What do these abbreviations mean on a workhouse master’s records?
Q
My ancestors, Thomas Bennett Kaye and his wife Margaret, were master and matron of Weardale Union Workhouse near Durham between 1870 and 1878, when they suddenly left and moved to Liverpool. I’ve never understood why, so I ordered a document from The National Archives at Kew that lists when new masters and matrons started and finished.
Can you help me decipher the abbreviations on the document, in particular the numbers in red? Was there some sort of scandal, or did they just want a new start? Bryony Parsons
A
The document you mention comes from the ‘Registers of Paid Officers of the Poor Law Commission and its Successors’ (1837–1921) held in section MH 9 at The National Archives (TNA). These registers record the main staff employed by each Poor Law union, including workhouse masters and matrons, medical officers, nurses, porters, teachers, relieving officers, chaplains and so on, although not lower-grade ‘servants’. The details for the successive holders of each post include their name, salary, date of appointment and (in red) their date of departure and cause of leaving. These volumes have not yet been digitised by TNA, and require a visit to Kew in order to examine them.
Thomas Kaye’s entry records that he resigned as master of the Weardale Union Workhouse in April 1878, with a note referring to his conduct that includes the rather cryptic text “v 75347 ’75”. The “v” is short for the Latin word vide, meaning ‘see’, and is a cross-reference to another section of TNA’s files, catalogued under the heading MH 12. This is the voluminous archive of the daily correspondence between each union and the central authority (the Poor Law Commissioners, later the Poor Law Board and then the Local Government Board) covering 1834–1900, and comprises a massive 16,741 volumes. It contains a wide range of material, not only administrative matters – for example, statistical and financial reports, staff appointments and departures, and so on – but a variety of other documents such as letters of complaint written by paupers and the union’s response to them. The final “75” in the MH 9 note relating to Thomas Kaye indicates that it is filed in the volume covering 1875.
The item of correspondence concerned, dating from December 1875, runs to several pages and reveals that an official audit of Thomas’ accounts for a six-month period in 1874 had revealed “certain grave irregularities”, although no further details were provided. Since Thomas’ book-keeping was found to have improved since that time, the auditor recommended just issuing him with a severe reprimand. However, some members of the board of guardians wanted him to be dismissed for “not having given satisfaction to this Board in the performance of his duties”, but when the matter was raised at a board meeting they lost the vote by four votes to three and Thomas stayed in his post. Nonetheless, the incident was clearly viewed by the Local Government Board as sufficiently serious for it to be noted in his MH 9 record.
One use of the MH 9 registers was to allow Poor Law employees to be tracked if, having committed some offence, they tried to obtain employment in a different union without revealing it. Such matters might also feature in the minute books of the guardians’ meetings. Unfortunately, virtually none of these books survives for the Weardale Union.
A county-by-county index to the MH 12 volumes can be found in TNA’s online catalogue Discovery at tinyurl.com/MH12PoorLaw. Some early MH 12 volumes for about 20 unions have now been digitised and indexed – for a list of these, see TNA’s web page at tinyurl.com/PovertyPoorLaws.
Peter Higginbotham