Pauper Ancestors

The first Poor Law was enacted in 1601, and this system of social security, which was supposed to ensure that those who could not work had food, drink and a roof over their heads, but which is inextricably linked in the public imagination with the cruelty of the workhouse, was not finally abolished until the creation of the NHS in 1948. Being part of the government bureaucracy, detailed records were kept of everything: rate-payers, collectors of rates, workhouse overseers and the staff and inmat