Poor Law Records

Poor Law Records 16th Century to 1835

Poor Law Records come from a crude Welfare system and can provide invaluable information about your ancestors. They are particularly helpful for the period 1660-1835: notably for settlement (the process for establishing which parish was responsible for the maintenance of each individual pauper), apprenticeship, boarding out of children, bastardy and militia service. The Poor Law system produced documents specifically related to individual persons or families.

Family historians are often plagued by the difficulty of finding families whose name suddenly disappears from the records of a parish because they moved away to another. To assist the researcher, West Sussex Record Office has available a Poor Law Database of information concentrated on the records of Settlement and Removal 1662-1835.

Many of the original records are in a fragile condition and so a microfilm version is available for reference (MF 983-1004 Overseers Records).

Settlement certificates (but not removal orders) from the East Sussex parish record collections have been published by M.J. Burchall in Eastern Sussex Settlement Certificates, 1670-1832, available in the Record Office Library (WSRO Lib No. 7259).

Among the Quarter Session records are cases where parishes disputed over the settlement of paupers. M.J. Burchall's published abstracts from the Order Books, Catalogue of Sussex Quarter Session Settlement Orders and Cases, in three volumes, 1661-1749 are also available in the WSRO Library (Nos. 6352, 9753 and 9751)

1835 to 1948

Between 1835 and 1948 paupers were maintained in the workhouses of the Poor Law Unions, each catering for a group of between 10 and 25 parishes. There was a rigid documentation for the inmates, producing the following items which can be of genealogical value:

• Births and deaths in the workhouse
• Creed registers, giving details of birth
• Admission and discharge for inmates, with the names usually grouped in alphabetical order

Material of this kind has survived for eight out of the eleven West Sussex Unions and is listed below. For full details of the parishes involved and references, see Sussex Poor Law Records: A Catalogue, by J.M. Coleman.