Poor Relief - Law Commission

convene vestry meetings; election of Directors in particular
circumstances; Directors required to accept office within ten days; no
Director to be re-elected within three years; Directors’ oath of office;
appointment of treasurer, clerk and other officers, including staff to run the
workhouse and clergy to perform divine service; taking of security from
such officers; weekly meetings of the Directors (sections 7 to 18)
(c) Directors empowered to contract to buy land within the parish of
Ellesmere and to construct a workhouse or other buildings for the
purposes of this Act; the buildings to be called “The Ellesmere House of
Industry” 65 ; rating and furnishing of such buildings; Directors to have the
management and care of the poor; Directors empowered to set the poor
to work; Directors empowered to send the idle or disorderly poor to the
workhouse ; Directors required to set aside space for a burial ground,
such ground to be consecrated (sections 19 to 25)
(d) Directors empowered to arrange for the apprehension of vagrants for
despatch to the workhouse or for their conveyance to any previous place
of settlement; workhouse children at 14 to be apprenticed for a maximum
of seven years or until they reach 21 (boys) or 18 (girls); Directors
empowered to discharge children at 14 or to hire them out for employment
in the area (including gathering in the harvest) (sections 25 to 29)
(e) the Corporation (ie the Guardians as an incorporated body) authorised to
borrow up to £8000, assigning the Corporation’s assets and the poor
rates as security; form of assignments; power to grant annuities; form of
such grant; annuities to be secured by the poor rates; transfer and
records of securities (sections 30 to 33)
(f) Directors authorised to assess the sums needed to meet the sums
needed to meet their obligations under this Act to provide relief for the
poor and to service borrowings, by means of levying rates on the
inhabitants of the various parishes and chapelry; rates to be collected by
the churchwardens and overseers who had to account for the same to the
treasurer and provide accounts; amount of rates to be fixed by reference
to the average expenditure over the previous twelve years (sections 34 to
36)
(g) churchwardens and overseers required to produce books and accounts of
poor law receipts and expenses over the past twelve years; persons who
65 I.e workhouse.
65