Rate books

Everyone living in property of a certain value had to pay to support the parish’s upkeep

Before the national census, taken every ten years from the start of the 1800s, few records are as effective for finding lists of people living in an area as rate books.

Various local duties were collected in each parish for the upkeep of its buildings such as the church and gaol, highways and also for fulfilling their legal poor law obligations – looking after the poor who depended on parish relief. These rate books were a record of those in the parish who paid the rates and as they are arranged by street, you can use them to find your ancestors and plot their movements over the years.

As the amount each person paid depended on the size of their property, the entries include details of their home, as well as how much they paid.

All rates were collected by the

parish Overseers of the Poor, until 1834 when new legislation meant that the Poor Law Guardians took on responsibility for the poor rate’s collection and distribution within the parish.

There is an interesting range of documents in the London Metropolitan Archives ( LMA) London, England, Selected Rate Books, 1684-1907 collection. While you can find the important Highway Rate and Poor Rate books that show how much parishioners paid to maintain the roads and look after the poor, there are also books that list those who didn’t pay. Browse the Hackney records to reveal the summoning book for poor rate defaulters from Shoreditch and Brentford Poor Rate Demand Notices. See if your ancestors are listed in the books of those reprimanded for not paying their way.

See if your ancestors were reprimanded for not paying