Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

were taken to the workhouse, established in 1774. This had brought about significant
savings, but the total amount paid weekly to the out-poor averaged £5, ‘a very heavy
expense for out-poor in a parish of about a thousand inhabitants’. Eden praises the diet
offered in Alcester’s workhouse, where the average number of poor was twenty-five,
chiefly infirm old people and very young children. They were mainly employed in
carding and spinning, ‘but their earnings are too inconsiderable to make any
difference.’ 10
In this chapter and in the three following chapters the occupational structure of
each zone is examined using tables showing data from probate, marriage licences, parish
registers and the 1841 census. 11
After discussion of the tables, the body of the chapter
comprises text organised in sections according to occupational groupings.
In the text
information from other sources is used to supply a fuller picture of the town’s economy.
Using probate data as a very approximate guide to occupational variation Table
8.9 in Chapter 8 shows that the market town of Alcester (as expected) had a wider range
of occupations than the other (more rural) zones until the nineteenth century when
urbanisation in Redditch and Studley caused Zone D to overtake Alcester in this respect.
Within Alcester itself the number of occupations stayed similar though there were many
differences in the actual occupations between periods. 12
The fact that Alcester’s range of
occupations did not grow as much as that of Zone D, combined with findings from other
10 Rogers, The State of the Poor (by Sir Frederic Morton Eden), p. 325. Alcester’s treatment of its poor
was also discussed in Berrow’s Worcester Journal 28 Jan. 1796 and 7 April 1796 where Alcester was held
up as a good example with local worthies forming a Bread Committee to supply good wholesome brown
bread to the town’s poor.
11 The merits and drawbacks of these sources are discussed in Chapter 2, but are also examined in Table 4.9
below. Appendices also provide data from sources such as trade directories, where available.
12 The number of occupations in probate data in Alcester were as follows: Period A: 35, Period B: 37,
Period C: 34 and Period D: 34. This can only be used as a rough guide as the amount of probate data
available for Alcester and the other zones differed over time. See Table 8.9 and also discussion of changes
and comparison between parishes in Chapter 8.
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