A Den of Darkness and Cruelty: The Sevenoaks Workhouse Scandal 1841–2

The Sevenoaks workhouse scandal never hit the headlines, whereas high profile historical examples did, such as at Andover workhouse where it was reported that half-starved inmates were found eating the rotting flesh from bones. This article explores the unpopularity of the Poor Law in the context of Kent and early Victorian history. The author reveals the hideous conditions at Sevenoaks workhouse and how the inmates suffered at the hands of the unscrupulous master and matron who treated the poor with contempt and abused the rules.

The early years of the New Poor Law following its introduction in 1834 gave rise to a number of ‘scandals’ which shone a spotlight on some of the worst abuses in the new workhouses and played into the hands of those determined to see the repeal of the new law. Stories of widespread ill-treatment, starvation diets, medical neglect, over-crowding, squalid and insanitary conditions, received widespread publicity at the time. In particular the appalling conditions in the workhouses at Bridgwater, Fareham and Andover were exposed, publicised widely and subject to investigations by Parliamentary inquiries.[fn1] Whilst these have been well documented and usually merit at least a brief mention in histories of the nineteenth century Poor Law, the workhouse scandal at Sevenoaks, has hitherto received scant attention.

Historical Background to the Poor Law and the Sevenoaks Workhouse

It was the Act for the Relief of the Poor in 1601 which was the foundation of poor relief until the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834. It gave to each parish responsibility for maintaining its own poor. Unpaid overseers were chosen each year to levy and collect a poor rate on landowners and house holders. The money raised would be used to look after the ‘impotent poor’ (the elderly, sick and orphaned), set the able bodied to work, and apprentice pauper children.

Although a few workhouses were in existence earlier it was legislation introduced in Parliament in 1723 by Sir Edward Knatchbull that encouraged a spate of workhouse building ‘to lodge, keep, maintain and employ the poor’ without the need to obtain a special Act of Parliament.[fn2] According to the returns made to Parliament by overseers of the Poor for 1776-77, Kent possessed a total of one hundred and thirty two workhouses, accommodating almost six thousand paupers (Fig. 1).[fn3]

[fg]jpg|Fig. 1 Parishes with Workhouse(s) 1776. Source: Historical Atlas of Kent, T.Lawson and D. Killingray, eds, 2004. Image courtesy of Kent Archaeological Society.|Image[/fg]

[pg178][pg179]

The first workhouse in Sevenoaks had originally been set up by the parish vestry in 1728. It is probable that they rented several cottages to house a small number of elderly and infirm inmates. For some reason by 1735 it was no longer being used and the vestry was renting temporary accommodation whilst they searched for more permanent buildings. In 1737 they nominated three landowners to use their ‘best endeavours as soon as maybe to find a piece of ground on which to build a new workhouse as long as it was not ‘a nuisance to the inhabitants or a manifest prejudice to the tradesmen of the town’. They were fortunate in being given land by the Duke of Dorset, to the north of the town, in the area once known as Gallows Common.[fn4] By 1740 a Governor had been appointed and the workhouse was functioning. It continued as the parish workhouse for just over one hundred years. The building no longer exists, but it was situated on the junction of the present day Camden Road and St John’s Hill which had once been known as Workhouse Hill (Fig. 2).

[fg]jpg|Fig. 2 The workhouse is located top right on Hasted’s Map of Sevenoaks, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 1797. Reproduced courtesy of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral.|Image[/fg]

By the early nineteenth century the workhouse was providing accommodation for a growing number of the poor. The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 brought the worst years for labourers. Post-war demobilisation was compounded by a relentless increase in the population which created a surplus labour market. Wages fell by about a third and many of the rural poor in the southern counties were living close to subsistence and were increasingly dependent for their survival on charity and poor relief. To make matters worse, there were particularly poor harvests in 1828 [pg180]and 1829, followed by a bitterly cold winter in 1830. In order to alleviate distress parish authorities provided what help they could. In Sevenoaks 400 families were being given faggots once or twice a week and between one and two bushels of coal. Subscriptions were also being raised from ‘humane and benevolent inhabitants’ to provide soup for the distressed. The Earl and Countess of Plymouth allowed the poor to collect firewood from their Knole estate as well as providing five oxen to be distributed to the poor of the district.[fn5] In the neighbouring parish of Seal almost a quarter of the village were receiving some form of poor relief and even larger numbers of the poor were given free soup twice a week as well as free or cheap coal.[fn6] This was also provided to the poor in neighbouring parishes of Otford and Shoreham. A county meeting of freeholders was convened by the High Sheriff in March 1830 and it sent a humble ‘address to the Sovereign and Parliament’ for measures to deal with ‘the dreadful distress which pervades every class of his majesties faithful subjects’.[fn7]

By 1830 the labouring poor were stretched to breaking point. Unprecedented levels of distress led to a series of disturbances which soon affected huge swathes of rural England. These Swing Riots, as they were known, began in East Kent at Lower Hardres, near Canterbury, on the night of 28 August, 1830[fn8] and eventually affected twenty two counties. A total of over one third of the parishes in Kent were affected.[fn9] Despite the risk of imprisonment, transportation and even the death penalty, desperate labourers vented their anger by setting fire to corn stacks and farm buildings and destroying threshing machines which threatened to rob them of winter employment. The area surrounding Sevenoaks did not escape the disturbances. In fact, Iain Taylor, argues that the outbreak of machine breaking in August was preceded in the Sevenoaks area by a series of ‘alarming fires’ which occurred between June and September 1830. These he maintains have ‘almost entirely been ignored by historians’.[fn10] The fires were so serious that the Committee of the Fire of London Insurance Company decided that as ‘a consequence of the numerous fires that have occurred in the neighbourhood of Sevenoaks’ it would not renew existing policies or provide new ones.[fn11] Without a proper police force landowners and farmers acted swiftly, and at a meeting at the Crown Inn on 11 September 1830, they established an Association for the Detection of Incendiaries and the Protection of Property in the neighbourhood of Sevenoaks.[fn12] Rewards were offered to anyone with information leading to the arrest of arsonists. The fires preceded the smashing of machines on a number of farms in Sevenoaks and the surrounding villages. This was followed by letters to local farmers from the mythical ‘Captain Swing’ which threatened murder, arson, and assault unless they destroyed threshing machines and increased labourers’ wages.[fn13] These widespread disturbances did extract some immediate wage concessions from employers and in some cases slightly more generous relief from overseers but these were only temporary gains.

Poor rates for England and Wales increased rapidly in the early nineteenth century. Expenditure had risen to 8.6 millions by 1813 and reached an unprecedented figure of 9.3 millions by 1817-18. There was a slight fall in the 1820s but they rose to a second peak of 8.6 in 1832-3. This rising expenditure on poor relief only intensified the clamour for the reform of the Old Poor Law as did its failure to prevent widespread rural unrest.

[pg181]In 1832 the Whig government responded by setting up a Royal Commission to make a ‘diligent and full inquiry into the practical operation of the laws for the relief of the poor’. Its report, which was published two years later in February1834, mounted a remorseless attack on the existing system of poor relief. The Old Poor Law was condemned for its extravagance, inefficiency, and lack of uniformity. It described the typical parish workhouse as ‘containing a dozen or more neglected children, twenty or thirty able bodied adults and probably an equal number of aged and impotent poor who are the proper objects of relief’. Among these ‘the mothers of bastard children and prostitutes live without shame, and associate freely with the youth, who also have the example and conversation of the inmates of the county goal, the poacher, the vagrant, the decayed beggar, and others of the worst description’.[fn14] On 14 August 1834, six months after the report’s publication, the Poor Law Amendment Act received its Royal Assent.

The Act created a national system of poor law administration. At a local level the 15,000 parishes in England and Wales were reorganised into unions and responsibility for administering the system was given to Boards of Guardians which were elected by ratepayers and as a consequence were determined to keep poor rates as low as possible. The intention was for each union to establish a central workhouse run by permanent paid officials. To establish some degree of uniformity the entire system was to be overseen by a three man Poor Law Commission which had its headquarters in London. To those who opposed the new law these Commissioners were the ‘triple headed tyrants’ of Somerset House.[fn15] Once they were in place, they appointed a number of assistant commissioners to implement the new law. Their job was to group parishes into unions, to assist in the formation of the new Boards of Guardians and where appropriate to encourage the building of new workhouses (Fig. 3).

[fg]jpg|Fig. 3 Location of Kent’s Poor Law Unions and Workhouses by 1847. Source: Historical Atlas of Kent, T.Lawson and D. Killingray, eds, 2004. Image courtesy of Kent Archaeological Society.|Image[/fg]

Administrating the new Poor Law in Sevenoaks – Sir Francis Head

The responsibility for implementing the new law in Kent was given to Sir Francis Bond Head a former army major and future Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada. He was well acquainted with the county having been brought up in the village of Higham near Rochester. He had trained at the Royal Military College at Woolwich and fought at the Battle of Waterloo. He retired from the army in 1825 and spent a year in Argentina working for the Rio Plata Mining Association.[fn16] He was an excellent horseman and his riding exploits in South America earned him the nickname ‘Galloping Head’. On his return to England, he was occupied in writing a number of articles and books based on his time in South America. Despite having no direct political experience, he was unexpectedly appointed as one of the first nine Poor Law Assistant Commissioners in October 1834.

He arrived in the county shortly afterwards and set about his task in a predictably brisk fashion. He began by touring the county and visiting existing poorhouses and workhouses including twelve poor houses in parishes surrounding Sevenoaks.[fn17] He informed the Commission that these were in a very poor state and in many cases were only accommodating a handful of poor people.[fn18] He described the workhouse at Hever as ‘a small, miserable, mud thatched cottage about one and a half miles from the village’ which housed ‘three haggered families’ and he condemned the one at Edenbridge as ‘a tumbledown building with many holes in [pg182][pg183]the roof and walls’. It provided shelter for six elderly paupers and a ’chattering idiot’. Chiddingstone, was no better, and was ‘an old rattletrap house standing in a field nearly a mile from the road’. He described the inmates as ‘three withered women’. Head was a scathing critic of the old system of relief and his visits to workhouses only confirmed in his mind the findings of the Report of the Royal Commission. He wrote to the commissioners to say, ‘the poor houses are in a most wretched state and in most cases, he could not be certain that the aged paupers would survive the houses that sheltered them’. He added that ‘the peasantry in this part of Kent have succeeded in intimidating the upper classes’.[fn19]

He was eager to win support for the new reforms and prepared his ground carefully by spending a considerable amount of time touring the county and meeting local officials in an attempt to convince them of the ‘immense advantages’ offered by the new law. The one for Sevenoaks was held at the Crown Inn on the 28 November 1834. He reported to the Commission that since his arrival in the neighbourhood he had been ‘overpowered’ with invitations to dinner but he reassured them that in the interests of remaining impartial he had politely declined each one explaining that he was too busy ‘minutely inspecting’ the districts’ workhouses. Nevertheless, he was acutely aware of the importance of securing support from the most influential landowners in the district, and wrote to Lord Templemore, at his home near Westerham, asking whether he would ‘do him the honour of waiting upon your lordship’. Their meeting took place which enabled Head to outline his plans for the new union boundaries. He had also tried to meet Lord Camden and Earl Amherst but, when he called on them, he found that ‘they had not been at home’ and so he departed leaving his card. Nevertheless, aware of their standing in the area and the importance of securing their approval he wrote personally to both men urging them to attend the meeting. This was well attended by thirty-six officials including fifteen magistrates. Both Camden and Amherst were present. At the end of the meeting, which lasted two hours, Francis Head was thanked for the trouble he had taken and the lucid explanation which he had provided. Much to his surprise a resolution was proposed by Colonel Austen[fn20] and seconded by Lord Templemore, to go ahead to form a union and elect a Board of Guardians. He commented later that the meeting was more successful than he expected from a meeting of people ‘many of whom came with an avowed hostility to the new law’.[fn21] One of these sceptics was the Westerham magistrate and landowner Charles Warde, whom Head described as ‘a man of immense wealth and someone who the whole parish looked to for everything’.[fn22] His opposition to the new law was well known, but by the time he left the meeting, he had been persuaded by Head to support the setting up of a union.

The meeting decided that the next step was ‘to take the sense of parish vestries’. To help ensure a favourable response Head instructed his clerk to send each of them a letter.[fn23] He began by saying that he wished it was in his power to attend each vestry but this was unfortunately not possible. Whilst it was not his intention to influence them in any way he wanted to provide them with an explanation for his proposal. He believed that ‘the wholesale management of the union would be infinitely cheaper’ and a large union with an elected Board could not be so easily intimidated. Although a number of parishes had reservations, the majority signalled their approval and the Sevenoaks union came into effect on 14th April 1835. It [pg184]consisted of ten parishes: Brasted; Chevening; Halstead; Kemsing; Otford; Seal; Sevenoaks; Shoreham; Sundridge and Westerham, but with six further parishes joining a little later it became one of the largest of the twenty-seven unions in Kent. Head must have been relieved that the establishment of the Sevenoaks union had proceeded so smoothly which was in sharp contrast to his experience in East Kent where he had met considerable resistance. Here some parishes initially refused to elect guardians and a number of others petitioned Parliament to remain independent from joining a union. Eventually simmering discontent boiled over and serious unrest swept through the Swale villages. Crowds of labourers gathered to protest, when part of their relief was offered in the form of bread tickets instead of money. Rumours circulated that this was an attempt to poison the poor, in order to reduce the population. Some workhouses were attacked and an overseer was besieged in a church for four hours, a relieving officer was mobbed and a magistrate trapped in a poor house. Passions were running high and in the villages of Bapchild, Doddington and Rodmersham near Sittingbourne, there were outbreaks of rioting.[fn24]

Local newspapers printed dire warnings of what would happen when the New Poor Law was put into practice. The Maidstone Journal maintained ‘the law would be impossible to carry into operation without plunging the country into the horrors of civil warfare’.[fn25] The Kentish Gazette predicted that ‘within twelve months a scene bordering on revolution of a most sanguinary description would exist’.[fn26] Worried that there might be a resurgence of the ‘Swing Riots’ which had caused so much destruction in the autumn of 1830 the authorities acted swiftly to head off trouble. Over two hundred special constables were sworn in as a precaution at Faversham and one hundred and twenty men from the 28th Regiment were moved from their barracks in Chatham to Sittingbourne. Their presence was backed up by a number of police officers sent from London. Eventually fifty-one demonstrators were arrested and later sent for trial in Canterbury. Twenty-eight were sentenced to imprisonment for three months with hard labour and two of the ringleaders were to spend two years in prison.

There were certainly no problems on this scale in Sevenoaks, although it would be incorrect to conclude that everyone welcomed the changes to the way poor relief was going to be administered. Although its author remained anonymous, a strongly worded pamphlet was sent to Sir Francis Head, entitled Two and Twenty reasons against building a new Central Workhouse particularly in the neighbourhood of Sevenoaks.[fn27] It claimed that the new law was ‘destroying all our parochial institutions and creating a triumvirate of unknown and distant dictators’. The author who signed himself Broke was not alone in condemning the new law. Both Thomas Rider and Thomas Law Hodges MPs for West Kent, which included Sevenoaks, opposed the Bill when it was going through parliament. Locally one of its most vocal opponents was Thomas Curteis, the Rector of Sevenoaks parish church.[fn28] In 1838 he set out his opposition to the New Poor Law in A Letter to the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel on the Principle and Operation of the New Poor Law.[fn29] In the same year he presented a petition to the House of Lords ‘praying that the law may be repealed’. His views were also shared by Earl Amherst one of the district’s most influential land owners. In August 1835 Amherst chaired a meeting of the West Kent Agricultural Association which was held in the town at the Rose and Crown Inn.[fn30] In addition to local landowners, the meeting was also attended by [pg185]Sir William Geary MP for West Kent. Samuel Love proposed and Amos Swaisland seconded a motion to petition both Houses of Parliament to complain that the costs of building any new workhouse would fall unfairly on the local ratepayers.

The district also experienced short anti-Poor Law disturbances in nearby Penshurst and Sundridge. Although the Penshurst Union had been one of the first to be created in Kent the guardians dragged their feet over building a new workhouse. Head wrote to them to say that ‘he was sorry to learn that they were not advancing the interests of the Union as rapidly as might be desired’.[fn31] Writing to the Poor Law Commission he said ‘the guardians were the most uneducated men he had encountered in setting-up Unions’.[fn32] Even when they reached an agreement to build a new workhouse the decision proved unpopular. As the ground at Bough Beech was being prepared for the new building, it was reported that local labourers were ‘very disorderly and evinced symptoms of rioting’.[fn33] Their threat to swell their numbers with labourers from Edenbridge so worried Chiddingstone magistrates that they summoned a detachment of dragoons and lancers from Maidstone. The crowd dispersed and trouble was temporally averted. Henry Streatfeild who, against Head’s strong advice, was both a local magistrate and chairman of the Board of Guardians had already warned Sir Francis that the formation of a union was ‘generally deemed an injudicious and unnecessary measure ‘and that it was foolish to build a workhouse on such a scale so far from ‘the protection and assistance of the town’ where 200 paupers might for a time ‘carry all before them’. He also clearly had a personal interest in where the workhouse was located because he added that it would be ‘an obvious annoyance to him to have this establishment near his house’.[fn34]

His fears proved well founded because, as soon as the workhouse had been completed, it attracted hostility from local labourers. On two successive days in February 1836 labourers from several neighbouring villages assembled, threatening to demolish the workhouse. The Tunbridge Wells yeomanry was called out, but by the time they had arrived, the mob had dispersed. On their return the following day they were attacked with stones. The Riot Act was read and once again the protestors dispersed without causing any damage.[fn35] Nevertheless, the disturbances convinced the Commission that the Penshurst union was too small to survive and should be merged with its larger neighbour at Sevenoaks. They issued an order to this effect on 15 February 1836. With these additions the Sevenoaks union had grown to include sixteen parishes, with a Board of Guardians which numbered thirty-one.

The merger of the two unions proved unsatisfactory in many ways and a year later on the 7 July 1837 the Penshurst vestry met to consider ‘selling the workhouse of their late Union’. Instead, they ‘unanimously resolved to petition the Commission to keep their own Union as originally established’. The petition claimed that the Sevenoaks union was between six and fourteen miles away ‘over a range of hills’ and ‘a great inconvenience’ to both the guardians and the poor.[fn36] The Poor Law Commission ignored their objections and the two unions were merged. Nevertheless, the journey to board meetings continued to be a problem and a letter from the overseers to the Poor Law Board in 1853 complained that very often the journey was so difficult that their guardians did not attend any meetings at all so that the parish was not properly represented.

There was also trouble near Sundridge where a ‘dreadful fire’ broke out in [pg186]the stackyard of Ovenden’s Green Farm in the early evening of the 6 September 1835. The fire destroyed fifteen out of its seventeen hay ricks, before it could be extinguished by fire engines from ‘Sevenoaks and other places’ which were able to save adjoining barns and their valuable contents. The Kentish Gazette claimed that ‘there is not the least doubt that the fire was the ‘work of incendarists’ who it claimed, ‘had escaped over the opposite hedge’.[fn37] Outbreaks of arson ‘reached epidemic proportions’38 at this time and the incident raised fears amongst landowners that there might be a return of the fires which had broken out in the area between June and September 1830.

The Ovenden’s Green Farm was owned by Lord Templemore who lived at nearby Combe Bank. He was the driving force behind setting up the Sevenoaks union which made him the target of an attack. His unpopularity continued because exactly a year later he was the victim of another attack on his property. A stack of clover belonging to him was discovered on fire at 10.30 in the morning but owing to the lack of water nothing could be done to save it.[fn39]

Once the Sevenoaks union had been formed, Sir Francis Head hoped that the guardians would proceed with building a new large central workhouse to serve the ten and subsequently the sixteen parishes in the union. Unfortunately for him, the powers of the Commission were limited. Whilst they could order guardians to modify or even close an old and inadequate workhouse the Commission lacked the authority to compel them to build a new one. This required the agreement from a majority of the guardians. In this case all Head could do was exert pressure on the guardians and hope that they would fall into line.

The hideous conditions of the Sevenoaks Workhouse

At first, he must have been pleased with the progress they were making. They had set up a committee which included Lord Templemore, Colonel Henry Austen, Lord Brecknock, the second son of Marquess Camden, and the Westerham landowner and magistrate Charles Warde to find a suitable piece of land in a ‘central location’ for a new workhouse. In June 1835 the guardians announced that they wished to rent or purchase a piece of land not exceeding three acres in the vicinity of Riverhead for the purpose of building a new workhouse.[fn40] This never materialised and a month later they were asking builders to submit tenders to build a workhouse between Otford and Kemsing.[fn41] Their ideas for this must have been quite well advanced because they announced that plans and specifications were available to inspect from Thomas Parker the union clerk. It is not clear why Sir Francis Head objected to the site but given his opposition the guardians dropped the idea. In the meantime, Charles Warde had written to the Poor Law Commission to say that he was willing to sell some land for a workhouse either close to the church at Sundridge or near to Riverhead, but for some reason, the guardians also turned this down. Their discussions had reached a stalemate. Despite calling nineteen meetings to discuss the idea of a new workhouse they had failed to reach an agreement. Sir Francis Head wrote to the Poor Law Commission in July 1835 to say that there were ‘so many secret enemies to the measure and so many prejudices and jealousies that all their discussion has ended in nothing’.[fn42] Having failed to build a new union workhouse they decided to enlarge their [pg187]existing building (Fig. 4). After the meetings, the guardians must have been relieved that they had at last reached a decision, even though Sir Francis Head would not have welcomed it. Not all guardians would have shared Head’s opinion that the existing workhouses were ‘small tottering hovels’.[fn43] Many parishes had taken steps to improve the way they managed poor relief and by the early 1830s almost half of the parishes in Kent were employing paid officials.[fn44] There was also a deeply held suspicion of interference from the central Commission in London into matters which hitherto had been dealt with at a local level. As far as the guardians were concerned their decision had the merit of avoiding the expense of building a new workhouse which would have meant borrowing the money and having to increase the poor rate.

[fg]jpg|Fig. 4 Union Workhouse 1845.|Image[/fg]

Once they had made their decision the guardians moved quickly and their new clerk, William Knowles, requested tenders from builders to enlarge their workhouse on St John’s Hill. The guardians stipulated that they wanted a new classroom for the boys and one for the girls, a washroom and two cleansing rooms as well as ‘a room for depositing bodies of paupers happening to die in the workhouse until the proper time for internment’.[fn45] They also wished to ‘erect a suitable building for the reception of persons travelling the country and begging relief’.[fn46] At the same time as the guardians were making plans to enlarge the workhouse, they faced a number of problems. In February 1837, the guardians dismissed William and Ann Robotham from their posts as the master and matron and their daughter who was the school mistress left at the same time. In May there were problems with John Allen the porter, who had previously been ‘a well conducted pauper’. He was dismissed for being drunk, violent and for other unspecified ‘gross behaviour’.[fn47] In March the clerk wrote to Edward Tufnell, who had taken over from Sir Francis Head in December 1835, to ‘take this opportunity to inform you a little how matters progress here’. He was told that ‘the management of the house has been sadly neglected and that it has reached the ears of the guardians that ‘the itch (scabies) prevailed amongst all the inmates to a lamentable extent [pg188]and many are in a state of uncleanliness and the presence of vermin amongst them is remarkable’. At the same time, he reassured the Assistant Commissioner that he was happy to say that ‘steps are ordered to remove the evils’. Following this there seems to have been a belated attempt to tighten the rules because in June, in response to a complaint from the assistant commissioner, Edward Tufnell, the union clerk reported to the Poor Law Commission that smoking in the workhouse had been forbidden. In July the guardians returned a packet of tea which had been given to a female pauper by the wife of the Rector of Sundridge Church with a firm warning that it was against the rules. David and Elizabeth Gain were appointed as the new master and matron but conditions continued to deteriorate steadily. Further trouble occurred in August 1839 when the clerk had to inform the Commission that elderly inmates using the workhouse garden for exercise were receiving ‘spiritious and fermented liquor’ over a hedge from a nearby beer shop.

Despite their efforts to rectify matters, conditions in the workhouse continued to deteriorate still further. The number of inmates was steadily rising so that the workhouse was becoming dangerously overcrowded. There were two main reasons for this. The amalgamation, in September 1836, of the six parishes in the Penshurst union (Chiddingstone, Cowden, Edenbridge, Hever, Leigh and Penshurst) with the Sevenoaks union simply added to the existing pressures on the workhouse. One of the guardians later claimed that this was the cause of ‘all the mischief’.[fn48] The pressure increased even further when the guardians followed the instructions of the Poor Law Commission and abolished out relief to the able-bodied in January 1837. This had traditionally been given by the overseers to support the poor during difficult times which might have allowed them to stay in their own homes. The withdrawal of this relief could not have come at a worse time. It took place in the middle of a very cold winter when large numbers had no work and could only survive with assistance from the parish. For many, the workhouse had become their only recourse.

The guardians believed that by adding an extension to the workhouse it was capable of accommodating about 300 paupers. During 1839-40 the workhouse was already exceeding that number and by February 1841 it peaked at 347 inmates so that throughout the late summer of 1841 rumours of serious overcrowding and an outbreak of disease in the workhouse were beginning to spread locally. Alarmed by the stories of what was happening in the workhouse the ratepayers of the small village of Sundridge, four miles outside Sevenoaks, called a vestry meeting at the Lamb Inn on the 5 November 1841.[fn49] The meeting of churchwardens, overseers and ratepayers was chaired by the fourth Earl Stanhope of Chevening who lived in the parish. He was not only one of the richest landowners in the district but also one of the fiercest critics of the New Poor Law. His strong objections to the law were well known locally because he had made it known publicly that he had dismissed two of his tenant farmers who had been elected as guardians of the recently established Sevenoaks union. His disapproval of the New Poor Law also led him to resign from the Committee of the Central Agricultural Society when they refused to condemn the new law. His fierce opposition was played out on the national stage. He became the main spokesman against the law in the House of Lords where he made four speeches during 1837 condemning the law and also presented several petitions on behalf of those calling for a repeal of the New Poor [pg189]Law. In a debate on the 27 June 1837, he maintained that he felt it was his duty to act as ‘the representative of the poor and the labouring classes because they are not represented in the House of Commons’. He also condemned ‘the grievous cruelties, the flagrant injustice, and the intolerable oppression of the amended system’. In his opinion the Poor Law Amendment Act was ‘a most odious and oppressive law which saw the establishment of a triumvirate or rather a dictatorship unknown to the constitution of England and inconsistent with public liberty’.[fn50] He also planned to establish a national Anti-Poor law Association which he hoped would become the centre of a national network of similar organisations (Fig. 5). This was launched in London in February 1838 but it never came to anything.[fn51]

[fg]jpg|Fig. 5 4th Earl Stanhope, Samuel William Reynolds, after William Haynes c. 1825.|Image[/fg]

The decision to call the Sundridge ratepayers meeting led to a clash between the vestry clerk, Daniel Booth, and the Rector of Sundridge, Dr George D’Oyley. The rector had insisted that the meeting was unnecessary and complained that it was being called illegally. Daniel Booth dismissed his objections but arranged for the meeting to be held in the Lamb Inn instead of the church.[fn52] The meeting went ahead and heard the sad story of Lucy Welch ‘an honest and industrious’ [pg190]sixteen-year-old servant girl of ‘respectable parents’ who, according to her mother, was ‘lost for want of proper medical attention’. Mary Welch had taken her daughter to the assistant medical officer for the Sevenoaks district when she had become seriously ill. He had given her a box of pills but refused to visit her because it was ‘out of his way’. Unable to leave her sick child she sent her eleven-year-old daughter to a relieving officer but he refused to help. Another medical officer she approached was ‘too busy’ to see her and in desperation she had taken her daughter in a donkey cart to a third medical officer in Brasted. He bled her from both arms but she collapsed an hour later and died in his surgery from ‘a rupture of a vessel in the brain’. The coroner subsequently refused to carry out a post mortem believing she had died of natural causes. He felt there was no justification for putting the county to the expense of an inquest ‘merely to allay any idle rumours that might be afloat’. The Times thought he should be dismissed from office and used the opportunity to blame the New Poor Law for her inhumane treatment and death.[fn53]

The meeting heard about the terrible conditions in the workhouse. It was claimed that between May and November 1840 the children were not properly washed so that ‘the itch prevailed to a great extent’. In April 75 boys were sleeping in 16 beds and 86 girls were in 19 beds. Each child had ten inches space to sleep in. Later in the same month 78 boys and 91 of the girls were suffering from enlarged glands at the back of the neck; 42 boys and 63 girls also had swellings in front of the neck. The Times blamed the entire and unmitigated responsibility for this ‘mass of abomination’ on the Poor Law Commission.

The vestry meeting having heard about the appalling conditions in the workhouse decided that it was ‘indispensably requisite’ that a strict inquiry should be made into conditions in the workhouse by ‘an intelligent and impartial person’. Daniel Booth the vestry clerk was authorised to send a list of eight questions to the Sevenoaks guardians insisting that their answers to them should be in writing. In particular they wanted to know about the accommodation for the children and the nature and extent of disease amongst them. They were also anxious to know about the conditions in the Lying-in room and whether the recent master and matron had resigned or been dismissed. The ratepayers’ letter to the Board of Guardians was also sent to the Poor Law Commission which must have already had some idea what was happening in the workhouse. They decided to intervene and send one of their Assistant Commissioners to hold a public inquiry in the town.

Before the inquiry started Dr D’Oyley had written to The Times to counter some of the criticism he had received following the Sundridge meeting. He insisted that as soon as he heard rumours about the poor conditions, he went straight away to personally inspect the workhouse. He had found all the rooms ‘clean and well ventilated’ and he was satisfied that everything was in ‘good order’. He defended the guardians saying that many were ‘most humane, upright and honourable men’. He ended his letter by assuring readers of The Times that he had always taken an interest in the welfare and comforts of the poor of the parish.[fn54] A few months later the rector was attacked in The Times for neglecting the poor of his parish who, as a result, were subjected to ‘all the horrors of the Sevenoaks workhouse’. The parish it believed was sufficiently endowed to support a rector ‘unfettered by any other parochial cure’. Instead, the rector was a pluralist, holding [pg191]a more important living in Lambeth where he lived for most of the time. He was accused of obtaining a favourable picture of conditions in the workhouse from the occasional visits he made to the guardians who would ‘receive him with bland reverential smiles’. He would naturally believe that everything within the walls of the workhouse ‘was as pleasant as the claret on their hospitable table’.[fn55]

The Inquiry opened at 12 noon on the 25 November 1841 and was chaired by Edward Tufnell. The decision to hold an inquiry had already generated much interest locally. The Maidstone Journal reported that ‘considerable excitement upon the subject prevailed in the town’ and as a consequence ‘a large number of gentlemen had assembled at the Union house’.[fn56] This was not entirely surprising since a number of placards advertising the meeting had been ‘anonymously’ posted around the neighbourhood during the previous ten days.

Despite the lack of room, Edward Tufnell insisted that the meeting take place in the workhouse boardroom and rejected a suggestion to adjourn to ‘a spacious apartment in a local inn’. As a result, a number of people had to be turned away. Tufnell was adamant that those unable to attend would be able to follow the inquiry from reports in newspapers because reporters from The Times and Maidstone Gazette had been able to gain admission to the inquiry. The owner of The Times, John Walter, was one of the staunchest critics of the New Poor Law and he ensured that lengthy accounts of the inquiry were published in his newspaper each day and these were circulated and often printed in numerous provincial newspapers.

Before the inquiry got under way, Tufnell invited anyone who wished to inspect the workhouse to do so. Once this had happened, he began the inquiry by explaining that its purpose was to investigate the statements made at the recent meeting of the ratepayers at Sundridge. The inquiry was to last one week and heard evidence from twenty-three witnesses including, guardians, workhouse staff and inmates. Tufnell was keen that any ratepayers of Sundridge should attend, although this proved difficult because most of the space in the small boardroom was mainly taken up by guardians, who were anxious to attend the inquiry. They included Samuel Love, the chairman of the Board of Guardians, Marquis Camden, William Lambarde, Henry Austen, and Charles Warde. Both the Rector of St Nicholas Church Thomas Curteis and the Vicar of Chevening John Austen also attended at times.

One person who declined an invitation to be present was Earl Stanhope. He was staying in Derbyshire and refused to return. He made his opposition clear to the assistant commissioner conducting the inquiry in a letter to The Times, published on 7 December 1841, when he protested that ‘the mode of investigation which is proposed is in my opinion unreasonable and unjust’. In view of the way the inquiry was to be conducted Stanhope said that it was ‘not his intention to be present’. Not everyone believed this was a good idea and he was subsequently criticised for ‘raising a storm of excitement and then running away from it’.[fn57] The first witness to be sworn in and give evidence at the inquiry was Thomas Carnell the union clerk. He was asked when the guardians were first made aware of the prevalence of disease. He replied that they had received a written report from Robert Adams, the workhouse medical officer, on the 21 January 1841. Robert Adams gave his evidence next. He explained that he had been the medical officer of the workhouse between 8 May 1840 and 23 June 1841. He told the inquiry [pg192]that having been appointed he had set about ‘the very onerous duty of putting the house in a healthy state,’ and had complained to the master and matron about the dirty and neglected state of the children. He also recalled informing the Board, but not in writing, that the Lying-in room was too crowded. In November 1840 he first discovered that a disease of an ‘eruptive character’ had broken out. On 21 January 1841 he informed the guardians in writing that unless they took action ‘the mortality would be frightful’. He made a number of suggestions to them which they agreed to implement. An experienced nurse was appointed in February to deal with both the children and the women in the Lying-in room. In March, in order to stop the disease spreading, the children were provided with a more nutritious diet. They would be given bread and butter and milk with water at breakfast and again in the evening. At lunch time on three days, they would have soup made from shins of beef and on the other days suet pudding. On Sundays they would receive meat pudding. He also advocated giving them London porter for a month. Robert Adams gained the guardians’ agreement to provide a new suit of clothing for the children. In April he recommended enlarging the workhouse to provide the children with more accommodation. He revealed to the inquiry the extent of overcrowding particularly amongst the children. He believed he was accurate in stating that 86 boys were sharing 19 beds and another 75 boys were sharing 16 beds. There were eighty six girls in nineteen beds; fifty seven men in thirty beds; and forty women were sleeping in twenty beds. He also gave evidence about the state of the children’s health. He admitted to the inquiry that seventy eight boys had enlargements of the neck and 42 had been suffering from goitres. Of the 94 girls in the house at the time, 91 had enlargements of the neck and 43 had goitres. There were also seven cases of scrofula amongst the boys and some of the girls were suffering from chilblains.

The inquiry heard that following Robert Adam’s report to them in January, the guardians had set up a committee to look into altering the workhouse to create more space for the children. In July whilst these discussions were taking place they were told by Edward Tufnell, not to proceed any further because a Bill was going through Parliament which if passed would remove all children from workhouses and so to go ahead might be an unnecessary expense for the union. The Bill, however, was subsequently defeated in Parliament and so the committee continued to plan new accommodation. Their proposal to build a temporary wooden building was recommended to the full Board on 29 July. This would create two new school rooms on the ground floor and more sleeping accommodation on an upper floor. The existing girls’ school room would be made into a dormitory and the boys’ schoolroom would be converted into a ward for the infirm. The Poor Law Commission gave their approval on the 12 August but before a start could be made on the building, a majority of guardians had to agree to the proposal. It took some time to arrange a meeting to collect all the necessary signatures because most of the guardians were farmers and too busy to attend because it was harvest time. They eventually gave their consent on the 7 October 1841 and the building was scheduled to be completed by December.

Another important witness at the inquiry was the nurse Mrs Margaret Middleton. She was described in The Times as a most respectable woman. She was also able to produce a testimonial from Samuel Love, the Chairman of the Board of Guardians [pg193]to say that during her time at the workhouse ‘she had proved herself to be a highly efficient nurse and that her general conduct had given satisfaction to the Board’.[fn58] She told the inquiry that she had started work in February but had resigned in May, disgusted at the dreadful conditions. She painted a lurid picture claiming that there was ‘a sickening amount of disease in the workhouse’. Beside the itch (scabies) she said that about a dozen of the children were suffering from foot complaints. When she washed the children, she found that some of them had spots an inch long on their feet which had eaten into their flesh so that the bones of their toes were poking through. Many of them were also suffering from goitres and enlarged glands around their necks. She described the Lying-in room for women who were about to give birth or had recently done so as ‘beastly beyond description and the smell arising from the filth horrible’. In her opinion the room was far too small. It measured ten feet by seven feet and at one time there were five women sleeping in two beds. She claimed that the women were not looked after properly and the bed linen was infrequently changed. She also said that one of the nurses looking after the women was ‘completely unfit’ for duty.

Margaret Middleton was also highly critical of the Master and the Matron claiming they had been cruel to the inmates. She accused Mr Gain of beating the children with his shoe and his wife of throwing chairs across the Lying-in room when she was in a state of intoxication. They had skimmed the workhouse milk of its cream to make butter and used workhouse property to make clothes for themselves. She told the inquiry that she had not complained to the guardians because she did not feel it was her ‘duty to do so’.

Other witnesses included Fanny Giles and Caroline Clark who testified to the neglect which they had experienced during their confinement. Fanny Giles told the inquiry that Harriet Harborer, who was another inmate, had given birth to a child whilst they were sharing the same bed. The next day because of the shortage of space she was moved to a casual ward where she was forced to share a bed with a woman who had venereal disease of a ‘very bad character’.[fn59] Caroline Clark explained to the inquiry that she was a single mother. On entering the house three weeks before her confinement she had been given oakum to pick. When she failed to complete the task, she was sent before the Board who took away meat and pudding in her diet and gave her bread and cheese for the fortnight up to her confinement.

Sevenoaks Workhouse as a ‘den of darkness and cruelty’

These details about conditions in the workhouse provided The Times with plenty of ammunition to support their crusade against the operation of the New Poor Law. It described the Sevenoaks workhouse as a ‘den of darkness and cruelty’ where the inmates had been ‘huddled together in dirt and disease’ and ‘treated worse than swine or cattle’.[fn60] Many local newspapers which like The Times were hostile to the new law also joined in the criticism. The Maidstone Journal concluded that it had no hesitation in saying that there was ‘gross mismanagement and the most cruel indifference to human suffering ‘displayed in the workhouse.[fn61] The West Kent Guardian also strongly condemned the workhouse for its ‘utter disregard for the decencies of humanity and the horrible indifference to the wants and feeling of the poor who have been reduced to the dreadful extremity of seeking shelter within [pg194]the pest house of the Sevenoaks Union’.[fn62] The Sevenoaks Advertiser which had been published for the first time in 1840 claimed that the moral condition of the inmates of the union workhouse was ‘truly deplorable’ and that it was ‘a very sink of vice’. It believed that details of conditions in the workhouse were ‘unfit for publication’.[fn63] After one week Edward Tufnell brought the inquiry to an end. It was a decision which annoyed a number of people attending who felt that the inquiry had been ‘improperly’ ended. The inquiry had certainly been bad tempered at times. At the start of the fourth day of the hearing it was reported that ‘a warm discussion’ took place so that Edward Tufnell had insisted on silence from all parties. The termination of the inquiry had also caused considerable dissatisfaction and a rather ‘unseemly altercation’ ensued and the last three to four days of the inquiry were described as ‘more in the nature of a personal squabble than an investigation the object of which was the truth’.[fn64] The Sussex Advertiser reported that the inquiry has created an ‘immense sensation in Sevenoaks, the disclosures being of a more frightful character than had previously been supposed possible’.[fn65] Shortly after the inquiry was brought to an end Daniel Booth the Sundridge vestry clerk wrote to the Poor Law Commissioners to say that he had been ‘sorely disappointed’ by Edward Tufnell’s ‘abrupt termination’ of the inquiry because there were other important witnesses still to be interviewed such as the porter, schoolmaster and the washer woman. He demanded that the inquiry be resumed without delay and that if they refused, he would ‘carry the whole case of his complaint to Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Home Department’. This prompted a swift reply from Edwin Chadwick, the Secretary to the Commission, to say that they would be glad to see him at their office in Somerset House. Daniel Booth travelled to London where he met Thomas Franklin Lewis, one of the three Poor Law Commissioners. He was told that there was nothing they could do because they had not received the inquiry report and that they had also decided to send ‘some medical men’ to inspect the children in the workhouse. The Commissioner assured him that once they had received the reports ‘they would lose no time in taking the subject into consideration’.[fn66] The inquiry had spent a considerable amount of time examining the evidence about the health of the workhouse children. Some witnesses gave contradictory views and so the commissioners decided to appoint Edward Rigby and Henry Hancock to visit the workhouse and inspect the children and the conditions they lived in. Both men were well qualified London doctors. Rigby was physician to the General Lying-in Hospital at St Bartholomew’s and Hancock was surgeon to the Charing Cross Hospital. They visited the workhouse on 13 December 1841 and quickly concluded that the children’s bedrooms were ‘utterly inadequate’. At one end of the two boys’ rooms the wall and the floor were soaked from a tub being used as a communal urinal which was ‘very offensive during the night’. The bedding was fairly clean but the blankets were old and thin. The washing facilities which consisted of outside sinks, exposed to the weather, were condemned as completely inadequate and a better supply of soap and towels was needed. They found that there had been some improvement to the Lying-in room since on the day of their visit they were told that a fire was kept going at night and also during the day if it were needed. They thought the bedding was excellent and the women [pg195]looked healthy. There was a small adjoining sleeping room with two beds. One bed was occupied by a laundress who acted occasionally as a midwife in the absence of the medical officer.

They found that some children were suffering from enlarged thyroid glands although apart from one girl they dismissed these as ‘trivial’ believing that most cases had occurred before the children had entered the workhouse. However, they found that all the boys and some girls were suffering from scald head (ring worm) and the girls had chilblains; five boys had diseases of the eyes. They believed that the boots provided for the girls were clumsy and ill-fitting so that their feet were becoming deformed. They also criticised the children’s food and condemned the ‘present meat pudding as indigestible’ suggesting that meat would be better baked or boiled with some vegetables.

Although their report was highly critical of conditions in the workhouse, they nevertheless found that the clothing of all the children was remarkably clean. They examined every child and concluded that they all appeared ‘cheerful and seemed perfectly happy’. Rigby and Hancock made their report to the commissioners together with a number of recommendations to improve conditions particularly for the children. They suggested that the workshops should be larger and teach the boys an increased number of trades as ‘a means of earning a livelihood’. The tubs at the end of the boys’ bedrooms should be removed and proper urinals installed and they should be provided with an ample supply of soap and hot water for washing themselves. No more than two children should sleep in one bed. They also recommended that the day rooms particularly for the old men and women should be furnished with benches with backs to them. Having received the report on 18 December, Thomas Carnell was instructed by the guardians to send it to the Editor of the Maidstone Journal so that it could be made public.[fn67]

Once the Poor Law Commission had received both reports its secretary Edwin Chadwick published its official report on 5 January 1842.[fn68] At the outset they made it clear that at the formation of the Sevenoaks union the guardians had disregarded the advice of the Commission and had refused to build a new workhouse. As a result, during the winter1840-41 ‘a state of things existed in the Sevenoaks Union workhouse which ought never to have been permitted’. During the period from December 1840 to March 1841 there had been serious overcrowding particularly in the boys’ sleeping rooms. This had ‘aggravated if not caused’ disease to spread. They concluded that ‘great blame’ attached to David and Elizabeth Gain who had, at the time, been the workhouse master and matron. They singled out Mrs Gain in particular for neglecting the women in the Lying-in room. They were also highly critical of Robert Adams who as the Medical Officer had the main responsibility for the health of the inmates. The report concluded that ‘the Commissioners feel bound to express in their decided opinion Mr Adams was ‘guilty of very great neglect in the discharge of his duties’ and in their view was ‘unfit to discharge his duties as a Medical Officer’. He had failed to realise the extent of disease amongst the children making an entry in the porter’s book in November 1840 to say that he was ‘much pleased with the state of the house’. He had also failed to draw the Board’s attention early enough to the extent of both the overcrowding and the poor conditions in the Lying-in room.

The Commission believed that the guardians must have known that the house was [pg196]‘inconveniently overcrowded’ since they received a report each week from the master but they had failed to inform the Commission. They also criticised the guardians for not obtaining permission from the Commission to offer outdoor relief to the able bodied which would have reduced the numbers in the workhouse. The regulations permitted this to happen ‘in cases of sudden or urgent necessity or sickness’. The visiting guardians were also criticised for not examining the Lying-in ward (‘from motives of delicacy’) which was too small and ‘imperfectly attended to’. In his evidence to the inquiry, Samuel Love, the board chairman, admitted that he had never been on the visiting committee and that he had always tried to avoid it.

They defended their assistant commissioner, Edward Tufnell, saying that the extent of his responsibilities was so great since he was responsible for 25 unions in Kent and 20 in Sussex so that it was only possible for him to visit a workhouse every six months and so he was forced to rely heavily on reports from the guardians. Nevertheless, he received a mild rebuke for not informing the Commission in February 1841 when he first became aware of conditions in the workhouse and for not finding the children temporary accommodation once the overcrowding had become known to him. His defence had always been that the children had been too weak to move in the ‘midst of snow and the severest weather’. They accepted that he had advised the postponement of the building in ‘the best interests of the children’ because there was a likelihood that District schools would be erected which would remove all children from workhouses.

Following the publication of the Commission’s report, public interest in the scandal gradually subsided. The Times moved on to report failings in other workhouses. The Sundridge vestry which had prompted the inquiry in the first place, hastily arranged a meeting to hear a report from Daniel Booth their clerk who had attended the inquiry.[fn69] He recounted what had been said on each day. He complained bitterly that he had not been allowed to see the guardians’ minutes and criticised Edward Tufnell for ‘improperly’ closing the proceedings when there had been several witnesses who had not been called. Lord Stanhope chaired the meeting once again and repeated his criticism of the way the inquiry had been conducted. He believed that there was other ‘intelligent and impartial persons’ in the neighbourhood who would have been better suited to conducting the inquiry than the assistant commissioner. He suggested Earl Amherst, who he maintained had ‘in his long public life, distinguished himself in a most honourable manner’. In his view another suitable chairman would have been Thomas Curteis, a man he claimed who was ‘conspicuous for his benevolence’. He lambasted the Poor Law Commission which ‘had adopted a course of proceeding which was repugnant to reason and utterly inconsistent with the principles of justice’. The ratepayers were far from satisfied and the meeting concluded with an agreement to send a petition to both Houses of Parliament.

The Commission’s report had important consequences for both the operation of the New Poor Law and for the Sevenoaks Board of Guardians. The Commission issued a set of detailed instructions to all Board of Guardians in February 1842. These stipulated that visiting committees of guardians should carry out careful inspections of the workhouse and keep a record of their findings which had to be discussed at meetings of the full board. They had to check that rooms were clean and well ventilated and that the inmates appeared clean and decent. They [pg197]had to record whether there was any evidence of infectious disease. They were also charged with ensuring that prayers were said regularly and that boys and girls were making sufficient progress in religious instruction, reading, writing and arithmetic as well as receiving proper industrial training. Finally, they were required to record the number of inmates in the workhouse at the time of their visits.

Despite the criticism which the Board of Guardians received it is surprising that no guardian resigned and Samuel Love remained as its chairman. Edward Tufnell continued as an assistant commissioner until the Poor Law Commission was dissolved in 1847 and he then became an influential inspector of workhouse [pg198]schools until he retired in 1874. Robert Adams lost his job as a district medical officer. He had written to the Board of Guardians on 12 January 1842 to refute the charges which had been made against him at the inquiry saying that he had always received from them ‘the fullest and most unqualified expression of confidence’.[fn70] They replied that they had no wish to go against the Commission’s findings. The Times defended him suggesting that the blame for the conditions in the workhouse rested with the guardians and that he was being made a scapegoat by the ‘despotic triumvirate at Somerset House’ who had cast around for a victim to be sacrificed’.[fn71] Having resisted building a new workhouse for so long the Board of Guardians was now left with no choice but to do so. By this time nineteen unions in Kent had already built new workhouses.[fn72] Sevenoaks now followed. The guardians were directed by the Poor Law Commission on 23 March 1843 to build a new workhouse to accommodate 450 inmates at a cost not exceeding £12,000. The guardians went ahead and purchased a ten acre site from Earl Amherst at Birchfield Wood one mile south of the village of Sundridge. They opened their new workhouse in October 1845.

Following this, the old workhouse on St John’s Hill, where the scandal had taken place, was auctioned on 11 March 1846 by ‘direction of the guardians and pursuant to an order by the Poor Law Commissioners’.[fn73] It was advertised as being a ‘valuable freehold property comprising several extensive ranges of newly erected buildings with productive gardens extending over two and a half acres and lately occupied by the poor of Sevenoaks’ (Fig. 6). The building was subsequently demolished ending a dark chapter in the history of the town and its workhouse. Today the scandal has been almost forgotten and the only trace of the old workhouse still in existence is a small section of the outer wall on the south side of Camden Road.[fn74]

[fg]jpg|Fig. 6 Sale of Sevenoaks Workhouse 1846.|Image[/fg]

Endnotes

[fn]1|For a detailed account, see Shave, Samantha A., ‘“Great Inhumanity”: Scandal, Child Punishment and Policymaking in the Early Years of the New Poor Law Workhouse System’, Continuity and Change, 33 (2018), 339–63 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0268416018000231>.[/fn]

[fn]2|Sir Edward Knatchbull was MP for Rochester, 1702-5 and MP for Kent 1713-15 and 1722-27.[/fn]

[fn]3|Paul Hastings, ‘The Old Poor Law 1640-1834’, in Nigel Yates, Robert Hume and Paul Hastings, Religion and Society in Kent, 1640-1914 (Woodbridge,1994), p.154.[/fn]

[fn]4|Sevenoaks Chronicle (henceforth SC), 21 February 1902, p. 5. A triangle of land on the west side of St John’s Hill.[/fn]

[fn]5|Maidstone Journal, (henceforth MJ), 9 February 1830, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]6|Jean Fox, David Williams and Peter Mountfield, Seal. The History of a Parish (Chichester, 2007), p.151.[/fn]

[fn]7|MJ, 6 March,1830, p. 2.[/fn]

[fn]8|Eric Hobsbawm and George Rude, Captain Swing (London,1970 ).[/fn]

[fn]9|Paul Hastings and Ian Coulson, A Historical Atlas of Kent, Terence Lawson, and David Killingray (eds) (Chichester, 2004), p.153.[/fn]

[fn]10|Iain Taylor, ‘One for the (farm) workers? Perpetrator risk and victim risk transfer during the ‘Sevenoaks Fires’ of 1830’, Rural History, 28 (2017), pp.137-60.[/fn]

[fn]11|Eric Hobsbawm and George Rude, Captain Swing (London,1970), p. 226.[/fn]

[fn]12|Kent History and Library Centre (henceforth KHLC), U44 2/067.[/fn]

[fn]13|Iain Taylor and David Killingray, Sevenoaks 1790-1914, Risk, and choice in West Kent (Hatfield, 2022), pp. 7-9.[/fn][pg199]

[fn]14|Parliamentary Papers, Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, 1834, p.170.[/fn]

[fn]15|West Kent Guardian, (henceforth WKG), 11 December 184, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]16|Sydney Jackman, Galloping Head (London, 1958), pp. 39-42.[/fn]

[fn]17|The term poor house and workhouse were often used interchangeably. Poor houses usually consisted of one or two cottages providing accommodation for a few mainly elderly, sick, or infirm poor. There would be no governor and few rules. Unlike a workhouse no labour would be required.[/fn]

[fn]18|The National Archives (henceforth TNA) MH 12/1535, Head to the Poor Law Commission, 29 November, 1834.[/fn]

[fn]19|TNA MH 12/5315, Head to PLC, 29 November, 1834.[/fn]

[fn]20|David Killingray and Elizabeth Purves, Sevenoaks An Historical Dictionary (Andover, 2012), p.62. Thomas Austen was a magistrate and MP for West Kent from 1845-47.[/fn]

[fn]21|TNA MH12/1535 Head to PLC, 29 November, 1834.[/fn]

[fn]22|TNA MH 12/1535 Head to PLC, 1 December, 1834.[/fn]

[fn]23|A.E. Sadler, Chevening in the 19th Century (1960), Unpublished thesis, Sevenoaks Library, K942.23, p.170. Kent History and Library Centre (henceforth KHLC)P88/8/1.[/fn]

[fn]24|David Hopker, Money or Blood, The 1835 Riots in the Swale Villages (Broadstairs, 1958), pp.1-17.[/fn]

[fn]25|MJ, 8 July, 1834, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]26|Kentish Gazette (henceforth KG), 16 September 1834, p. 3.[/fn]

[fn]27|Sevenoaks Library, B1232.[/fn]

[fn]28|Killingray and Purves, ibid, p. 45.[/fn]

[fn]29|Thomas Curteis, A Letter to the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel on the Principle and Operation of the Poor Law, London, 1842.[/fn]

[fn]30|South Eastern Gazette, (henceforth SEG) 11August. 1835, p. 1.[/fn]

[fn]31|TNA MH 12/1535 Head to PLC,12 June, 1835.[/fn]

[fn]32|TNA MH 12/1535 Head to PLC,16 April, 1835.[/fn]

[fn]33|MJ, 26 May, 1835, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]34|TNA MH 12/5315, Streatfeild to PLC, 31 May, 1835.[/fn]

[fn]35|KG,16 February, 1836, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]36|KLHC, P/184/19/4.[/fn]

[fn]37|KG, 8 September, 1835. p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]38|John Rule and Roger Wells Crime, Protest and Popular Politics in Southern England (London 1997), p. 107.[/fn]

[fn]39|KG, 6 September, 1835, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]40|SEG,16 June, 1835, p. 1.[/fn]

[fn]41|SEG,14 July, 1835, p. 1.[/fn]

[fn]42|TNA MH 12/5315, Head to PLC, 11July, 1835.[/fn]

[fn]43|Sir Francis Head was encouraged by the Commission to write two articles for the Quarterly Review in 1835. One was a defence of the New Poor Law to counter the opposition from hostile papers such as The Times. The other described the implementation of the law in East Kent.[/fn]

[fn]44|Paul Hastings in Religion and Society in Kent,1640-1914 (Woodbridge,1994), p.118.[/fn]

[fn]45|SEG, 25 April,1837, p. 1.[/fn]

[fn]46|TNA MH 12/5316, 8 September, 1835.[/fn]

[fn]47|KHLC G/Se AC b 1.[/fn]

[fn]48|MJ, 7 December, 1841, p. 3.[/fn]

[fn]49|MG,16 November, 1841, p. 3.[/fn]

[fn]50|Aubrey Newman, The Stanhopes of Chevening (Manchester,1960), p. 235.[/fn]

[fn]51|Nicholas Edsall, The Anti Poor Law Movement (Manchester,1971), p. 139.[/fn]

[fn]52|The Times, 10 November, 1841, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]53|The Times 6 November, 1841, p. 5.[/fn][pg200]

[fn]54|The Times 12 November,1841, p. 3.[/fn]

[fn]55|The Times cited in the WKG, 22 January, 1842, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]56|MJ, 30 November,1841, p. 3.[/fn]

[fn]57|MG, 21. December, 1841, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]58|Sussex Advertiser (henceforth SA), 6 December 1841, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]59|KHLC U1590/C 202.[/fn]

[fn]60|The Times, 24 November,1841, p. 5.[/fn]

[fn]61|MG, 21 December,1841, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]62|WKG, 11 December,1841, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]63|SA,1 April,1843, cited in Fox, Williams, Mountfield, Seal, p. 156.[/fn]

[fn]64|MG, 7 December, 1842, p. 3.[/fn]

[fn]65|SA, 6 December,1841, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]66|MJ, 14 December,1841, p. 3.[/fn]

[fn]67|MJ, 21 December, 1841, p. 3.[/fn]

[fn]68|MJ, 18 January, 1842, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]69|WKG, 22 January, 1842, p. 7.[/fn]

[fn]70|WKG, 22 January, 1842, p. 7.[/fn]

[fn]71|The Times, 25 January, 1842, p. 4.[/fn]

[fn]72|Paul Hastings and Ian Coulson. in Historical Atlas of Kent Terence Lawson and David Killingray (eds) (Chichester, 2004), p. 159.[/fn]

[fn]73|MJ, 10 March 1846, p. 1.[/fn]

[fn]74|John Dunlop, The Pleasant Town of Sevenoaks ( Sevenoaks,1964), p. 160.[/fn]

[pg201]