Poor Relief - Law Commission

(c) overseers of the poor authorised to collect the rate; arrangements for
accounts to be kept; penalties for overseers failure to account or carry
out the collection duties
(d) trustees empowered to borrow money on the credit or this Act (such
moneys to be repaid by means of annuities); application of rate receipts
to pay parish debts; provisions as to payment of annuities and as to
record-keeping; rights of annuitants
(e) election and qualification of trustees
(f) the Act, and its authority to levy rates, to continue only so long as any
annuity granted under the Act continues (Act and its powers thereafter to
cease)
(g) trustees’ expenses; civil procedure issues; status of Act.
6 Geo.3 c.64 (1766) (St Botolph, Aldgate Poor Relief Act)
5. According to the long title, this 1766 Act was enacted for:
the better maintaining, regulating, and employing, the Poor within the Parish
of Saint Botolph, Aldgate, in the City of London .
6. The preamble to the 1766 Act recorded that “the Poor of the Parish of Saint
Botolph, Aldgate, in the City of London, are very numerous, and are maintained and
supported at a very great Expence by the said Parish.” It also recorded the need to
provide a place for those persons whose age or infirmities rendered them incapable
of supporting themselves, as well as for the better employment of the able and
industrious, the correction and punishment of the profligate and idle, and for the
education of poor children.
7. The 1766 Act provided as follows:
(a) churchwardens, overseers of the poor and vestrymen of the parish of St
Botolph, Aldgate were authorised to meet annually to ascertain the sums
needed to provide for the relief and employment of the poor of the parish;
qualification of vestrymen
(b) churchwardens, overseers of the poor and vestrymen authorised to levy
a poor rate on all inhabitants of the parish; property owners to be liable
for the poor rate assessed on tenants and lodgers; tenants and lodgers
to be liable to pay any rates not paid by their landlord (up to the amount
of the rent due) upon pain of having their goods seized
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