Family history
This month, Ken Nisbet takes a look at the variety of online resources that can help you find out more about ancestors who endured poverty
How to trace ancestors who fell on hard times
Just as 1855 is important to statutory registration, 1845 is one of the most crucial years regarding the treatment of the poor in Scotland, since this was the year that An Act for the Amendment and better Administration of the Laws relating to the Relief of the Poor in Scotland was passed.
So what was the situation prior to 1845? A good introduction is Sir George Nicholls’ A History of the Scotch Poor Law (https://scot. sh/scotch). After the reformation, when kirk sessions came into being, it was accepted that a percentage of the money raised through church collections could be used to provide assistance to the poor. In Scotland there was a separation between those who were deemed to be requiring permanent assistance, and those described as being ‘occasional poor’ – that is, the able-bodied. It is the former who appear in the poor law rolls kept by the kirk sessions.
Generally speaking, it was due to age and health that an individual would be placed on a poor law roll because they had no prospect of earning an income. So, the kirk sessions records which are available on www.scotlandspeople.gov. uk might be the only place where you will find references to ancestors who lived in poverty. The attitude of the Scottish authorities was that the able-bodied poor had the ability to move outside their parish to find work so should not be dependent on relief from the kirk sessions, as the overview here https://scot.sh/ hskirk explains.
Royal Commission evidence
In 1843, a royal commission was appointed to inquire into the poor law in Scotland. The commission began taking evidence on 2 March 1843 and continued into 1844, when the report was published. If you have Scottish ancestors, make sure you explore National Library of Scotland’s digital resources at
www.nls.uk/digital-resources.
Under ‘UK parliamentary papers’ you will find all the commission’s reports – and parliament had a huge number of commissions on a huge range of subjects. For this topic, see ‘House of Lords papers – Poor Law inquiry Scotland’. The appendix is on Google Books:
https://scot.sh/inquiry.
The Scottish Mining website also has information for a small number of Fife, Lanarkshire and Ayrshire parishes: www.scottishmining.co.uk/445.html. Parishes were able to raise funds for poor relief through an assessed property rate. The ability of parishes to combine for the administration of poor relief gave them the power to bring into operation poorhouses for individual parishes, or combinations where the population was at least 5,000. There was a central board of supervision that largely had an advisory role and worked with the courts where legal disputes over the interpretation of the act occured.
In Scotland there was a separation between those who were deemed to be requiring permanent assistance and those described as being ‘occasional poor’
For a research guide to using poor relief records, visit National Records of Scotland: https://scot.sh/ poorrelief
Ken Nisbet is secretary of the Scottish Genealogy Society and of the Scottish Association of Family History Societies and is on the user group for the Family History Centre in Edinburgh. He is a regular lecturer to Scotland’s family history societies. He has written a number of books, all of which are published by the Scottish Genealogy Society, and tutors some of the classes the society runs.