the
Poor were elected each year and it was their responsibility to work out
how much they would need and to divide that amount among the taxpayers of
the village. Although there was no income tax until 1799, people paid
several taxes and some of them were quite high. There was land tax, Church
tax, as well as the poor tax.
Most of these taxes were based on property and varied with the amount of
property owned. In 1776 the poor rate for Thriplow was one shilling in the
£. The amount raised that year was £113.1s.2d and the amount spent was
£112.10s.4d, a nice bit of book-keeping. At
the back of the overseer’s book was this remark: '30th August
1775, William Pomfrett of Waldon agrees to keep his daughter the Widow
Moule for half a guinue per quarter of the year and to have five shillings
till next Michaels and then to have half a guinue a quarter'.
This intrigued me and I started to investigate as to why Thriplow
was paying for a lady to live in Saffron Walden. The hunt for information
led me from Cambridge Record Office to the Essex Record Office Archive
Access Point, the Town Hall and the
Muniments Room in Saffron Walden Parish Church. Elizabeth
Pomfrett was born in Saffron Walden in 1742. On the 2 May 1774 she married
John Mowl, a higler of Thriplow in Thriplow Church.
A higler sells goods
from a horse and cart, unlike the pedler who goes on foot. Elizabeth was
32; I don’t know how old John was. Thirty-two was quite old to get
married, but in the eighteenth century the working classes married much
later than they did in Victorian times, often in their late twenties.
Apprentices were not allowed to marry until they had finished their
apprenticeships, usually a period of seven years. Both girls in service
and servants in husbandry, as farm hands were called, lived in their
employer's home, where a strict eye was kept on them and their morals.
Even when they were free to marry it took them a long time to save enough
money before they could marry and set up a home of their own.
John
and Elizabeth set up home in Thriplow but, only nine months after they
were married, John died. Elizabeth returned to her father in Saffron
Walden, but within a week the overseers of Saffron Walden had brought her
before the magistrates to be examined as to her financial circumstances.
They already had 70 pensioners on their books, so I expect they were
reluctant to add another and thereby increase the burden on the taxpayers
of the town. They may also have been worried lest Elizabeth was pregnant,
for then they would be responsible for the upkeep of the child also, as
children born within a parish were the responsibility of that parish. Perhaps
at this stage I should explain that the law only allowed overseers to help
those who had been born within their parish, or who were married to those
born within the parish, or to those who had been employed within the
parish for one year. The Quarter Sessions of the period are full of the
wrangles between parishes as to who should bear the brunt of keeping
paupers. The
first thing that happened was that on 24 February 1775 the overseers and
churchwardens of Saffron Walden 'did complain to' two JPs (William Flower
and Thomas Browne) who made out a removal order requiring the Saffron
Walden overseers to remove 'Elizabeth Moule widow, who hath lately
intruded into your said Parish, there to inhabit as a Parishioner contrary
to the laws relating to the Settlement of the Poor, and is likely to
become chargeable if not timely prevented'. They charged the overseers to
'remove and convey' Elizabeth to the parish of Thriplow. The next day, 25
February 1775 the JPs examined Elizabeth
who made a signed statement declaring that she was legally married
to John Moule on 2 May 1774 in the parish church at Thriplow and that they
had lived there until her husband’s death on 'Monday last'. So less than
a week after her husband had died, Elizabeth was sent
back to Thriplow. One of the Thriplow Overseers, probably Mary Tinworth who
being a widow herself may have felt some sympathy for her, bought her some
beer at Widow Brands (the Green Man public house) when she arrived, for
the overseers entry for that date reads: 'paid at Widow Brands for beer on
Widow Moules account when she was brought from Walden 1s.10d'. On
March 3 a settlement certificate agreeing that Elizabeth Moul was the
'widow and relict of John Moul' and therefore legally settled in Thriplow,
was signed by two churchwardens, Bennet Cranwell and George Colman, (who,
despite being a moderately wealthy farmer, could only make his ‘mark’)
and two overseers, Mary Tinworth and William Faircloth. Their signatures
were witnessed by John Godfrey and William Triplow. The following day this
document was countersigned by Hale Wortham Senior and Junior, two of his
Majesty’s Justices of the Peace. They also wrote that William Triplow
'did under oath did see the Churchwardens and Overseers sign and set their
seals to the document'. All this probably took place in the Green Man public house as
the overseers' account once again records 'Paid for Beare at Brands on Wid
Mouls account 3 shillings'. Three shillings was a lot of money, the
equivalent of three days wages for a labourer. It is interesting to note
that Hale Wortham was Lord of the Manor of Bacon’s in Thriplow and that
Widow Brand, proprietor of the Green Man pub, was one of his tenants.
But Widow Moule did not stay in
Thriplow, for the next day, 5 March, the Overseers' account lists ‘for
carriing her part of the way to Walding – 2 shillings’. There was then
a gap of five months until August 30
when the note referred to at the beginning was written in the back
of the overseers’ account book: ‘William
Pumphries of Waldon Agrees to keep his Daughter the Widow Moule for
half a guinue per Quarter of the year and to have five shillings till next
Michaels [Michaelmass] and then to have half a guinue a quarter’; and the
entry within the account states ‘30th August 1775 paid Wid
Moules till St Michaels 5s’.
The rate
books for Saffron Walden for 1757
show William Pumfrett living in ‘part of a cottage’ in Castle Street.
He shared with Robert Barrett, who kept a ‘shop and cottage’ owned by
Widow Norris. William probably had either the upstairs or the back of the
house. As it is the first house on the list we can presume that it was the
house on the corner of Castle Street and Bridge End which is still a shop
and house. William died in 1787 and the next rate book for 1790 shows
someone else living in the house (Fig 2). The money was duly paid for the
next eleven years until Easter Monday 1786 when it suddenly stopped –
why? Had she died? No, the burial register records her burial at Thriplow
in 1815 at the age of 74, so why had the money stopped? I thought I would
go to Saffron Walden and look at their registers to see what I could find,
and here the story takes an interesting twist. On
three dates in July 1785 (Elizabeth would now be 43) the banns of marriage
were read for Elizabeth Moule and William Lagden, although the space on
the banns certificate for the date of marriage is not filled in.
If they were married and moved away it would explain why
Elisabeth’s pension was stopped, as she was now married to an inhabitant
of Saffron Walden and no longer the responsibility of the parish of
Thriplow. If she did not marry William Lagden
then she would still be Widow Moule when she was buried at the age
of 75 (the dates fit) in Thriplow, or maybe there was another Widow Moule
the same age. We shall probably never know.
This
story reveals several aspects of parish politics of the late 18th
century. By paying for Elizabeth to stay with her father, the overseers of
Thriplow were saving their taxpayers money for, had she stayed in Thriplow,
they would have paid for her rent, her fuel, clothes, food, and nursing
should she need it. This would have come to much more than the two guineas
a year they were paying her. The story also reveals the unreliability of
parish registers: there are still Moules living in Thriplow, yet between
1670 and 1815 there are only 5 Moules in the registers. People in the past had the same
problems and emotions that we have; the excitement of local history is
finding the human face behind the often bare facts and bald statements
written in the official documents. What this story does tell us is that
people don’t change, only the technology for dealing with them changes. REFERENCES 1. Shirley Wittering, Parochial
variation in Poor Relief Expenditure in Thriplow Hundred (Cambridgeshire)
c. 1770–1815, M.
St thesis (unpub.)
University of Cambridge, 1999. ©
Shirley Wittering & Saffron Walden Historical Society 2001 |
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SAFFRON WALDEN HISTORICAL JOURNAL |