This guest blog has been written by Phil Carstairs
Twenty of the households on the soup list cannot be matched with the Hexham residents listed in the censuses of 1871, 1881 or 1891. Given the mobility of the late nineteenth century working class population, the figure does not seem unduly high for a sizeable industrial town. In contrast in Swanbourne, a village in rural Buckinghamshire, all of the 58 households receiving soup in the late 1870s appeared in the censuses.
The 338 heads of household (ignoring the ‘second’ Charles Lowe) represented 1,258 individuals if we assume that the 1 pint serving represents one person. The census records these households as containing 1,268 people over one-year old and 38 infants which confirms the one pint plus bread serving was for one person (many other soup kitchens provided a quart (two pints) as their standard serving. The serving sizes show occasional variation as some households with several people of working age got less than one pint per person and one or two households got more pints than the census records people. The variations may be because some household members had some income and some may have been particularly poor or been ill. The number getting soup represents 21.3% of the local population.
This proportion of the population being in receipt of charitable food is at the higher end of the range for the northeast of England in the late-nineteenth century. There were complaints in the Hexham Courant (6/12/1879) that some of the applicants were not all that needy, so its policy may have been more generous than elsewhere. The most common categories of work that soup applicants were engaged in were general labourers (28), specialist labourers (27) and building trades (26). However, market gardening (24) and hawkers, pedlars and costermongers (24) were also well represented. These were outdoor occupations that were vulnerable to winter weather and shorter daylight hours; market gardening was particularly seasonal. Agricultural workers only accounted for five soup recipients reflecting the continuing practice in Northumberland of hiring most farm workers on annual contracts. Those with no or only limited skills made up a large proportion of those on the soup list, so it is surprising to see a journalist, two barbers, two butchers and 12 tanners. There were those with skills that were becoming increasingly superseded by industrialisation or changes in fashion: the average age of the glove makers was 69 and the straw hat maker and lace maker were both over 60; in contrast the tanners and market gardeners were on average 44 and 45 years old.
The age profile of soup recipients (Figure 1) shows that the heads of household in receipt of charity were mostly of working age and most had family members to support. There were the sorts of people who were not eligible for poor law relief; the able-bodied were expected to support themselves even if there was no work to be found. The age range of the workhouse population in 1881 (Figure 2), a time when the workhouse was becoming a facility reserved for the elderly, orphans, single mothers and sick, is in marked contrast, showing that most inmates were above working age with men significantly outnumbering women (the heads of household data will record men in preference to women both in the soup list and the census). Unfortunately no records survive of those who received outdoor relief (poor law relief given to those living outside the workhouse) who made up the majority of parish welfare recipients; only one person on the soup recipients list is recorded in the census as being a pauper (someone in receipt of parish relief).
The lists provide a unique insight into the lives of the working poor who rarely appear in official Poor Law records. The Soup Kitchen and other similar charities were the only assistance available for those who were deemed ineligible for assistance under the Poor Law.
