The sixteenth century increase in poverty led to a system of parish based poor relief evolving from Acts of 1597 and 1601 and lasting, with modification, until 1834. The Acts created a poor rate and overseers to care for the 'settled' impotent poor of every parish. The able-bodied were to be set to work. In their homes the 'deserving' poor received 'outrelief' in cash, food, clothing, fuel, rent and medical aid. Since poverty was created by unemployment, parishes were empowered to 'set the poor on work' in 'Abiding and Working Houses'.
Workhouses increased after Knatchbull's Act 1722 permitted parishes or groups of parishes to build or rent them to 'receive the labour' of their inmates. Refusal to enter meant ineligibility for relief. By 1776 the basic pattern of a Kent workhouse system had emerged. Some 132 workhouses had accommodation, sometimes shared, for 5,819 inmates. Only 29 of 391 parishes did not use them since they were thought cheaper than 'outrelief'. While some large urban workhouses held 100-350 paupers, half held under 30 and were little more than cottages.
Rising poor rates and Gilbert's Act 1782, authorising unions of parishes to establish common workhouses controlled by Guardians for 'the aged, infirm and impotent poor' produced further workhouse building. Twelve Gilbert unions were formed, mostly in East Kent. Some large individual parishes also adopted the Act such as Dover St Mary, Ramsgate and Margate. Approximately a quarter of Kent parishes were affected.
By 1813 two thirds of Kent parishes, including the larger towns, were keeping most of their poor in workhouses. This was a higher proportion than in any other county except Middlesex indicating the extent of Kent's poor law problems. Often squalid and slackly administered with lavish dietaries Kent's mixed workhouses did little to reduce the rates.
From c.1760 increased pauperisation of the landless labourer was compounded by the relentless growth of population producing in turn a surplus rural labour market, permanent unemployment, underemployment and low wages. Post-war demobilisation in 1815 and then prolonged depression brought even more widespread unemployment as farmers sought to minimise their losses and the condition of the poor, despite encouragement of parish emigration, became 'worse than ever known'.
Every parish devised its own particular expedients to encourage farmers to employ men even if it meant subsidising wages. By 1824-25, 138 (33.7 percent) parishes employed full-time, paid assistant overseers, increasing to 188 by 1834 in a bid to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Select vestries, standing committees to consider relief applications, reached a peak of 61 (14.9 percent) in 1825-26. Regular 'cesses' or pensions, formerly payable only to the impotent poor, after 1800 were paid to the able-bodied in time of crisis although there is little evidence that allowances in-aid-of-wages or the Speenhamland system, whereby incomes were supplemented from poor rates in proportion to family size and the price of bread, were widely adopted in Kent. Payment of child allowances to labourers in work for the fourth child and above was widespread. Relief in kind, particularly in fuel, was common as were payment of pauper rents, rates, provision of housing and subsided food in time of dearth.
Kent overseers continued to try to solve unemployment by setting the able-bodied to work. Those lacking equipment or materials were given the requisite money. Most parishes fell back upon their own public work schemes. Road repair was almost universal. Parish farms were more successful.
Many parishes initially adopted the Roundsman system or variations upon it. The unemployed were sent round the parish farmers to do what work could be found. Wages were made up from poor relief to a family income considered sufficient for subsistence.
By 1834 many parishes had turned to a Labour Rate. Farmers who employed a number of regular labourers according to their rating discharged a part of their rates by employing surplus hands. Failure to employ them meant payment of a Labour Rate. Workhouses, too, implemented work schemes mostly associated with textiles, though few succeeded. Elsewhere parishes experimented with contractors who took responsibility for the poor for a lump sum which entitled them the use of their labour.
Relief was not granted indiscriminately. Nor were all Kent workhouses 'small, tottering hovels'. Pembury, Coxheath, Westerham, Eastry and Ashford were but a few applauded as 'well-regulated'.
Compared with the northern counties the Kent poor law had reached a crisis point by 1834. The system was abused by labourers caught in a hopeless poverty trap and by farmers who used it to keep wages low. Overseers were desperately aware of the social discontent revealed by the 'Swing Riots' 1830-31. Most felt that the present state of the laws was 'bad and capable of extensive improvement' although not necessarily by the new uniform system introduced in 1834.
The Commissioners dealt first with the low-wage, rural south of England where abuses were greatest. Assistant Commissioner Sir Francis Head, a powerful advocate of the new system, arrived in Kent in late 1834 where he felt there was an urgent need to re-establish social control. By July 1835 he had created 11 unions in East Kent, where rioting had begun together with Sevenoaks union and a short-lived Penshurst union in the West. When he left Kent in December 1835 he had added ten more. His successor, E. C. Tufnell, completed the changes by November 1836 although a Strood union was formed from North Aylesford union in 1854 and a Woolwich union created in 1870. The Gilbert unions were easily dissolved save for the Canterbury Incorporation that remained until 1844. Before his departure Head had persuaded the 11 East Kent Unions to erect new buildings.
By 1841, 19 of Kent's 27 unions had new workhouses. Further workhouses were built at Sevenoaks, Gravesend, Tenterden, Canterbury and Chatham by 1855. Head believed large unions with big boards could not be intimidated. As befitted a model poor law county the capacities of these workhouses were large. Greenwich workhouse held over 1,000 inmates; 12 others held 400 paupers or more.
Initially care was taken to consult local magnates over unions since their support was crucial. Nevertheless while agriculturalists and Conservatives generally accepted the New Poor Law, Radicals and Liberal Whigs opposed it. Kent Liberal MPs, T. L. Hodges and Thomas Rider, fought it in Parliament. The ultra-Tory Earl of Stanhope condemned 'the cruelties, injustice and oppression of the amended system'. The poor responded to 'less eligibility' and the 'workhouse test' with widespread rioting and renewed incendiarism. In Kent's new workhouses cruelty tended to be psychological and insensitive rather than sadistic and deliberate. Work was hard and monotonous. Inmates were classified and families divided. Strict discipline was imposed but not always successfully. Diet was adequate but unattractive. The worst conditions were in unions controlled by its opponents but the 'terror of a well-regulated workhouse' was never realised.
While the more blatant abuses of the Old Poor Law vanished, outdoor relief was curtailed but certainly not abolished and there was considerable continuity with the old system. The 1834 Act brought a dramatic fall in able-bodied paupers. County expenditure dropped from £345,878 in 1834 to £185,309 in 1837. After 1839 it began to rise again although never approaching the 1834 level. Many contemporaries would have agreed that if the cost of new workhouses was taken into account 'the ratepayer has not much benefited nor the condition of the poor been at all ameliorated'.