The English protoindustrial family: old and new perspectives

Abstract

English research on protoindustrial communities in general and the protoindustrial family in particular has fallen somewhat behind that in many continental countries. Constrained by inadequate sources and a historiographical literature that has constantly placed the small and simple nuclear unit at the heart of English residential arrangements, English historians have often seen the protoindustrial family as little different in form and function from those to be observed in rural areas or market towns. This article uses sources generated by the English poor law to offer different perspectives. Focusing on Lancashire, as the protoindustrial phase of its development began to truly break down in the early 19th century, the article suggests that the English protoindustrial family was volatile in form and size and that the nature of underlying protoindustrial demography and the communal welfare system provided a powerful impetus to a process that saw the constant redistribution of kin between related households. It concludes that in Lancashire the expectation among protoindustrial families must have been volatility and that complex families rather than simple nuclear families have long held the English imagination.

Keywords:

• Protoindustrial family
• Poor law
• Communal welfare

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the Scoloudie Foundation for making a travel grant available to complete the research for this article. The writing took place at the University of Trier during a 3-month stay funded by the Deutche Forschungemeinschaft. I am grateful to Professor Dietrich Ebeling for arranging this visit.

Notes

1 “Hidden kin” might include grandchildren, cousins, stepchildren, and in-laws, who often did not share the same name as the head of household.

2 The English poor law was formally instituted in 1601. It was a national welfare system administered by ecclesiastical parishes (and later some individual townships) on an amateur basis. Each parish had a legal duty to relieve the deserving poor (such as the old, sick, and widowed) from the proceeds of a rate based upon local property. At the same time, it had a legal duty to put the unemployed to work and to punish those (such as vagrants) who were “undeserving.” The system remained in force until 1834, and the process of assessing eligibility and dispensing welfare has generated voluminous sets of accounts, committee minutes, and other documentation for most English parishes.

3 “Complex” in this sense represents an amalgamation of two household forms—extended and multiple—often separated in the historiography. The nature of the English sources demands broad rather than narrow categorizations.

4 Select vestries were small groups of major ratepayers mandated by the larger body of ratepayers to organize the local welfare system, among other things.

5 Lancashire Record Office (hereafter LRO) PR2391/31, “Letter.” Italics are the author's. The overseer was the local administrator of the poor relief system and was chosen annually from the list of local taxpayers.

6 LRO PR2388/18, “Bastardy bond.” Affiliation was the process by which paternity and thus financial liability for the child was established.

7 LRO PR 2386/10–18, “Poor law accounts for Billington.”

8 LRO DDX 325, “Garstang vestry minutes,” from which the next 14 quotations are excerpted.

9 Rawtenstall Library, “Poor law accounts of Cowpe, Lenches, Newhallhey, and Hall Carr.”

10 LRO PR2391/44, “Letter.”

11 Rawtenstall Library, “Poor law accounts of Cowpe, Lenches, Hall Carr and Newhallhey.” Also LRO PR 3016/6/1, “Notices of meetings and minutes for Haslingden.”

12 LRO PR2391/8, “Letter.”

13 LRO PR2391/34, “Letter.”

14 LRO PR2391/18, “Letter.”